Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition

Phalkey, Revati K.; Aranda-Jan, Clara; Marx, Sabrina; H�fle, Bernhard; Sauerborn, Rainer

Abstract

The World Health Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change propose undernutrition as the most significant impact of climate change on child health. The question then arises: Where does the empirical evidence to back this claim come from? Current evidence for the impacts of climate on childhood undernutrition draws on a limited number of heterogeneous studies with methodological limitations and is based predominantly on secondary data. Establishing and validating causal pathways among complex confounding factors remain the main challenge in quantifying the climate-attributable fraction of undernutrition. Systematically generating evidence from long-term, high-quality primary data on a range of factors (agricultural, environmental, socioeconomic, and health) at the household level is critical for designing adaptation strategies, particularly for subsistence farmers.

Citation

Phalkey, R. K., Aranda-Jan, C., Marx, S., Höfle, B., & Sauerborn, R. (in press). Systematic review of current efforts to quantify the impacts of climate change on undernutrition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(33), Article E4522-E4529. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1409769112

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 21, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jul 27, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• Print ISSN: 0027-8424
• Electronic ISSN: 1091-6490
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 112
• Issue: 33
• Article Number: E4522-E4529
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1409769112
• Keywords: Climate change, Weather variability, Malnutrition, Childhood undernutrition, Crop yield
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/756223
• Publisher URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4522.abstract
• Related Public URLs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547305/