Annual Report 2025 - Report - Page 94
Climate Change and Food Security
Targeting Sustainable Growth
For decades now, we’ve been told about growth and environmental protection
conflict. The data says otherwise: climate action and prosperity can bolster each other.
Economists refer to a classic market failure. We’ve treated the atmosphere like a free
dump, externalizing costs such as sea-level rise, extreme weather, and crop losses.
In a world of abundance, nearly 700 million people still
go hungry, David M. Beasley reminded the audience in
Lindau – punctuating his point by quietly counting four
seconds: “A child just died from hunger.” Food insecurity
is not only a human tragedy, it also fuels political instability and feeds into other crises, including climate change.
Helping people where they live – before they’re forced
to move – saves lives and reduces costs later on. “When
people have food, conflict decreases.”
Beasley argues that effective aid strengthens communities and entrepreneurship. Under his tenure at the UN
World Food Programme, tens of thousands of kilometres
of feeder roads and water canals and over a hundred
thousand small reservoirs were built, reducing conflict
between herders and farmers and boosting local markets.
That’s how you turn necessity migration into choice – by
addressing root causes early. Beasley linked hunger to
displacement. By the end of 2024, 123 million people had
been forcibly displaced, nearly double the amount in 2015.
This is not only a human tragedy, Beasley elucidated.
Lack of food security is also a leading cause of political instability that contributes to a growing number of global
crises, including military conflicts, geopolitical tensions,
92 | Debating Economics With a Purpose
and climate change – which in turn threatens crops and
food supplies. These interconnected challenges require
pragmatic policy responses, as several sessions at the Lindau Economics Meeting illustrated.
Food and climate are closely linked. Roughly onethird of all food produced is never eaten, enough to feed
two billion people. At the same time, food production
accounts for about 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Cutting waste, protecting biodiversity, shifting
toward predominantly plant-based diets, and fostering
regenerative agriculture are concrete levers that mitigate
global warming while improving resilience.
Forests matter – not just morally, but measurably. The
Amazon Fund channels international finance to keep
trees standing; research involving Lars Peter Hansen indicates that payments as low as 15 USD per ton of CO2e
could drive substantial net reforestation if farmers are
properly incentivized. An average tree absorbs around
20 kg CO2 per year; preventing deforestation today avoids
greater harm tomorrow.
Policy, however, is where progress stalls. Hansen called
for,“better carbon accounting systems,” noting that some
offsets were used fraudulently. He stressed that uncer-
