FOOD CRISIS: A new report identifies world regions likely to be hardest hit by climate change's impact on food.
Image: Evelyn Simak/Wikimedia Commons
Southern Africa, India and Southeast Asia will be plagued with both high susceptibility and a lack of coping mechanisms as climate change takes its toll, according to models published in a new study.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's (CGIAR) Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security identified world regions that will bear the brunt of climate change's consequences on food availability. The project's researchers measured current food security indicators and climate-sensitive zones in 2050, and the overlap between the two.
Other high-risk hot spots include Mexico, northeast Brazil, southern Africa and West Africa, assessed by indicators like future water availability, number of days above 30 degrees Celsius, length of the growing period, reliable growing days and high or low rainfall.
"In all of these areas, food security is always an issue," said Philip Thornton, one of the study's authors and a senior scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute. In addition to climate and economy, "these are areas where population increases are projected to carry on, adding more potential problems."
How productivity flips
The researchers mapped vulnerability to nine thresholds -- the points at which a region can "flip" from normal productivity to subpar yields. One example of a threshold is the 120-day growing period, the minimum length needed for a crop like corn to survive. If climate change causes growing periods to shrink to less than 120 days, it will take a significant toll on food sustainability.
Southern Africa -- encompassing Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa -- showed to be highly exposed to several of the eight thresholds. Spots in northeastern Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan were also very vulnerable, concluded the study.
Food security indicators, a combination of economic, health, logistic and population statistics, assessed which areas are currently at greatest risk for hunger and malnutrition.
"Africa and South Africa are clearly much more chronically food insecure regions than Latin America or China," states the study. "In terms of resource pressure, again Africa is highlighted for population growth rates."
Market access, economy also key
North Africa, a region that will not be especially vulnerable to climate change according to the study's findings, ranked high in the number of hours needed to access a market. As seen in food riots earlier this year, the region is also sensitive to price volatility in international markets.
"One of the key areas in helping to provide food security is not simply an idea of more productivity, but also access and affordability of food to those who need it," said Thornton, in regard to North Africa.
But for the regions that are faced with increasingly stressful weather patterns, "there's a great deal that could be done to offset the impacts of climate change through adaptation, farming with new technology and government policies that are conducive to promoting small-holder agriculture," he said.
Crop substitution for a drier and warmer climate, converting cropland to livestock grazing land, and making better use of rainfall are proven methods.
"It's not particularly rocket science," he said.
Thornton's words reflect the conclusions of another report released this week. The nonprofit aid organization Oxfam released a food security report recommending government investment in small-scale farming and instituting concrete plans to deal with climate change. Continuing to follow the current system may drive food prices up 70 to 90 percent in the next 18 years, warns Oxfam.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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19 Comments
Add CommentPossibly, but not probably, these predicted shortages will cause these governments to reconsider birth control measures. Both India and the Hispanic community exhibit reckless abandon when it comes to the very real problem of over-populating the world. What about the Catholic Church's position on birth control? They don't seem to feel obligated to explain famine and poverty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProbably, the identification of places where future food shortages have a high probability of occuring is not new. The treasure ministers of the french Bourbon monarchy probably forecasted the food crisis linked to bad weather, one of this finally ended in the french revolution. May be one of the approaches to solving the problem they took was sending a branch of their family to Spain, then a traditionally high cereal producing country, they even built the Castilla channel to export grain to the northern ports and the to France. Prices of food in Spain soared, uprisings started,and they sent the army against the people, a Bourbon tradition that ended in the 1936-39 spanish civil war. Exporting your food deficit, like exporting inflation with the solution of paying debt by speeding up the money printing, is a dangerous approach that can finally harm you in unexpected ways. Fair trading and helping the poor is the right way to behave under all circumstances.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJRWermuth: Religions thrive in ignorance. Massive populations reduce available resources increase ignorance and enhance the dominance of religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith democracy the new craze, religions now seek to increase their flocks by advocating uncontrolled breeding. The Islamic, Catholic and Hindu religions now strive to control the world by out breeding one another.
What a terribly misleading story. The key part of this story is the part that states “according to climate models”. There is no climate model that has been shown to be even reasonably accurate in predicting future temperature and rainfall amounts at a local or even regional level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is 100% propaganda and not based upon valid science.
My climate model shows that by 2,070, barring the inevitable onset of the next ice-age,(when not if), each of the areas named in this article will be net exporters of all of the foods they currently grow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEarthling, where do you get your information on religion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman beings in very poor countries have the largest families for a very practical secular reason; it ensures a workforce that is indemnified against infant mortality and low life expectancy.
Family size in modern, democratic CAPITALIST societies tends to diminish as per capita income increases. Here in the U.S. for example we are just ahead of zero population growth.
By 2100 The world's population will have leveled off at around nine to ten billion, and this will happen because per capita income will be sufficiently high enough, and goods and services plentiful enough so as to obviate the need to raise children for subsistence labor.
In any event, People are motivated, not by what the Mullahs or Monsignors or Rabbis say, but by what economic realities dictate.
Timbo555: Religion is the most evil institution devised by man. Its principal concern is the control of society and imposition of the will of the few on the many. A power structure that enslaves the majority and prohibits thought beyond the dictates of its officialdom. To attain this goal religions deny people secular scientific education, religions encourage unsustainable breeding amongst the illiterate to dilute the impact of the scientific and rational thinking of the educated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou postulate the world population will be 10G by 2100. Totally wrong, barring a population reducing calamity. The current population is 6.9G expected to exceed 7G bu 2012. The USA grew 9.7% between 2000 & 2010 from 281,421,906 to 308,745,538 (these numbers are a bit rubbery since we can not estimate our populations exactly). This growth mainly from religious Hispanic populations.
