Promoting the Right to Adequate Food Amid Climate Crisis: A Call for Policy Reform

The climate crisis stands as one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time, exacerbating inequalities and threatening lives and livelihoods worldwide. Beyond its direct impacts, climate mitigation and adaptation measures can also undermine human rights if not carefully implemented. A human rights-based approach is essential—not only to protect people from climate change’s adverse effects but also to ensure that policies addressing it uphold equality, accountability, and public participation.

Climate change disrupts nearly every facet of life, jeopardizing fundamental rights, including the right to food. Extreme weather events—such as droughts, floods, and shifting rainfall patterns—threaten food production, destabilize prices, and endanger ecosystems. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), these challenges demand urgent, rights-centered solutions.

Discussion

Climate change specialists have organized consultative workshops to guide state institutions in prioritizing policies that integrate climate action with national development agendas. Human rights bodies play a critical role in this effort, leveraging policy advice, research, education, and investigations to safeguard rights—including environmental protections.

In Uganda, the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), established under Article 51 of the 1995 Constitution, holds a broad mandate to investigate human rights violations. Civil society organizations (CSOs) must collaborate with the UHRC to address climate-related rights abuses.

Recently, the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) engaged with the UHRC on the link between climate change and food security. The discussion highlighted Uganda’s 2017 famine, triggered by drought, erratic rains, and pest outbreaks, which left many households struggling to secure even one meal a day.

Key contributors to food insecurity include:

• Overemphasis on cash crops at the expense of food production.

• Insufficient funding for the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAIF).

• Harmful agricultural practices, such as wetland destruction and excessive agrochemical use.

Recommendations to the UHRC

To combat food insecurity, the following measures were proposed:

1. Policy Reform: The government should adopt agro-ecological practices to boost food production, accessibility, and storage.

2. Increased Funding: The Ministry of Finance should allocate more resources to MAAIF.

3. Agricultural Bank: Establish a national agricultural bank to support farmers.

4. Extension Services: Harmonize policies to guide farmers on climate adaptation and sustainable practices.

5. Infrastructure: Construct national food reserves and promote household granaries.

6. Farmer Support: Provide subsidized high-quality seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides.

7. Local Empowerment: Deploy village agriculture volunteers and enforce crop zoning.

8. Price Stabilization: Reassess liberalization policies to prevent volatile farm prices.

9. Legislation: Enact the long-pending Food and Nutrition Bill (2009).

The Way Forward

As climate change intensifies, Uganda must adopt a rights-based framework to ensure food security. Strengthening institutional collaboration, increasing agricultural investment, and enforcing sustainable policies will be critical in safeguarding the right to adequate food for all.

(This analysis reflects discussions between CEFROHT and the UHRC. For further insights, visit CIEL.)