Food and Water Security in Asia Pacific: KeyIssues and Challenges
Nazia Hussain, PhD
Institute for Future Initiatives, the University of Tokyo
Presentation for the International Forum for Sustainable Asia and thePacific, Dec 19, 2023

What is food security? basic facts• Food security* refers to:• availability of sufficient quality food through domestic production or imports• access to adequate entitlements (such as common resources) for acquiring food• utilization of food through diet, water, sanitation, and healthcare to meet all physiologicalneeds• stability (access to adequate food at all times, and not risk losing it to sudden or gradual risks(including climate change, economic reasons etc.)* FAO policy brief (June 2006, no.2)

Asia Pacific-key trends
in demographics•

60 % of the world’s population (approx. 4.3 billion
people), it is a diverse region.
• Home to the world’s most populous countries(India, China) to the smallest populations(Pacific).
• Spans Central Asia, Northeast Asia, SouthAsia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific.

• While some countries have youthful populations,others are ageing rapidly.
• By the middle of century, 1 in 4 will be 60
years or older (compared to 1in 10 today).
• In East and Northeast Asia, 1in 3 will be over60, many will be women without social
protection nets.
• Migration and urbanization are important issues.
• 40% of all international migrants originate
from the region, and more are moving within
their own countries.
• At present only 2 out of 5 people in live incities. By 2050, almost a billion people in theregion will move to cities.
Source: UNESCO

Climate risks to agriculture and food systems in Asia will escalate (IPCC, 2022)• Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation levels and extreme climate events, such as
heatwaves, droughts and typhoons, will persist in being important vulnerability drivers that will
shape agricultural productivity particularly in South, Southeast and Central Asia.
• Examples:••••

Major projected impacts in the agriculture and food sectors include decline in fisheries, aquaculture, crop production(particularly in South and Southeast Asia), reduction in livestock production in Mongolia and changes in crop,farming systems and crop areas in almost all regions, with negative implications to food security.
In India, rice production can decrease from 10 to 30%, whereas maize production can decrease from 25 to 70%
assuming a range of temperature increase from 1°C to 4°C.
Rice production in Cambodia can decrease by 45% by 2080 under the high-emissions scenario.
Occurrence of pests threatens the top Asian rice-producing countries including China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh,Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Japan.

• In South Asia, monsoon floods from 2005 to 2015 contributed to a high level of loss in agricultural productionwith peaks in 2008 and 2015 (FAO, 2018a).
• In Pakistan, farmers are experiencing a decline in crop yields and increasing incidence of crop diseases
because of climate extremes, particularly floods, droughts and heatwaves.

Half the people in the world facing food insecurity live in Asia Pacific (FAO, 2022)• More than a billion people in 2021 (460 million—severe food insecurity; 586 million—moderate foodinsecurity).
• South Asia (40.6 %), Southeast Asia (20.7 %), Oceania (13%) and East Asia (6.2 %). East Asia has thelowest levels of food insecurity and where food insecurity fell below pre-pandemic levels in 2021.
• 23% of the children are stunted in the region (half of the world’s total).
• Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand (41.4%), South Asia (30.7%), Southeast Asia (27.4 %)and East Asia (4.9 %).

• 9.9% of the children under 5 are wasting away due to malnutrition (global average 6.7%).
• South Asia (14.1 %), Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand (9 %), Southeast Asia (8.2 %) andEast Asia (1.7 %).
• 32.9% of women (15-49 yrs) had anaemia in 2019.
• South Asia (48.2%), Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand (33.9 %), Southeast Asia (27.2 %)and East Asia (16.1 %).

Food prices are getting higher (FAO, 2022)• The continued impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on theaffordability of food are exacerbating hunger and food insecurity.
• In 2021, 49.8% of the global total of people experiencing food insecurity werein Asia and Pacific. South Asia (412.9 million), East Asia (28 million),
Southeast Asia (17.4 million), and Oceania (2 million).
• The average cost of nutritious food is USD 3.98 per person/day.
• Almost 1.9 billion people or 44.5% of the population in Asia and the Pacificcould not afford a healthy diet in 2020 due to the increased cost.

What can be done? locating causality

Extant framing: links between food security, climate change, and socio-economic systems(IPCC, 2019)

This is what it means…
• Food security is an outcome of the food system → human well-being.
• Food production must increase by 70% to meet the needs of 9.1 billion people by 2050.*• Food security → is indirectly linked with climate and ecosystems
through the socio-economic system.
• Adaptation measures can help to reduce negative impacts of climatechange on the food system and ecosystems.
• Mitigation measures can reduce GHG emissions coming from the foodsystem and ecosystems.

