Climate research:- Countries hardest hit by hunger and climate change are also the ones with the lowest volume of agri-food research targeting them, according to analysis scoping more than 6 million scientific papers and reports.

Food systems transformation is needed urgently in the face of rising food insecurity – with one in four on the planet facing hunger – and extreme weather events caused by climate change.

However, critical evidence on environmental and climate change outcomes in the regions most impacted by climate change is lacking, as is research around women’s empowerment and inclusivity, says Jaron Porciello, co-founder of The Juno Evidence Alliance, a global evidence synthesis platform to support policymaking on agriculture, food systems, and climate adaptation.

“There is a lot of research out there, more than 1 million papers are published every year in the sciences,” Porciello told SciDev.Net.

“Yet at the same time we still seem to have a lack of research focusing on countries with high levels of food insecurity.”

Juno, a collaboration between the agricultural research organisation CABI (the parent organisation of SciDev.Net), Havos.Ai, a New York-based data company, and the University of Notre Dame, USA, used artificial intelligence (AI) to review the distribution of global research over the last 13 years. AlphaGalileo/SP