Breakout Session: Fostering Climate Resilient Food Systems
When: 29 April 2026 | 14:00-15:30
Format: Roundtable discussion or panel discussion
Venue: Plenary
Food insecurity is one of the most critical and well-documented pathways through which climate-related instabilities manifest in conflict contexts. Droughts, floods and shifting growing seasons are decimating harvests, disrupting supply chains and driving acute hunger across some of the world's most fragile and conflict-affected settings — with cascading effects on displacement, intercommunal tensions and political stability. Yet despite a growing evidence base, the integration of climate risk analysis into food security mandates, financing mechanisms and anticipatory action frameworks across the UN system remains uneven and insufficient.
Building on recent contributions to the UN Security Council on the climate–food–conflict nexus, this session aims to deepen shared understanding of how these three dimensions interact — and what a more coherent, system-wide response would look like in practice. It examines the roles and responsibilities of key actors across the UN system, from the Security Council to specialised agencies, in translating climate risk intelligence into timely, conflict-sensitive food security action.
With perspectives from states navigating the frontlines of the climate–food–conflict nexus alongside institutional voices from within the UN system, the session identifies concrete opportunities to strengthen early warning, anticipatory financing and integrated programming — and asks what political will and institutional reform would be needed to seize them.
Guiding questions:
- How well does the UN system currently integrate climate risk analysis into food security mandates and anticipatory action frameworks — and where are the most significant institutional and financing gaps?
- What does the evidence base tell us about the pathways through which climate stress translates into food insecurity and conflict, and how can this knowledge more effectively inform UN Security Council deliberations and agency programming?
- What concrete reforms to early warning systems, anticipatory financing mechanisms and inter-agency coordination would most significantly strengthen the UN system's ability to prevent and respond to climate-driven food insecurity in conflict contexts?
Speakers:
- H.E. Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations
- Representative of Sierra Leone (tbc)
- Angélica Jácome, Director, FAO Liaison Office with the UN
Moderated by Erin Sikorsky, Director, Center for Climate and Security
Return to the BCSC 2026 New York Agenda.