Brazil’s Approach to Hunger, Climate Needs to Address Conflict

The vision of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is based on Brazil’s G20 agenda that it launched last year. It supports the use of climate funds to boost global agricultural production and social protection to better protect countries facing hunger related to climate change.

Brazil’s focus on food security is welcome, especially as droughts, floods, heatwaves and shifting agricultural growing seasons – exacerbated by climate change – are undermining global livelihoods and access to food, and as international targets on hunger, food security and malnutrition are far off track.

But there is a serious omission in Brazil’s vision: conflict. By treating hunger as merely a technical problem of production and access, and ignoring the political realities of conflict, global climate diplomacy risks adopting an approach that will leave the most vulnerable behind.

In places experiencing conflict, whether in Sudan, Gaza, or Haiti, hunger is not primarily a failure to produce food, but rather a political crisis rooted in insecurity, power struggles, and weak institutions. No amount of improving global crop yields or cash transfers will end hunger when people cannot access food – either because local economies deteriorate, markets are disrupted, or violence prevents people from visiting markets.

Likewise, in these places, the fact that a flood or drought can turn into a disaster is not due to their bad luck with the weather. People living in conflict are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change for the same reasons they are unable to access food: because conflict and fragility have undermined the ways in which people cope with shocks.

However, the intersection between conflict and climate vulnerability remains an uncomfortable reality in diplomatic circles, because no one wants to invest in places considered too risky for climate and development funds. Highly fragile or conflict-affected countries are routinely excluded from global climate finance mechanisms and long-term adaptation strategies, overlooking the real risks of not investing in fragile places – and the high costs of delaying investment. By one estimate, in 2022, fragile countries received only 26% at most of the financing they need to adapt to the climate crisis.

But in recent years, political momentum has been growing around the need to focus climate efforts on countries affected by conflict.

COP 28, held in 2023, saw the first thematic day on this topic. It also saw 94 countries sign the Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace Declaration, which calls for “bolder collective action” to scale up climate finance for fragile states. (Brazil in particular has not signed it.)

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) last year, dozens of countries – including Chad, Somalia and Yemen – launched the first climate network led by countries affected by conflicts, and called for raising at least $20 billion annually to meet climate adaptation needs.

“Our message to all countries is clear: we can no longer ignore this,” Tawfiq Al-Sharjabi, Yemen’s Minister of Water and Environment, said in a speech. “The blind spot in climate finance poses an existential threat to developing countries and…is a clear dereliction of the international community’s duties.”

Greenpeace members hold signs calling for action to save forests outside the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brasilia, Brazil, on October 13.Evaristo SA/AFP via Getty Images

Although Brazil has great ambitions to lead the Global South, it has been reluctant to link climate vulnerability to conflict. So did Russia and China, two BRICS member states, which vetoed related proposals at the United Nations and in climate negotiations, arguing that addressing the conflict risks securitizing climate action or violating national sovereignty. This is despite the fact that the goal of climate finance for conflict-affected countries is not related to the causes of conflict or even behavior; This is about ensuring that communities on the front lines can respond to the climate crisis.

Similarly, during its G20 presidency, Brazil deliberately marginalized the role of conflict in the hunger-climate nexus, opting instead for a consensus-oriented, development-focused framework, avoiding politically sensitive terms such as fragility, conflict and violence. Its flagship initiative, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, deliberately avoids pointing to armed conflict and fragility as root causes of hunger.

Palestinians hold their empty utensils in front of a charity kitchen in the southern Gaza Strip on August 21.AFP via Getty Images

This creates a stark contradiction: A leader confident enough to rebuke major powers over the wars in Gaza and Ukraine simultaneously marginalizes the very issue that links those conflicts to his core climate hunger agenda.

One reason for this omission appears to be Brazil’s eagerness to protect its access to climate finance. In the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, Brazil and other countries – including China and India – are classified as developing countries, making them eligible to receive rather than provide funds. Acknowledging the unique vulnerabilities that fragile countries face would risk directing money specifically to those countries and diverting resources away from large emerging economies like Brazil’s.

Brazil’s hesitation is also likely influenced by domestic political imperatives. Lula’s administration is betting big on agriculture to drive growth, and promoting the expansion of global food production supports this goal. Although excluding the conflict from COP30 may boost domestic support for Lula and global North-South solidarity, it threatens to undermine years of hard-won progress – and entrench climate vulnerabilities that signatories to the Paris Agreement, including Brazil, have committed to reducing.

Some have claimed that including the conflict on the climate agenda threatens to overburden an already contested negotiation process. They have a point. The graves of former policemen are filled with overly ambitious plans. But recognizing that conflict and fragility deepen climate vulnerability does not mean relegating discussions of global security to the halls of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30). It’s about confronting an uncomfortable truth: the communities stuck in the double bind of climate impacts and conflict are precisely the communities that need help the most.

The COP30-proposed focus on social protection schemes and agricultural reforms may help in stable contexts, as Brazil’s success story shows, but this will not work in countries in crisis. In fragile settings, hunger is political: conflict and contested power determine who eats, who plants, and who gets aid. COP30 must confront this reality by prioritizing climate finance that works in unstable contexts, rather than assuming that technical solutions alone can fill the gap.

This should be the COP that sends climate finance to the places and people that need it most. This involves leading efforts to push multilateral development banks and climate funds to reform their old, zero-tolerance models; Ensure that a significant share of the new Loss and Damage Fund and other adaptation financing is explicitly allocated to conflict-affected communities; Ensure that investments focus on people, not countries. Increasing climate finance alone is not enough to solve the political problems underlying climate vulnerability in fragile states. But in the right hands, it can help communities build long-term resilience to better absorb and adapt to shocks.

It is commendable that Brazil wants to frame the UN Climate Change Conference as an opportunity to put “people at the center” of climate negotiations, but unless its vision confronts the hard realities of conflict and fragility, it will misdirect resources and leave the hungriest and most vulnerable people behind.