Does Climate Change Affect Child Malnutrition in the Nile Basin?

Children’s nutritional status is expected to be negatively impacted by global climate change given their relative vulnerability to food insecurity shocks. The developing countries in Africa are relatively even more vulnerable to these negative impacts. This study investigates the impact of climate change on the geographical variation of the prevalence of stunting among children under the age of five in the Nile basin region using the Demographic and Health Surveys of the three countries Egypt, Ethiopia and Uganda. Survey data is spatially and temporally merged with high resolution climate change datasets to investigate whether and how the change in temperatures and precipitation has an influence on children’s malnutrition. The prevalence of stunting among children under five years of age and its socioeconomic determinants are modelled using Bayesian geospatial regression model. The prevalence and determinants of stunting varied across Egypt, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The result of this paper highlights the fact that social policies and public health interventions targeted to reduce the burden of childhood stunting should consider geographical heterogeneity and adaptable risk factors.