Seminar on the Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Food and Nutritional Security in Costa Rica

Climate change is undermining food security and nutrition, maintaining persons in poverty and inequality traps, threatening forest and water resources, biodiversity, sanitation and water quality. This is why the results of the Paris Treaty are closely related to sustainable development goals (SDGs) of zero hunger, sustainable agriculture, health, wellness, and clean water (SDG 2, 3, 6). Likewise, the SDGs relevant to energy, economic growth, employment, industry and infrastructure, resilient cities and societies, and biodiversity (SDG 7, 8, 9, 11, 15) imply various measures that will contribute to a transformation towards low greenhouse gas emission solutions.

In July 2015, an Expert Meeting on Challenges and Opportunities for Food Security and Nutrition in SICA countries was jointly organized by Central American Agricultural Council (SE-CAC), ECLAC, FAO, and the Regional Food Security and Nutrition Programme for Central America (PRESANCA). One of the objectives was to identify possible lines of action to strengthen regional food security and nutrition. Within the context of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the CELAC Plan for Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication 2025 was also considered. With respect to this meeting, the group of experts recommended developing a line of action on food security and nutrition, climate change, and giving continuity to a regional scope of work on this challenge. Because the was an ad-hoc meeting of experts, without the representation of any formal institution, it was agreed that each participant would make the decisions they considered appropriate to transit the message to regional and national representative bodies.

Based on the recommendations of this meeting and within the scope of their work, SE-CAC and ECLAC prepared a work proposal on food security and nutrition, risk, and climate change that was presented to the Regional Technical Committee (CTR) of the Economics of Climate Change in Central America and the Dominican Republic Initiative (ECC CARD) at its meeting September 2015, meeting in San Salvador, El Salvador. The CTR approved the proposal which consisted in developing methodological proposals and initial analysis of potential impact climate change may have in the different dimensions of food security and nutrition and in the activity chain of the agrifood system in SICA countries. The proposal included a face-to-face meeting to discuss other proposals and to submit lines of action on food security and nutrition and climate change. This meeting was supported financially by BID and NDF within project RG-X1107 which supported phase III of ECC CARD. Following are the objectives of the meeting.

Event Objectives:

• Make known the current situation as well as the progress made by countries in the work done in food security and nutrition and in response to climate change.
• Identify through different methodologies how climate risk and climate change may impact food security and nutrition in all four of its dimensions as well as the food system.
• Establish a more complete perspective on the work done by national and regional institutions on food security and nutrition, and climate change and risk. Each of the participating institutions work on food security and nutrition topics, but according to their specialty, the meeting seeks to combine analyses or methodological proposals to examine food security and nutrition from within the agrifood system.
• Identify food security and nutrition topics that have not been addressed or about which there is little information.
• Consider if the methodologies could be applied as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each.