The serious problem of malnutrition is undoubtedly linked to the issue of climate change. The reduction in harvests and the decrease in the nutritional value of some products caused by climate damage are central issues that should not be underestimated because they can cause potential socio-economic repercussions; for example, the increase in the prices of some foods, especially staple foods such as rice and maize, could more than double in the coming decades, putting populations already suffering from poverty in even more precarious situations.

On the other hand, the decrease in the nutritional value of certain crops (the increase in CO₂ in the atmosphere reduces the concentration of nitrogen in plants, which in turn causes a significant decrease in protein in certain crops such as maize, soya, barley, rice and sorghum) could change and worsen people’s eating habits, involuntarily pushing them to consume food that is poorer in nutrients but rich in calories, leading to problems linked to obesity or, on the contrary, persuading them to avoid consumption and causing situations of malnutrition.

Moreover, as if that were not enough, primary activities such as fishing and livestock breeding are destined to decline in the future: fishing, for example, is already suffering serious damage and loss of its fauna reserves, which are normally found on our tables, due to warming and pollution of the seas; while livestock breeding, also due to the ill-considered use of chemical fertilisers that damage the quality of some crops used as feed, is seriously endangering not only the health of the farms themselves but also the health of meat consumers.

The results and forecasts of recent research (University of Wisconsin – USA, 2014) are alarming: today more than 800 million people are hungry and in the future, if current behaviour does not improve, world food production could fall by around 2% every decade with food demand increasing by as much as 14%. In Africa and Asia, countries that are already considered to be “food insecure”, climate change by 2050 could lead to a reduction of at least 8% in maize, wheat, millet and sorghum harvests and more than 25 million children could be at serious risk of malnutrition.