On August 4, 2020, Food Security published a special issue with articles focusing the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on food security, the resilience mechanisms to such crises, the development of resilient food systems, and the policies to be considered. An opinion article by the Editorial Board entitled “Mapping disruption and resilience mechanisms in food systems” provides an overview and comprehensive analysis on how the current global pandemic is impacting food systems, locally and globally and a series of recommendations intended for policy makers and science leaders.

In the August 4, 2020 update of GatesNotes, the blog of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said that “COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse”. At the same, he gave an optimistic view that “there are lessons from the current crisis that should guide our response to the next one”.

On August 11, 2020, temperatures in excess of 40 degrees were recorded in several places in Japan. The Carbon Brief, a UK-based website covering the latest developments on on climate change, announced on July 30 that 2020 could be the first or second warmest year in history.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) published an article entitled “To counter the COVID-19 recession, invest in the food system” at the World Economic Forum. Three measures have been proposed to stimulate the economy and strengthen the food supply chain: regional economic integration, food security, and strengthening the food system at the regional level.

On July 31, 2020, researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published a paper entitled “COVID-19 risks to global food security” in Science Magazine. The policy forum article tackles how the COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic fallout and disruptions to the food supply chain, and discusses critical responses that policy-makers should consider to prevent this global health crisis from becoming a global food crisis.

Researchers at the International Potato Center (CIP) published a paper in Food Security entitled “Resilient agri-food systems for nutrition amidst COVID-19: evidence and lessons from food-based approaches to overcome micronutrient deficiency and rebuild livelihoods after crises”. Amidst the uncertainty due to COVID-19 pandemic, the paper stated that production and market diversification strategies should be prioritized in order to protect food and nutrition security of the world's poor.

On July 26, 2020, AFP reported that Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard, which is located about 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, recorded it’s highest-ever temperature of 21.7 degrees on the 25th of July. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a long-term seed storage facility established by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is located in Svalbard Islands and has been storing seeds from around the world since 2008. The climatic conditions that led to a record high temperature this time would affect the maintenance of storage and could threaten the agrobiological base of crop diversity.

The Lancet published a paper “Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenario for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the global burden of disease study” with a lower world population forecast than the estimate of the United Nations. In the reference scenario, the world population was projected to peak at 9.73 billion in 2064 and decline to 8.79 billion (6.83-1.8 billion) in 2100 based on novel methods for forecasting mortality, fertility, migration and population.

The World Economic Forum published a report “Nature Risk Rising: Why the crisis engulfing nature matters for business and the economy” in January 2020. Five factors, including land use change, have contributed to 90% of natural loss over the last 50 years. All businesses depend directly or indirectly on natural capital and ecosystem services. Estimates show that more than half of the world's total GDP worth $44 trillion of economic value is dependent on nature and its services, and is therefore at risk from nature loss.