A/70/287 offering leeway for socially and environmentally detrimental practices to be pursued under the guise of climate-smart agriculture. 87 X. Conclusions and recommendations Conclusions 82. Climate change poses unique and distinct threats to all aspects of food security, including availability, accessibility, adequacy and sustainability. Moreover, these threats are poised to affect a huge number of people, with 600 million additional people potentially vulnerable to malnutrition by 2080. Manifestations of climate change, such as an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, global warming, a rise in sea levels and a decrease in the availability of water, have significant impacts on food security. As a result, crop failures and adverse impacts on livestock, fisheries and aquaculture will have an overall negative effect on people’s livelihoods, with climateinduced food price volatility, nutritional deficiencies and diminishing quality of land and soil suitable for agricultural production a daunting reality. The consequences of failing to enact appropriate policies will pose a threat to global peace and security. As we are all living ever more interconnected lives, climate change should not be considered as affecting only those living in remote places. 83. The imperative to feed the world in a time of climate change resonates strongly with food policymakers and has resulted in a push for large-scale agricultural models to respond to the future demand for food. However, it is has been proven that more food production does not necessarily result in fewer people suffering from hunger and malnutrition. The world has long produced enough food, sufficient not only to meet the caloric requirements of the existing global population of over 7 billion, but also to meet the needs of a population expected to reach 9 billion in 2050. Hunger and malnutrition are a function of economic and social problems, not production. Moreover, not all of the calories produced go to feed humans: one third are used to feed animals, nearly 5 per cent are used to produce biofuels and as much as one third are wasted all along the food chain. 84. A strong “agropessimism” has emerged, partly as a result of the significant adverse effects of agricultural activities responsible for triggering climate change and degrading natural resources and partly as a result of the difficulty of the task of feeding a growing global population in the face of substantial challenges. As a result, the view has emerged that humankind will not be able to feed itself unless current industrial modes of agriculture are expanded and intensified. 85. This approach is wrong and counterproductive and will only serve to exacerbate the problems experienced by the current mode of agriculture. Rather, agriculture and food systems need to be reformed to ensure that they are more responsive to the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation, as evidenced by reduced reliance on fossil fuel-intensive __________________ 87 15-10041 Coopération internationale pour le développement et la solidarité (CISDE), “Climate -smart agriculture: the emperor ’s new clothes?”, CIDSE discussion paper (October 2014). Available from www.cidse.org/articles/item/640-climate-smart-agriculture.html. 23/25