Food Security and Environmental Pollution: Policy Directions in the Face of COVID19

Abstract

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries were experiencing rising levels of acute food insecurity due to many factors, for instance, natural disasters, extreme weather and climate events and socioeconomic conditions. Subsequently, COVID-19 led to substantial and pervasive increases in global food insecurity, impacting vulnerable households worldwide. Owing to these facts, the first empirical study intends to investigate the empirical relationship between COVID-19, environmental pollution, and food shortage. We employ rolling window multiple correlation analysis on worldwide daily data of COVID-19 cases, carbon emissions, and food shortage news index from 22nd January 2020 to 29th November 2021. The results reveal a significant correlation between bivariate and multivariate cases over time. In bivariate cases, we find asymmetric but insignificant correlations between COVID-19 vs. food security and food security vs. CO₂ emissions, except for a significant interconnection between COVID-19 vs. CO₂ emissions at different periods. In the trivariate case, CO₂ emissions and COVID-19 significantly and positively correlated to the food shortage index. This study provides policymakers with critical insights into the global food scarcity crisis driven by COVID-19 and climate change.