Global hunger risk in alternative climate change and socio-political scenarios

Around 735 million people, or 9% of the world’s population, are currently exposed to chronic hunger. Recent stocktaking of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 “Zero hunger” highlights violent conflict, adverse climate and weather impacts, and poor economic performance as major barriers to progress. Assessments of possible future changes to the state of food security therefore should account for plausible developments in climatic, socioeconomic, and political conditions around the world. Here, we present a global study of how national institutional characteristics (democracy) and the breakdown of peace (conflict-related fatalities) affect the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU), over and beyond socioeconomic and agroclimatic drivers. Drawing on a statistical prediction framework trained and calibrated on more than half a century of empirical data, we simulate and assess future changes in country-level PoU until 2050. Projections are generated along alternative scenarios for climate change and socioeconomic development, along with new political development pathways that quantify future changes in democracy and conflict risk. Results demonstrate that while no scenario achieves SDG 2 within 2050, future progress in reducing chronic hunger will depend fundamentally on reducing conflict risk. We find comparatively weaker effect of agroclimatic heat exposure on projected PoU.