This summary was prepared by Hamed Kioumarsi, EBM at Springer Nature, in collaboration with Bahareh Rafiei (Plant Protection Research Department, Gilan Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, AREEO, Rasht, Iran) and Hanif Amrulloh (Universitas Ma'arif, Metro Utara, Kota Metro, Indonesia).
Citation: Kioumarsi, H., Rafiei, B., & Amrulloh, H. (2026). A Warmer World, New Pest Risks: Rethinking Agricultural Pest Management. Springer Nature Communities. https://go.nature.com/4zxxZEP
Introduction
Climate change is a multi-faceted phenomenon and thus its management needs a multi-faceted awareness and understanding. The effects of climate change on agriculture, particularly on crops and animals as well as the environment, have been explored in a number of studies. Furthermore, the effects of climate change on the abundance, distribution, and seasonality of pests as well as the relation of pests to crops have also been explored to address food safety concerns. Therefore, understanding climate change is an important component of effective integrated pest management (IPM) and sustainable agriculture.
Climate change has shifted from a future threat to agriculture in the future into reality, which is changing the ecosystem in which crop, pests, pathogens and natural enemies interact. Rising temperatures, altered rainfall pattern, and incidence of extreme-weather have events are creating new pest-risk scenarios. Some species might migrate to areas they could never occupy before, there will be outbreaks in periods other than those traditionally known, and practices based on historical climatic conditions will probably fail. Scientific evidence has already shown that rising temperature leads to an increased number of generations per year.
The critical issue is thus not merely that of killing more pests. It is rather that of adapting agricultural systems to anticipate, avoid and control pests.
The pest landscape
Temperature plays a very important role in the development, survival, reproduction and growth of the insect community. Insects which could not previously survive because of the low temperature in some particular places may survive owing to the warm winter season. More growing seasons could provide more chances for reproduction, thus enabling the insects to colonize distant locations. The FAO has identified the increasing evidence that climate change is affecting the geographical distribution and host range of plant pests and increasing the probability of establishment of some species in regions that were unsuitable before.
All these changes have great influence on the farmers because new species of insects may appear in agricultural zones where the farmers are not familiar with them and their biology, and usual insects will change their seasonal dynamics because those species that had one or two generations per growing season before may have more now.
However, global warming is not going to make life easier for all pest species. Certain species might enjoy moderate climatic warming while others will suffer from mortality due to temperatures going beyond their physiological threshold limit. There are many other aspects too that affect the response of these pests, such as the amount of moisture available and the condition of crops.
Climate change is transforming the pest-management environment
Historically, managing agricultural pests has relied on certain patterns regarding time, location, efficacy, and treatment needed for pest protection. Now, climate change is putting pressure on some of the existing assumptions.
The example of drought can lead to stress in physiology of plants and impact nutrition and chemical composition of plants. Drought can influence the ability of plants to be more or less vulnerable to being attacked by herbivores. The changes in precipitation may have an impact on reproduction, mortality, dispersion, and dynamics of the pest population. Moreover, floods, heat waves, storms, and other weather abnormalities may interrupt biological control and result in invasion of new organisms.
It is especially relevant because the protection of crops is not just about plant-pest interactions. It is about the whole ecosystem of crops, herbivores, predators, and parasitoids. For example, if pests accelerate their development faster than their natural enemies, this phenological mismatch may reduce biological-control effectiveness.
Moving from reaction to prediction
In this way, the above advancements indicate a potential change in agriculture pest management from managing pest problems after occurrence to predicting possible risks even before the problem occurs and becomes economically significant.
Instead of reacting to an outbreak after it has occurred, there is need to have tools that can determine when and where such outbreaks will occur and which climatic factors may cause such an outbreak. Climatic observations, field scouting, remote sensing, geographic information systems, models of pest development, and artificial intelligence can help make this transition.
These tools should not be considered as substitutes for the farmers' knowledge and experience. These are needed because they complement farmers' knowledge and provide information from the environment and biology in large quantities, which can then be used in predictions and early warning systems.
Rebuilding IPM for a changing climate
Integrated Pest Management continues to be an important technique of sustainable agriculture, though in the light of climate changes, it requires some adjustments. Traditionally, IPM consists of pest surveillance, biological control, cultural techniques, resistant plants and properly chosen use of chemicals. However, due to climate changes, both effectiveness and timeliness of these techniques might change.
Climate-resilient IPM needs to include variable and not constant thresholds of intervention, climate-driven forecasts of pests’ appearance, diversity of plants, habitat management that creates friendly environment for useful species, resistant and thermotolerant varieties and precise use of pesticides. Taking into account the fact that pests migrate from farm to farm, management has to take into account not only one farm’s landscape, but also neighboring ecosystems.
It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that intensified use of pesticides should not be the solution in the case of increased pest pressure. It might contribute to the acceleration of resistance, harm useful species, reduce biodiversity and disrupt the ecological balance of pests.
Toward pest-smart agriculture
Future methods of crop protection need to be aligned with overall climate-smart agricultural practices. The developing concept of "pest-smart" agriculture might involve a combination of climate-smart resilient crops, ecological engineering, climate smart IPM, pest forecasting, artificial intelligence, and digital advising services.
This would recognize that the process of pest control is intertwined with biodiversity, soil conditions, water availability, food security, farmers' livelihoods, and overall climate resilience. Ecologically diverse agricultural landscapes could be more capable of suppressing the pests naturally than agricultural landscapes that depend excessively on inputs from outside.
The key question now is not if climate change will create new threats of pests, but rather if the agriculture would be sufficiently adaptive and predictable to deal with those challenges.
The challenges that a warming planet faces cannot be solved by simply adapting current methods of pesticides advice based on warmer temperatures. It needs a new way of thinking in the field of agricultural protection that is based on predictive, ecological, data-driven, and adaptive systems. Climate change knowledge, ecology, digitalization, farmers' experience, and global surveillance can provide a solution for turning current pest management into a proactive system of threats prediction.
In order to make sure that we will have our food secure amid the changing climatic conditions, it is not enough to merely increase our food production; it is equally important to ensure that we become better at predicting the occurrence of pest outbreaks.
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