Horn of Africa Drought: The Science of Climate Change and Future Impacts on Food Security

In the recent years it has become clear that climate change is an inevitable process and a growing concern for many regions in the world. In the Horn of Africa especially, the expectation is that climate change will have negative impacts on the livelihoods due to existing vulnerabilities of the population. A cursory view of many regions in the world reveals the existing albeit critical relationship between climate change and food security. Climate change is already affecting all dimensions of food security: food availability, food accessibility and food utilization. Not to mention the impacts range from both short-term as seen through extreme weather events and long-term through changing global temperatures and precipitation patterns. With the current drought situation in the Horn of Africa, the effects are already at bay and coupled with other problems afflicting the region, this only exacerbates the negative impacts therein felt. This research explores the science behind climate change in order to have a clear understanding as to the root cause of the problem. It interrogates the existing linkages between these changes and the existing food insecurity situation in the Horn of Africa. This research employs both primary and secondary sources of data. Publications from UNEP, FAO, WFP, IPCC and all other bodies concerned provided the primary sources of data. To further investigate the link, a systematic literature review was done of the peer-reviewed literature related to climate change and food security, employing the realist review method. A realist approach aims at offering an explanatory analysis aimed at discerning the underlying problems in order to determine what works and for whom and the impacts it’s expected to have.