Climate Change, Food Security and Rights of Peasants

Climate change will probably constitute the most serious security challenge that humanity will face in 21st century. The extreme complexity of both the causes and the consequences of this phenomenon makes it very hard to be studied in overall terms. The aim of this paper is indeed to begin to tackle this complexity, starting by analysing how does the international legal framework addresses the relationships amidst climate change, food security and rights of peasants. The focus on food security and rights of peasants is not arbitrary. Food security is one of the first security dimensions that risks being jeopardised by climate change, as well as peasants are one of the categories of workers whose security and rights are going to be most severely challenged. If we add to this the fact that agri-food sector is one of the most polluting one in terms of GHGs emission and impact on climate change, we start to make sense of the complexity of the picture.