Burney Jennifer A
Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0519.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Aug 12;122(32):e2410202122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2410202122. Epub 2025 Aug 4.
What will it take to eliminate hunger in a world that is increasingly serious about climate change mitigation? For the past two decades, climate activism and mitigation efforts have largely focused on energy, industry, and transportation as the main contributors to anthropogenic warming. Although there is a long way to go to eliminate emissions from these sources, increasing international ambition means that attention is now turning to other hard-to-decarbonize sectors. Net zero food systems in particular pose unique challenges for humanity, given the moral dimensions of food security and the strong potential for vicious cycles: Globally hunger is back on the rise, the changing climate is already making food production for a growing population more difficult, and food shocks could lead to more land use change emissions that accelerate warming and feed back to negatively impact agricultural productivity and hunger. The dynamics of food production and consumption differ from other sectors and reveal several dimensions in which it will be critical to get policy right. Recent science suggests that two coordinated efforts will be needed to meet this challenge-a revamped focus on smallholder adaptation and productivity, and new "safety valve" institutions that sit at the intersection of food production and climate mitigation efforts and can operate at the relevant spatial and temporal scales to avoid negative tradeoffs in the quest to eliminate hunger and stabilize earth's climate.
在一个日益重视减缓气候变化的世界里，消除饥饿需要付出什么努力？在过去二十年里，气候行动主义和减缓气候变化的努力主要集中在能源、工业和交通领域，将其视为导致人为变暖的主要因素。尽管要消除这些来源的排放还有很长的路要走，但国际雄心的增强意味着现在注意力正转向其他难以脱碳的领域。鉴于粮食安全的道德层面以及恶性循环的巨大可能性，净零粮食系统尤其给人类带来了独特的挑战：全球饥饿问题再度抬头，气候变化已使为不断增长的人口生产粮食变得更加困难，而粮食冲击可能导致更多土地利用变化排放，加速气候变暖，并反过来对农业生产力和饥饿状况产生负面影响。粮食生产和消费的动态变化与其他领域不同，揭示了几个政策必须正确制定的关键层面。最近的科学研究表明，应对这一挑战需要两项协同努力——重新聚焦小农户的适应能力和生产力，以及建立新的“安全阀”机制，该机制处于粮食生产和减缓气候变化努力的交叉点，能够在相关的时空尺度上运作，以避免在消除饥饿和稳定地球气候的过程中出现负面权衡。
