Improving Food Security Through Climate Mitigation and Adaptation: Land, Livelihoods, and Nature-Based Solutions

Climate change is a major threat to food security, especially in areas where populations depend on smallholder agriculture and subsistence livelihoods. Climate shocks and climate change disrupt food availability and access by altering agricultural production, degrading landscapes, increasing income instability, and increasing exposure to health and economic risks. These pressures are especially disruptive for rural populations in low- and middle-income countries, where livelihoods are closely tied to natural resources and where socioeconomic services are limited.Despite commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, progress on improving global food security has stalled or even reversed in some settings. Climate adaptation is now critical to protect livelihoods by protecting incomes, reducing vulnerability, and sustaining access to healthy landscapes. In many contexts, adaptation is shaped by land access, land tenure, and land management decisions, which influence how households and communities respond to climate risks. Adaptation strategies across the food system, like land management, agroforestry, fishery management, and food storage, can influence household and community strategies to adapt to climate variability and change. Simultaneously, nature-based climate solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as reforestation and protection of coastal wetlands and forests, generate additional benefits that strengthen adaptation and enhance food security. These solutions can also increase resilience of livelihoods to climate shocks through stabilizing incomes, improving ecosystem health, and reducing the effects of extreme weather. However, these interventions can also involve land system trade-offs (e.g., competition for land, changes in land access and use, or impacts on local livelihoods), which require careful assessment. However, empirical evidence documenting the synergistic benefits of climate mitigation and adaptation is limited. The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together disciplines that evaluate how nature-based solutions support household and community-level adaptation to food security shocks through improvements in livelihoods. This Research Topic welcomes contributions that bridge disciplines like ecology, public health, demography, development, geography, and climate science. We seek projects that highlight evidence and case studies that provide innovative measurement approaches and policy-relevant insights on how climate adaptation can strengthen livelihoods and food systems. We particularly encourage work that explicitly links outcomes to land systems—such as land use change, land management, land tenure, land access, or landscape restoration—and that considers cross-scale dynamics (from local land decisions to broader land system drivers). Specifically, we seek contributions that emphasize quantifiable indicators of livelihood resilience, such as: income stability, ecosystem health, biodiversity, land tenure, or livelihood diversification. We also seek articles that assess trade-offs, equity, and social justice implications of nature-based solutions. Subthemes of interest include, but are not limited to:• Synthesis or review papers and new research evaluating climate adaptation and nature-based solutions and their impacts on livelihoods, income, and food security• Forestry, agriculture, and ocean-based climate solutions and their food security implications• Household, farmer, or community decision-making and adaptation strategies under rising climate risks in low- and middle-income countries• New frameworks or methods for measuring climate adaptation through income stability, improving ecosystem health, and reducing the effects of extreme weather, particularly using social science approaches• Direct or indirect food security benefits of climate mitigation or adaptation interventions• Equity implications of climate solutions, including gendered and socio-economic differences in benefits and risks• Case studies evaluating co-benefits of nature-based climate solutions in low- and middle-income countries• Land system trade-offs and governance questions associated with nature-based solutions (e.g., land tenure, access to land, competing land uses, and distribution of costs and benefits)• Connections between local land-use decisions and broader drivers of change (e.g., markets, migration, rural–urban linkages, or telecoupled land systems) influencing livelihoods and food security Topic editors: Ruthie Burrows, Maryia Bakhtsiyarava, Shail Joshi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77600/improving-food-security-through-climate-mitigation-and-adaptation-land-livelihoods-and-nature-based-solutions