Extreme Weather Events and Food Insecurity in Northeast India

Abstract

Frequent occurrences of extreme weather eventsExtreme weather events such as droughts, floods, cyclones, and hailstorms—arguably caused by climate changeClimate change—are likely to increase food insecurityFood insecurity across the globe, especially in developing countries. They pose formidable challenges to achieving the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending hunger and ensuring access by all to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food all year round by 2030. Using household survey data for eight states of India’s Northeast Region (NER) obtained from the India Human Development SurveyIndia Human Development Survey for 2011–12, this chapter empirically analyzes the incidence, intensity, and inequality of food insecurity among the households in the region, which is known for its remoteness and relative economic destitution. Applying econometric techniques to household data and village-level weather data, it further investigates the impact of the extreme weather eventsExtreme weather events on food insecurity after controlling for several demographic and socio-economic factors. The results of this exercise indicate that extreme weather events interact with household income to significantly increase the likelihood of food insecurityFood insecurity in the short as well as long run, although they do not have statistically significant impacts on their own. Further, there is some evidence of floods and hailstorms increasing the likelihood of food insecurityFood insecurity through their interactions with the household income in the long run. Similarly, the results suggest that droughts and floods increase the probability of food insecurity through their interactions with the distance to the market and household income in the short run. These results are robust to the inclusion of additional control variables and the use of alternative functional assumption of the regression model.