Just weeks ahead of COP21, a United Nations expert has warned that climate change poses a major threat to global food security and stressed the need to ditch industrial agricultural approaches in favor of agroecological ones.

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“Increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather, rising temperatures and sea levels, as well as floods and droughts have a significant impact on the right to food,” Hilal Elver said in a statement Tuesday. “All these climate incidents will negatively impact on crops, livestock, fisheries, aquaculture and on people’s livelihoods,” she added.

The incidents, she said, “could subject an additional 600 million people to malnutrition by 2080.”

Echoing many food justice groups, Hilal said, “Responding to the food demand through large-scale production oriented agricultural models is not the right solution.”

“There is a need for a major shift from industrial agriculture to transformative systems such as agroecology that support the local food movement, protect small holder farmers, respect human rights, food democracy and cultural traditions, and at the same time maintain environmental sustainability and facilitate a healthy diet,” she said.

Explaining agroecology in an interview with The Moon magazine last year, Elver said, “There are two simple phrases that summarize it: feeding the world without destroying the planet, and applying ecological principles to agriculture.”