International Development Committee: The UK Government’s work on achieving SDG2: Zero Hunger
Met Office submission, December 2023
Introduction
The Met Office is the UK’s National Meteorological Service, a Public Sector Research Establishment and an Executive Agency of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). In addition to our well-known weather-related capabilities and services, we are home to the Met Office Hadley Centre which provides climate science and services to help governments, industries and citizens understand and prepare for climate variability and change. This includes targeted research related to climate change impacts on food, farming and the natural environment.
Internationally, the Met Office supports the UK Government on several Official Development Assistance (ODA) programmes including:
As well as partnering with UK institutions, the global nature of weather and climate means we work extensively internationally; bilaterally with individual countries; with multilateral organisations such as the United Nations World Meteorological Organization and World Food Programme (WFP) as part of wider international collaboration projects. One of the benefits of this coordinated, collaborative approach is the ability to extend the benefits of funded programmes.
We recognise that this inquiry is primarily focussed on workstreams and projects directly reporting to SDG2: Zero Hunger; however, we believe that it is also important to note that programmes reporting to other SDGs also support progress on food security, including those that report to SDG 13: Climate Action. For example, without having a clear understanding of the impacts a changing climate will have on a global, regional and local scale, it would be impossible to put effective measures in place to ensure food security. It is in this context and the roles and responsibilities listed above that we provide this response.
Inquiry response
Climate & Weather
Weather and climate change are intrinsically connected to food production and climate-related disasters are already one of the leading causes of hunger today.[1] An understanding of these topics is therefore paramount to considerations about food security. The UK Government’s work on this policy area and SDG2 draws on a strong evidence base from across the research community, including the Met Office. We specifically provide research, evidence and advice in three key areas:
Projects range in scope from providing global insight, to regional and highly focused locally applied data intelligence and analysis. Examples include:
Research looked at how airborne fungal spores of a wheat disease (Wheat Rust) could endanger food security. The Met Office worked with partners including the University of Cambridge, to adapt modelling systems previously used to forecast ash dispersal from erupting volcanoes and radiation from nuclear accidents to predict when and how wheat diseases are most likely to spread.
Results have identified the circumstances and factors under which a threat is posed from long-distance dispersal out of East Africa to the large wheat-producing areas in India and Pakistan. The assessments produced can effectively inform surveillance and control strategies.
Adaptation Assessments help vulnerable communities use weather warnings and forecasts to better prepare for climate-related shocks including mitigating the impacts on food production.
For example, an assessment in Nepal, based on the same methodology as the WFP climate change risk assessments for food security was funded under the FCDO Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARCCC) programme. The four-year programme aimed to strengthen weather forecasting systems across South Asia. Following the success of the project a series of risk reports for Africa and Asia have been produced to advise FCDO on future climate risk.
Met Office work also contributes directly to SDG2 through the delivery of activities with the WFP such as:
The index provides policy-relevant evidence to evaluate the benefits of mitigating climate change for human food security outcomes and to support long-term adaptation planning.
These assessments combine knowledge of future climate projections for the 2050s and 2080s with livelihood maps so WFP can work with governments in least developed countries to develop adaptation plans relevant for agricultural sectors and others, such as water and health. These have been produced for Sudan and Mozambique and work is now progressing to extend to other countries.
UK Leadership
The UK can support global progress on SDG2 through its international leadership. We welcome the International Development White Paper published in November which sets out the UK Government’s continued support towards the delivery of the SDG aims by 2030.
The UK’s long-standing commitment to using world class science and research and collaborative approaches to solve international challenges has strongly contributed to its leadership position globally, its ability to support others effectively, and its authoritative voice when calling for global action. This includes mitigating against and adapting to climate impacts and promoting food security. Examples include:
Developed from an FCDO-funded pilot initiative and led by the Red Cross Climate Centre (RCCC) and WFP, FbF enables access to humanitarian funding for early action ahead of extreme weather events.
The Met Office has worked closely with the RCCC since 2017 to ensure National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) are engaged in the development of thresholds which, once triggered, enable financial aid to be released to help governments and people prepare for extreme weather and climate events such as flooding and drought. A co-authored paper - The Future of Forecasts, has been published to share knowledge in this area.
FbF has led to the creation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Anticipation Hub which gathers together experts in Anticipatory Action. As an expert member, the Met Office encourages other NMHSs to join the hub to enhance forecasting to support humanitarian efforts, from advanced notice for use of drought proof seeds to seasonal forecasting advice on predicted rains.
A research and development programme jointly funded by the FCDO and the Natural Environment Research Council, bringing together more than 200 researchers from over 20 countries, including the Met Office.
