How the Russia-Ukraine crisis affects food security
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has thrown energy markets into disarray. With soaring oil and gas prices, nuclear facility Across Europe saw their lifespans increase and the international coal trade revives. The current crisis is changing the understanding of energy security at the heart of the international system.
The impact on the European and North American economies has drawn a lot of attention. In this article, Harry Verhoeven, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, answers questions about the implications for the world’s least developed countries, particularly as they relate to financing energy imports, local energy transitions, and food security. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is creating considerable short-term instability, sending prices of wheat, fertilizers and other commodities soaring, while exposing deeper problems that require continued attention.
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How is energy security related to food security and other crises in LDCs?
The economies of many LDCs rely heavily on oil imports and less on natural gas and coal imports. Historically, rising energy prices have created balance of payments crises and debt accumulation among these countries. The debt-to-GDP ratio rose sharply in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to rise since. So, with debt at 50-year highs, the surge in energy bills triggered by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict comes at a particularly sensitive macroeconomic moment. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are concerned that turmoil in energy markets and higher interest rates in the United States and the euro zone could lead to an inflationary spiral and severe financial distress in the least developed countries. This is especially worrying because debt and energy imports are directly linked to water, food and climate in the world’s poorest countries.
The worsening climate dilemma underscores the trade-offs that exist between water, food and energy security—increasing instability in one country can quickly jeopardize another. The IPCC 2022 assessment highlights that the countries most vulnerable to climate change tend to be the least developed countries, as evidenced by the current record-breaking droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia and increasingly deadly tropical cyclones in Madagascar and Malawi to this and Mozambique. Most of these countries are low-saving economies, struggling to connect their populations to the grid, provide them with adequate food, and increase agricultural productivity, all of which are critical to increasing their resilience to global warming. All other things being equal, increasing the amount of energy and water used in agriculture may help increase yields per acre, but is often costly and often exacerbates water or energy shortages at the same time. For example, dry states can double down on desalination plants to increase freshwater supplies, but if energy must be imported, the cost of running such units is often prohibitive. Likewise, extracting groundwater to irrigate farmland not only runs the risk of depleting aquifers, but often requires diesel pumps, and the input cost of imported fuel is increasing. While dams appear to be an ideal source of low-carbon renewable energy amid dizzying oil and gas prices, they are expensive, alter the chemistry of rivers and hinder the natural replenishment of riparian land. . Also, ironically, increasing climate change is causing disruption to energy and agricultural production as reservoirs are empty for months or at risk of overflowing, leaving LDCs in paralyzed and affected more developed economies such as Mexico, South Africa and Venezuela.
Therefore, the energy security dilemma caused by the Russia-Ukraine standoff cannot be resolved in isolation from broader questions about climate woes, water scarcity, and the self-sufficiency of the hungry in the least developed countries.
Are volatile global energy markets affecting the energy transition in LDCs?
For LDCs to effectively address climate change, at least three goals need to be prioritized: inclusive, participatory-based adaptation to climate shocks; increasing total energy consumption through low-carbon sources; and making clean, affordable energy more accessible. The latter two targets are suffering as energy prices soar due to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. With government budgets in Europe and North America now shifting toward increased military spending, Western support for the energy transition of the least developed countries is likely to diminish. For example, the US Congress approved $1 billion for 2022. This is especially disappointing given the long-term global failure to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance for low-income countries since 2009. Aid peaked at around $80 billion in 2019, according to the most generous estimates, although civil society organizations suspect the real figure is half or less. In addition, a renewed focus on hydrocarbons in rich industrialized economies is undermining efforts to mitigate climate change, which will make adaptation more difficult for the most vulnerable least developed countries.
A handful of LDCs hope soaring oil and gas prices mean stagnant hydrocarbon investment will resume: Mozambique has long touted its potential as a world-class gas producer; Senegal intends to tap into its recently discovered oil and gas reserves to speed up economic growth; Angola has pledged to restructure its eye-popping debt by raising oil prices. However, most LDCs are net energy importers and face balance of payments issues that challenge the need to adapt to climate change and the energy transition.
Another potential outcome of the Russia-Ukraine crisis is less known. Western investors have started pulling their money out of Russia, demonstrating that the meaningful pursuit of environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals is incompatible with doing business in or providing money to Russia. For LDCs, a renewed focus on ESG is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it may generate greater interest in decarbonization and adaptation initiatives in the global South. But as investors reassess long-standing organizational practices outside the West and the associated reputational risks, they will become more skeptical of working on controversial, difficult or difficult-to-monitor projects in LDCs, especially with the potential to rise when global interest rates are low . Ironically, therefore, tightening ESG standards to counter criticisms of the green wash could lead to less money available to ensure access to low-carbon energy for the world’s poorest people.
Will conflict in Russia and Ukraine and soaring energy costs undermine efforts to end global hunger?
Uncertainty over new supply and demand patterns in energy markets has raised the cost of food production in LDCs. Moreover, since Russia is the world’s largest supplier of fertilizers, and Ukraine produces about a quarter of the planet’s wheat, the conflict between the two countries has raised the price of imported wheat and fertilizers, leaving countries like Ethiopia Import prices have doubled. Policymakers are already talking about a “global food crisis” and the need to ensure international trade continues with as little disruption as possible in the form of export bans and speculative hoarding. However, while trade disruptions should not be underestimated, from the perspective of the beleaguered populations of LDCs, a food crisis is not just around the corner, it is happening quietly.
Since 2014, the number of undernourished people globally has increased by more than 10 million annually.Even before COVID-19, nearly 700 million people did not have access to enough food to meet minimum daily dietary energy needs; more than 120 million driven by pandemic additional People falling into a situation where starvation could kill them in the near future. Although the world’s total food production hit a record high.
The difference between increased supply and increased hunger underscores the fact that increased global production is not the solution, and that today’s energy geopolitics are not causing the crisis, but only amplifying it. Decades of donors and international financial institutions pushing the Global South to further integrate into the global financial system and commodities trade have produced contradictory — and often downright debilitating — results, especially for the poorest of these countries. people. The tight overlap of carbon in the global political economy has led to increased energy production but also deepened hunger: LDCs such as Angola, Chad, South Sudan and Sudan, which have become producers of hydrocarbons on the international market, are increasingly “Food aid is combined with the import of cheap wheat and other staples from international markets, despite their rich tradition of growing local food. This shift has directly led to neglect by local agricultural producers and instability in consumption patterns. It also leaves millions of citizens increasingly hungry and vulnerable to food and energy price shocks in rural areas and expanding slums. The majority of these people are women, who remain major crop producers in most LDCs but are most vulnerable to water, energy and food insecurity caused by climate, conflict or geopolitical instability.
This article was originally published by Columbia University’s Center for Global Policy. For more coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, visit their website.
