The year 2020 delivered the hottest global average temperature to date, making the last six years the warmest on record, including an average temperature approximately 1.25°C above that of the period from 1850 to 1900. Extreme weather events damage infrastructure and can impede access to health and care facilities, placing pregnant women and infants most at risk. Climate change, now manifest in any number of ways around the world, has become a climate crisis. Furthermore, human behaviour has never before threatened wildlife the way it does today. The global biomass of wild mammals, for example, has fallen by 82%, while three-quarters of the world’s land surface is significantly altered and 66% of its ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts that exacerbate a growing environmental crisis.
Given the internationally recognised climate and environmental emergencies and their connection to malnutrition, Action Against Hunger programmes must adopt a climate and environmental approach by transforming our relationship with ecosystems and recognising their value as going beyond the services they provide. This approach builds our understanding around key environmental problems and challenges us to confront them responsibly. The second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to eradicate hunger and to put an end to all forms of malnutrition by 2030. Doing so requires us to address the climate crisis, along with other pressing issues such as gender inequity, and to implement humanitarian and development practices that respect the environment, even as they aid in the fight against the climate crisis and, ultimately, promote food security in all reaches of the globe.
This framework incorporates global and local perspectives that protect the local environment and identify and mitigate environmental risks. The minimum standards enable Action Against Hunger to monitor and evaluate our progress. We are committed to integrating climate crisis issues into our strategic planning as well as into our management system at all levels.