Climate Crisis & Nutrition

Climate change significantly contributes to humanitarian crises around the globe, as climate-related disasters elevate levels of risk and vulnerability. In 2023, among the 15 countries most susceptible to the climate crisis, 12 received an internationally coordinated humanitarian response. 

The climate crisis poses a significant threat to nutrition throughout the life cycle, affecting all forms of malnutrition and impacting every region. Available evidence indicates a strong negative correlation between extreme climate events and children's nutritional status. Climate shocks, such as excessive rainfall, extreme temperatures, and drought, are key risk factors contributing to child wasting. Additionally, seasonality and changes in seasonal weather patterns critically influence livelihoods, food production, mobility, and the availability of nutritious food. 

The four GNC priority areas of linking Nutrition in Emergencies (NiE) and the Climate crisis are: 

1. Applying a NIE climate crisis lens to current approaches for nutrition risk analysis, preparedness and anticipatory actions: With the increasing number of emergencies linked to extreme weather events, seasonality shifts, and subsequent displacements, the GNC prioritizes proactive risk management and preparedness approaches. This area focuses on explicitly considering how the climate crisis alters disaster risk and nutrition profiles, addressing these risks with existing tools and approaches to ensure continuity of services. Anticipatory Action is a key approach representing a shift towards more proactive disaster management in response to the changing dynamics of climate risks.  

2. Climate-adapted NiE: This area addresses additional climate crisis-related risks and vulnerabilities that cannot be managed through current approaches, potentially requiring changes, expansions, or new methods, guidance, tools, or ways of working. The GNC prioritizes exploring approaches to support healthy, sustainable diets in preventing and treating all forms of malnutrition and functional care pathways that consider gender, environmental, and climate impacts.  

3. Climate and environmental justice, anti-oppression, and localisation: This area expands on the GNC’s principled approach to NiE and the climate crisis and cuts across other focus areas. These aspects inform the way in which the cluster develops and delivers on its NiE work in the context of the climate crisis through a restorative process by which disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis and its impacts on the nutrition status of individuals are addressed, and not further exacerbated, by the clusters. This area aims to foster broad-based engagement in shaping its NiE and climate crisis work, recognizing the importance of decentralized and local inputs in crafting effective NiE action for the climate crisis.  

4. NiE climate and environmental impact mitigation: This area involves updating NiE approaches to mitigate negative climate and environmental impacts by the nutrition cluster/sector. It includes better impact analysis and continued exploration of adaptations in nutrition supply recipes, packaging, and localisation of supply chains to reduce environmental impact.

Check the recording from the webinar “COP28 – What does it mean for Nutrition in Emergency practitioners?” in English/Français/Español

Stay tuned for more Nutrition and Climate change tools and resources on the GNC Climate Crisis webpage!