Global impacts of climate change mitigation through reduced surface ozone concentration on food consumption and risk of hunger

Abstract

 Tropospheric surface ozone is a strong oxidizing agent, and its chemical properties have adverse effects on plants, especially in terms of food supply. In this paper, we investigated the effects of climate change and its mitigation measures through associated changes in crop yields due to changes in ozone concentrations on global food consumption and populations at risk of hunger. As a result, the global population at risk of hunger increased by about 9.8 million people due to climate change impacts and decreased by about 5.5 million people due to ozone concentration reduction in the scenario where strong climate change measures were implemented. Thus, the total number of people at risk of hunger increased by about 3.8 million. The decrease in the population at risk of hunger due to ozone mitigation was considerable in India and other Asian countries, which are still facing severe hunger. This can be an incentive for developing countries to adopt climate change measures.