*FAO2009 policy brief, “How to feed the world”

Extant framing simplifies the complexity of ground realities…

1. Climate change is not the only cause of food insecurity• Climate change is not the only cause of food insecurity.
• Food insecurity (including any crises) results from distribution and markets
that create conditions where low-income populations are unable to accessenough food.
• Legal resources (such as land, labor, money etc.) + social networks of support→ food insecurity among populations (Amartya Sen, 1983)• Thus, in addition to the bio-physical aspects of climate change, it is important topay attention to the socio-political-economic decisions, processes, and systems
that create vulnerability.

2. Social-ecological systems are cascaded across time and space• Also, it is important to consider economic
globalization (trade, investment, integrated
financial markets and production activities,communication systems, etc.)• Since climate change and globalization are
ongoing processes, their overlap may lead toclimate impacts of negative and positive kinds,leading to “double exposure” (Leichenko andO’Brien, 2000).
• E.g. agro-industrial modernization in
Mexico → benefitted agro-industrialists,
capitalist farmers and some peasanthouseholds →but excluded small farmers(Kay, 1997 cited in Leichenko and O’Brien,2000).

Interdependent and linked systems of people andnature nested at local and global scales. (Fischer etal., 2015)

2. Social-ecological systems are cascaded across time and space (cont’d)• A different example of “double exposure” iswhen the impact of climate change reduces
food production and countries may importfrom other places, creating food insecurity inthe latter.
• E.g. winter drought in 2011 in China’s
wheat growing region led her to buy it in
the international market → doubling of
wheat prices → significant impact on
Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer→ high food and bread prices in Egypt +other pent-up grievances → coincidedwith the Arab Spring (Sternberg 2012).

Interdependent and linked systems of people andnature nested at local and global scales. (Fischer etal., 2015)

3. Ensuring food insecurity requires systemic changes to prevent
deepening structural inequities• As IPCC reports tell us, agriculture and food system are key responses to climate change:• “Agriculture and the food system are key to global climate change responses. Combining
supply-side actions such as efficient production, transport, and processing with demand-side
interventions such as modification of food choices, and reduction of food loss and waste,
reduces GHG emissions and enhances food system resilience (high confidence).” (IPCC,2022)• In making agricultural systems efficient through corporate/market-driven solutions, but
especially securing/acquiring land, it is important to consider the impact on smalholder farmers
and indigenous populations in Asia and Pacific.
• 30% of population of the region is employed in agriculture, mostly as smallholder farmers(ILO, 2022).
• 90% of the growth in crop production globally (80% in developing countries) is supposed tocome from higher yields and increased cropping intensity, with the remainder coming fromland expansion (FAO, 2009).

3. Take land and water issues in account to prevent deepeninginequities (cont’d)• Solutions need to take land issues in account as they are central tofood and agriculture.
• Land-based inequities already exist and should not be deepened throughsuperficial policy measures that take land away from marginalized groups andto capitalistic production systems (Franco and Borras Jr., 2021).

• The pressure on renewable water resources from irrigation would
remain severe and could even increase slightly in several countries.
• Simply, policy reforms should not push smallholder farmers,
indigenous populations, and other marginalized groups including
women, into further vulnerability through production aiming tomazimize benefits, even while deepening inequities.

4. Cities are in the heart of action and need to be studied inrelation to rural processes• Urbanization is driving changes in agri-food systems across the rural–urbancontinuum. These changes represent both challenges and opportunities toensure everyone has access to affordable healthy diets.
• Urbanization is also leading to increasing claims on water resources awayfrom cities. In cases of big cities vs. smallholder farmers and upstream
populations, the needs of cities are often prioritized considering contribution
to GDP by cities. These claims and decisions portend all sorts of issues in
the present and near future.

4. Urban food security is becoming a significant concern (cont’d)• Urban food security and nutrition will increasingly become significant.
• More than 50 percent of the Asia and the Pacific region’s population is
expected to live in urban areas by 2030.
• Cities across the region will need to accommodate almost a billion more people by 2050.

• Malnutrition and health deprivation levels among the urban poor are often as
high as among the rural poor (FAO, 2022).
• About 40 percent of the region’s current urban population, 500 million, lives in informal
settlements, which typically face governance challenges.
• The urban poor are also among the most vulnerable to shocks such as the COVID-19
pandemic and the impacts of climate change in cities.

Thank you!