BRICS Cooperation as a Response to Climate-Related Food Security Risks: The Case of Ethiopia

Extreme weather events, including droughts and floods, are among the most significant threats to food security. Unlike economic or political risks, they arise largely beyond the direct control of governments and are considerably harder to manage. Since the onset of climate shocks cannot be controlled, preparedness is the only way to minimise their risks and consequences. This requires appropriate agricultural infrastructure and strategies to support vulnerable groups. At the same time, climate shocks can disrupt all four dimensions of food security: food availability (by reducing domestic production and food stocks); physical and economic access (primarily through their effects on food prices and household incomes); and resilience and stability.

African countries are particularly vulnerable to climate-related risks, and Ethiopia is a case in point. Agriculture has long been the backbone of the Ethiopian economy, accounting for more than 30% of GDP, supporting the livelihoods of around 80–85% of the population and generating up to 90% of export earnings. About 95% of agricultural output comes from smallholder farms, which may lack the resources to weather a crisis. This structure illustrates how extreme weather events can have both production-related and economic consequences, with the latter felt at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. For example, agricultural exports as a share of Ethiopia’s GDP have fallen markedly over recent decades, from 6.8% in 2010 to 1.6% in 2023, and have generally continued to decline in recent years.

The sharp decline in several key agricultural indicators in 2016 was primarily linked to one of the most severe droughts in decades. Driven by El Niño, the 2015–2016 drought had a significant impact on Ethiopia’s economy. Successive crop failures and widespread livestock losses followed, with agricultural and pastoral production falling by 50–90% in some areas. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), around 7.5 million farmers needed emergency assistance to restore agricultural production. Overall, approximately 10.2 million Ethiopians faced the threat of hunger and chronic undernourishment.

In subsequent years, climate-related pressures increasingly coincided with other crises. The decline or slowdown in certain agricultural indicators after 2016 was most likely driven by several overlapping factors, including recurrent droughts, floods and locust infestations since 2018, political conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic. A distinctive feature of climate risks in Ethiopia is their cumulative impact: repeated adverse events deplete productive assets and household resources, reducing people’s ability to recover before the next crisis strikes.

Although the 2015–2016 climate shock was exceptional in scale, El Niño and the associated climate anomalies remain a source of risk to Ethiopia’s food security. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), more than 1.3 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity between October and December 2026, partly as a result of El Niño.

Over the past decade, Ethiopia has recorded the highest prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity among BRICS countries, at more than twice the global average of 25.8%. More than half of the country’s population (60.1%) lacks adequate access to food. In other words, these people live in households where at least one adult has, at some point during the year, experienced poor-quality diets and had to reduce food consumption because of insufficient money or other resources. The prevalence of food insecurity increased throughout the period beginning in 2009, although the figures for 2023–2025 indicate a decline from 61.4% in 2023.

Ethiopia also has the highest prevalence of undernourishment among BRICS countries: 19.9% in 2023–2025, around 2.5 times the global average of 7.8%. Unlike the previous indicator, the trend is less straightforward and clearly reflects the decline in agricultural production associated with the 2015–2016 drought discussed above. The rate fell gradually from 24.3% in 2009 to 13.6% in 2016, before rising to around 20.6–20.8% in 2021–2023. As with the previous indicator, the latest figures for 2023–2025 show a decline. This may lead to some stabilisation of the country’s food security situation, although it remains to be seen whether the trend will last.

Food insecurity offers a clear illustration of how climate risks and financial vulnerability reinforce each other. Among BRICS countries, Ethiopia has the highest share of people living below the poverty line and one of the highest levels of income inequality, second only to South Africa. Although the poverty rate has declined substantially, from 80% in 2009 to 36% in 2026, it has remained significantly higher than in other BRICS countries throughout 2009–2026. As in other low-income countries, poorer households in Ethiopia devote much of their income to food. Even a modest increase in food prices caused by climate shocks can therefore put food beyond the reach of vulnerable groups.

While climate shocks cannot be fully controlled, their impact on food security can be significantly reduced by making the agricultural sector more resilient and better able to recover from crises. Ethiopia is already implementing several initiatives to build climate-resilient agriculture, including a project to expand irrigation networks and the National Wheat Development Initiative, a comprehensive programme aimed at achieving wheat self-sufficiency.

To support vulnerable populations, Ethiopia is also implementing the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), described as the world’s second-largest social protection programme for rural households. It provides assistance in cash or in kind, as well as support for farmers during extreme weather events, particularly droughts. The programme is designed to address both chronic food shortages among the poorest groups and short-term shocks. It combines targeted assistance for vulnerable groups, public works aimed at improving infrastructure, and risk-financing mechanisms. According to the World Bank’s 2026 figures, more than 23 million people received emergency assistance through the crisis response platform during the programme’s fifth phase. Approximately 2,600 infrastructure facilities were also rehabilitated. The new, sixth phase aims to improve food security by expanding access to employment, placing particular emphasis on women and young people, and strengthening climate resilience.

One avenue is existing South–South cooperation, particularly the FAO–China South–South Cooperation (SSC) Programme in African countries. This model enables countries to share technologies, knowledge and practical experience, helping partner countries build capacity and support their development. BRICS also has mechanisms for information exchange and joint research, including the BRICS Agricultural Research Platform (BARP) and the BRICS Agricultural Information Exchange System (BAIES).

For Ethiopia, relevant areas of cooperation on climate risks include sharing technologies for growing hybrid cereal varieties (drawing on the experience of China and India) and irrigation (China, India and Iran), as well as expertise in agricultural mechanisation (China, India and Brazil) and digital agriculture (China, India and Indonesia). The 16th BRICS Agriculture Ministers’ Declaration also notes plans to establish the BRICS Network of Centres of Excellence (CoE) on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture for Climate Resilience and Productivity, with a view to deepening cooperation on climate resilience.

In the areas of finance and infrastructure, the same declaration places particular emphasis on developing business partnerships to encourage investment within BRICS in locally produced machinery and equipment suited to smallholder and family farms. The New Development Bank (NDB) could provide a larger source of infrastructure finance. Established by BRICS member countries, the NDB finances infrastructure and sustainable development projects both within the grouping and in other developing countries. Ethiopia is currently among the prospective members approved by the NDB’s Board of Governors. Completing its accession could become a major driver of technological development for sustainable agriculture, especially given Ethiopia’s limited domestic resources.

Another promising avenue is the initiative to establish strategic food reserves for use in times of crisis. Proposed in April 2026 amid food security risks arising from the crisis in the Middle East, this mechanism could also help mitigate the effects of climate shocks by offsetting temporary declines in domestic production and disruptions to food supplies.

Ethiopia’s experience thus shows that climate shocks pose the greatest threat to food security where resources are insufficient to help the agricultural sector and local populations adapt to their consequences.

The key task, both at the national level and through international cooperation, including within BRICS, is therefore not to eliminate climate risks as such, but to develop effective strategies for reducing vulnerability. In this respect, BRICS has considerable potential to bring together technological, scientific and financial resources to strengthen the resilience of food systems, not only in its member countries but across the Global South.