Is climate change boosting hunger around the world?

That much seems clear as a warming planet brings higher sea levels that ruin farmland and wilder weather - from droughts to floods - that affect harvests and shift the range of crop pests.

Scientists say hotter temperatures are reducing the levels of key nutrients in major grains, threatening more malnutrition even if people can get enough food to eat, and making it harder for farmers to work outside and for some crops to grow effectively.

Such problems could soon lead to worsening shortages that could drive everything from higher food prices to food riots and more migration, agriculture and security officials warn.

But climate change is not the key driver of what was recently termed the world's first climate-induced famine in drought-hit Madagascar, scientists say.

Instead, widespread poverty - with many families already on the verge of hunger - was a big contributor, alongside deforestation, COVID-19 restrictions, normal climate variation and a lack of investment in key drought-fighting technology such as irrigation, said World Weather Attribution, a scientific research initiative.

"When you just blame everything on climate change then you take all the agency away from local decision makers to actually deal with the disasters," noted Friederike Otto, co-head of initiative - one reason it's worth not automatically pointing the finger at climate change, she said.

In Turkey, however, harsher drought - and a rise in the charges land owners levy for animals to pass through - is pushing Turkey's remaining Yoruk nomads to settle, abandoning a 1,000-year-old way of life.

That is a deeply unwelcome change, some say, but "there is little water now ... this year it did not rain much at all."

"For people like us, if we lived in a village there would be no work opportunities - but mountain life is ending," said Mehmet, one of the goat herders correspondent Liz Cookman interviewed during their journey.

How can loans for women help boost conservation? Don't miss our coastal tale from Kenya.

See you next week!

Laurie

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