Reducing ozone pollution can offset the food security cost of climate action

By Abhijeet Mishra, Timothy Sulser, Keith Wiebe, and Eleanor JonesMay 15, 2026

Key takeaways

•Reducing ozone pollution offsets negative impacts of climate mitigation: lower ground-level ozone cuts crop damage and offsets about 15% of the increase in hunger risk.

•Cleaner air boosts agricultural yields: reduced ozone improves plant growth and productivity, driving much of the food security gains.

•Accounting for ozone reduction shows that climate mitigation policies may have lower negative impacts on food security than previously estimated, though challenges remain.

Cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential for ensuring food security over the long run. Climate impacts such as rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and extreme weather will limit the agricultural production needed to feed a growing global population.

However, climate mitigation measures can themselves undermine food security goals. For example, planting forests for carbon capture and using bioenergy from sources like maize will compete with the need for farmland to grow food in the coming decades. Studies have shown that policies to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement’s target of limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels tend to push up agricultural production costs, raise food prices, and leave more people at risk of hunger.

A new study in Nature Food clarifies that picture: it shows that those very same mitigation policies also reduce ground-level ozone pollution, a benefit that has been almost entirely missing from previous analyses. The study finds that ozone reduction could offset approximately 15% of the negative effects on global hunger associated with mitigation.

Read More Here