Guest post: How climate change drove food insecurity in the 2007 Lesotho drought

In 2007, a severe drought in both Lesotho and South Africa upset this shaky situation triggering a dramatic drop in crop yields and a steep spike in food prices.

In a recent study, published in Scientific Reports, we find that human-caused climate change exacerbated both the drought and its knock-on impacts for food security.

Our findings indicate that climate change contributed to a decline in self-sufficient households in Lesotho by 50% and caused a decrease in the average household purchasing power by 37%.

While climate change did not create food shortages by itself, our findings suggest that it made a bad situation a lot worse and hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

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