World 'unprepared' for climate impacts on food
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 25, 2014
Global nonprofit organization Oxfam warned today that climate change could put back the fight against hunger by decades but our global food system is woefully unprepared to cope with the challenge.
Oxfam's briefing paper, "Hot and Hungry: How to stop climate change derailing the fight against hunger" analyses ten key factors that will have an increasingly important influence on countries' ability to feed their people in a warming world.
Across all ten areas, Oxfam found serious gaps between what governments are doing and what they need to do to protect our food systems. The results also show that while many countries – both rich and poor – are unprepared for the impact of climate change on food security, it is the world's poorest and most food insecure among them that are least prepared and most at risk.
The ten gaps, "failing" policy areas that will undermine the world's ability to feed itself in a warming world, are: International adaptation finance, crop irrigation, crop insurance, agricultural research and development, social protection, weather forecasting, gender discrimination, food stocks, agricultural investment, and humanitarian aid
Oxfam's analysis also highlights that a number of countries such as Ghana, Viet Nam and Malawi that are bucking the trend by taking action in areas such as social protection, crop irrigation and agricultural investment. This is helping them to outstrip countries such as Nigeria, Laos and Niger on food security, despite sharing similar levels of income and climate risk.
Wang Binbin, manager of Oxfam climate change and poverty team said: "Climate change is the biggest threat to our chances of winning the fight against hunger. It could have grave consequences for what we all eat but the world is woefully underprepared for it."
"Hunger is not inevitable," said Byanyima. "If governments act on climate change, it will still be possible to eradicate hunger in the next decade and ensure our children and grandchildren have enough to eat in the second half of the century."
"Paying for climate adaptation need not break the bank. Poor countries' adaptation needs are estimated to be around $100bn a year - equivalent to just five per cent of the wealth of the world's richest 100 people," said Byanyima.
Already this year, the worst drought in a decade has ruined crops in Brazil's south-eastern breadbasket, including the valuable coffee harvest. In California the worst drought in over 100 years is decimating crops across the state, which produces almost half of all the vegetables, fruits and nuts grown in the US.
Without urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts will become more serious. It is estimated there could be 25 million more malnourished children under the age of five in 2050 compared to a world without climate change – that's the equivalent of all under-fives in the US and Canada combined.
The warning comes as governments gather in Japan to agree a major new scientific report, the Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation, made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which due to be published on 31 March.
The report is expected to warn that climate change will lead to declines in global agricultural yields of up to 2 per cent each decade at the same time as demand for food increases by 14 percent per decade.
It is also expected to warn of higher and more volatile food prices - Oxfam estimates world cereal prices could double by 2030, with half of this rise driven by climate change. While temperature rises of just 1.5 degrees will have serious impacts on our food system the IPCC is also expected to highlight a global temperature threshold of 3 – 4 degrees beyond which we will experience runaway global food crises - we are on track to reach this threshold in the second half of this century.
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