Food security and sustainable growth are receiving increasing attention in the global debate. The climate change related risks will aggravate food and water insecurity, and poverty. According to Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), reports that many global shifts in agricultural production have happened already due to climate change. Grain yields, the world’s major food staff, have fallen in many regions. Food shortages develop and the recent food price spikes may be more frequent. It is evident that nobody on this planet is going to be left untouched by the impacts of climate change. The MENA region will be particularly hard-hit by food insecurity, poverty and increased risk to ecosystems. Perhaps, MENA will be the region most impacted by climate change, due to more extreme weather events. A major reason for the strong impact in the MENA region is its large population of impoverished people. Such insecurity will add to the existing vulnerabilities of people in rural areas. With 70 per cent of people living in rural areas, the rural poor would suffer most from such risks.
There is huge scarcity of knowledge on the kinds of mitigation and adaptation measures needed, also at local level, and research could be fully engaged in adaptation policies practices and corresponding impact evaluation exercises. Public policy is urgently needed on food security and sustainable growth, as well as on impact evaluation of public policy.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) “The World Food Summit” of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences”.
The definition adopted puts emphasis on both quantity and quality of food accessed i.e. indicating the multifaceted dimensions of supply and also states the importance of demand as it is referring to preferred food, focusing among other on consumers with special habits and needs. This definition is in turn translated into a network of complicated global value chain which requires the design and implementation of sophisticated policy measures. In addition, it includes a wide range of stakeholders varying from small farms, to large manufacturing companies, retailers, research and academic institutions assessing scientific and socio economic aspects, government policymakers, charity organisations and NGOs among others.