The programme aimed to enhance scientific knowledge and prediction of African climate variability, and pilot methods to ensure impact on specific development problems and deliver practical results at a local level. The learnings and expertise developed under FCFA will be used to inform the UK and Canadian Government funded initiative Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE).
Under FCFA the Met Office worked with partners to pioneer a new local regional forecasting model for Africa to reduce uncertainty, enable better-informed evaluation of the robustness of future projections, and increase confidence by decision makers to use these projections in their national adaptation planning across all sectors, including food and water security.
Maximising effectiveness - International Collaboration
Working with international, regional and local partners means that expertise can be applied where it is needed most to give the greatest impact against SDG2 and wider international development objectives. Through co-design with partners, projects can be made highly relevant and impactful. Examples include:
An ODA-funded programme, managed by the Met Office on behalf of FCDO, developed to assess the gaps for weather and climate services at local level and pilot programmes to resolve these, including enabling pre-emptive work by farmers and communities to safeguard food production.
The programme, which started in East Africa and has now expanded across the continent and to Asia Pacific, delivers maximum value for money by working in partnership internationally to build capacity and leverage funds to ensure long term sustainable delivery and improvement of local weather and climate services.
To date WISER has enabled enhanced information for over 3.3 million households and delivered in excess of £200 million of socio-economic benefit.
REAP was established in 2019 by the UK Government to enable expertise from across the climate, humanitarian and development communities to be pooled to better inform the design of international funds and implementation of Early Warnings for Early Action programmes globally.
The programme, hosted by the IFRC, aims to connect climate change adaptation planning to disaster risk resilience, e.g. using knowledge of future climate change impacts to inform actions taken in the present day to reduce food insecurity.
Over 30 nations and organisations are involved in the partnership, including the Met Office as the original co-designer of the initiative and technical expert for weather and climate information.
Maximising effectiveness - A Coordinated Approach
Taking a coordinated approach is essential when working with partners and consortia internationally, regionally, and locally, in order to solve complex challenges. In addition to ensuring that ODA-funded programmes deliver the best results, a coordinated approach can also enable benefits such as extending the impacts of funded programmes. For example, the Food, Farming and Natural Environment (FFNE) Climate Service (detailed below), although currently being delivered in a UK context, is being explored for synergies with projects in, and relevance to ODA-countries.
One of the national structures which the Met Office has found beneficial to facilitating coordination is the Global Food Security Programme – Programme Coordination Group Board which brings together the UK’s main funders and government departments with food security interests. The Met Office sits as an observer on this group ensuring close alignment of work and priorities with those across funding organisations and Government departments. Other examples of the benefits of taking a coordinated approach include:
CLEAR is an analytical approach developed by the World Food Programme to better understand how food security is affected by climate risks.
Utilising the CLEAR approach, the Met Office has developed best practice guidance for undertaking assessments of future climate risk at regional or national scales known as the ‘Climate in Context’ methodologies. Through a coordinated approach, these have been subsequently applied to Sudan, Mozambique and Nepal.
This project has identified where traditional sources of food will not be viable in the 2050s and is informing adaptation strategies. In Mozambique this is the transition away from reliance on grazing cattle as models show that this method of food production will not be viable at scale in future because of climate change.
This Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) programme has focused on climate smart agri-food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. AFRICAP also investigated the potential use of agroclimatic indices and seasonal forecasting (Mittal et al. 2021) and their integration with local knowledge (Streefkerk et al. 2022) to support decision making in Malawi.
UK Food Security
In addition to fulfilling international commitments, addressing food insecurity in developing regions is also important for the UK’s own national food security. The UK currently imports approximately half of all fruit and vegetables consumed, therefore it is important that food supply chains are resilient and secure. Met Office research which has been commissioned to support these considerations includes projects like the Food, Farming and Natural Environment Climate Service:
This DEFRA-funded Met Office climate service established in 2015 includes work examining the climate impacts on international regions of importance for the UK food security. For example, providing increased understanding of high-impact, low likelihood climate risks and what this means for food security in the UK.
Evidence from this service has been used in support of climate resilience and adaptation in the UK agrifood system, supporting the Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), National Adaptation Programme (NAP), and UK Food Security Report.
While the FFNE climate service focuses on UK food security, the remit includes international impacts, which given that the UK imports nearly half the food consumed, is both relevant and important to UK interests.
Looking Ahead
The Met Office welcomes how the Government is evolving its approach and is facilitating constructive future thinking including incorporating social science into future projects. This includes work by DEFRA, supported by the Met Office, to better integrate climate change metrics and indicators into the UK Food Security Report - a comprehensive review of the status of food security looking at global and UK supply, to inform and enhance future thinking and planning.
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