Food insecurity risks global instability and fuels terrorism

Food insecurity in the global south has the propensity to metastasize into even more dangerous instability. When people lack accessible and affordable food, their desperation for nutrition intensifies sociopolitical tensions, which leads to violence and popular unrest. When nations disintegrate under these forces, they leave power vacuums for malicious actors and terrorist elements to exploit, just as they did during the aftermath of Arab Spring. Drastically climbing bread prices first catalyzed popular uprisings against governments in Libya, Egypt, and Syria and led to partial or total state collapse. In Syria, ISIS then proliferated in the subsequent vacuum and the nation also became a door for Russian influence into the Middle East. The clear lesson here is the power food exerts over stability and therefore security. Unfortunately, climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of food challenges. Unseasonal temperature and precipitation fluctuations, rising sea levels, droughts, and extreme weather events can kill crops in a multiplicity of ways. This is already triggering food security issues. Up until the 1990s Syria was relatively fertile. However, a series of irregular multi-year droughts turned Syrian agricultural land to desert from 2006 to 2010. Crop yields plummeted and 85% of livestock died, forcing Syria to rely on imported grain. When another climate change induced drought hit Russia in 2010, its government halted all grain exports. International prices soared, triggering the bread riots that grew into the Arab Spring. As climate change continues the prevalence of food scarcity events will rise in conjunction.