Population will decline, but due to catastrophic causes like famine and greenhouse gas induced climatic events. We just can not produce enough food and the religious are unwilling to modify their diet. Earthworm, cricket and cockroach burgers and fungal supplements to carbohydrates are feasible food sources. Still however the biosphere imposes a limit. Its back to Malthus's observed boom bust population variations, till the sixth extinction eliminates all the mega species inhabiting the planet.
Have you heard of the middle east wars? The Catholic war until very recently in Ireland? The unspoken Hindu war ongoing in India? They are the result of people doing the bidding of their religious leaders. leaders.
Timbo555: I did not respond to your point about human breeding in poor countries, since I have already made my opinion known on this: here is a link to my ideas on this aspect of your response:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=beespotter-illinois
Earthling, Your ideas sound to me so much like the Unabomer's that I'm wondering if he has access to the internet in prison.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't want to respond, I just wanted to hear more of your cheery outlook on things. Thanks
Well, don't blame India,China or any other over populated country with skilled workforce, they supply abundant labor and make affordable high quality living possible in developed countries. Instead of limiting ourselves in population, I think we need even more educated and skilled people who are capable enough to achieve challenging tasks like humanizing other planets to continue our prosperity. At least rich countries should invest more in this type of research. Peace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry I have to take issue with you minimalist characterization of population growth:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"By 2100 The world's population will have leveled off at around nine to ten billion, and this will happen because per capita income will be sufficiently high enough, and goods and services plentiful enough so as to obviate the need to raise children for subsistence labor."
While it is projected that by 2050 the population will exceed 9 billion, it's a bit premature to predict economic conditions in a world whose human population will have increased from an all-time high of little more than 1.5 billion in 1900 to 9 billion in the span of 150 years.
While the birth rate in developed countries is generally diminishing, the U.S. Census Bureau still predicts that the U.S. population will increase 40% from 313 million today to nearly 440 million by 2050.
Humanity is currently running an uncontrolled experiment to determine the human being carrying capacity of the Earth. We have only to experience a 500 year drought, for example, in the Western U.S. to thoroughly disrupt world food supplies.
I predict that at some point in this century the world population will dramatically decrease...
JRWermuth (comment 1),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "What about the Catholic Church's position on birth control?"
The teaching of the Church is, was, and always will be, contraception is an intrinsic evil. That teaching is based on Scripture,
THE BOOK OF GENESIS
"And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply,
and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. 1:27-28
And God spoke to Noe, saying: Go out of the ark, thou and thy wife, thy sons and the wives of thy sons with thee. All living things that are with thee of all flesh, as well in fowls as in beasts, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, bring out with thee, and go ye upon the earth: increase and multiply upon it." 8:15-17
and on the Natural Law.
As for famine and poverty, the Church has had, as part of Her mission from the beginning, to aid those in need. You might wish to examine the corporate policies of greed and profit for at least part of the cause of the problem.
The subject is not very much connected to food shortages linked to global warming, but religions are not a mankind invention, early in human history, both shamanism and religions existed along as distinct and separate realities. Some religions are based in what men perceive about spirits, so they are connected to what the spirits let know about them, judaism and Christian religions are based in God's revelations about himself. The Catholic Church statements about contraception being wrong is based on Daniel book, Daniel advised not to marry just for pleasure like the beasts do, but for reproduction. Eliminating the possibility of pregnancy in a sexual encounter is bad, but there are many medical reasons for a woman using hormonal and non hormonal procedures that have the side effect of difficulting pregnancy, non-medicated IUDs excluded, they're wrong, as their mechanism of action is to impede egg implantation, equaling abortion. The timed abstinence methods the church endorses are not contraception, they are just abstinence, and couples are not obliged to have sex all day, all night, every day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood points, except that the depletion of resources and humanity's production of co2 thought to be responsible for global warming, etc., are all a function of population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhatever methods mankind might have for managing the population's demand for the Earth's limited resources and their resulting overconsumption and pollution, we can otherwise rely on economics, our gods or mother nature to make necessary adjustments for us. That could, of course, include catastrophic infrastructure failures, horrendous suffering for literally billions of people and the potential elimination of humanity...
Of course, you can choose to believe that whatever result is "God's plan", but IMO it is simply the omission of any plan by an ignorant, uncontrolled and irresponsible human populace.
jgrosay,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood points indeed, except, it's my understanding that the IUD is an abortifacient. As for food shortages the Old testament is replete with examples of God providing for the multitude of the Hebrew people as long as they kept His Commandments.
jtdwyer,
That Revelation can be sloughed off as misplaced Faith if one so chooses, but agw is also based on faith. Why? Who is testing/verifying the data produced in the technical literature and the NASA photographs?
Disregarding any global warming, many civilization have been destroyed by the effects of a 500 year drought. I won't describe here what desperate, starving peoples have done to stay alive in the past, but there are now more than 10 times the number of people that suffered the effects of the most recent 500 year drought. We have no basis for predicting the effects that even normal variations in environmental conditions will have on such an enormous population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe key here seems to be your observation that, "We have no basis for predicting..." It would seem to me, if the population were the problem it's being touted to be, the survival threshold would have been reached before now. Just a reflection...
I think that the threshold is a probability function indicating increasing risk of catastrophic infrastructure and/or resource failure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCertainly increasing the population increases the potential impact of any and all catastrophes. There is now the potential for producing the simultaneous suffering of more people than ever existed at any time prior to 1900, for example.
jtdwyer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt doesn't seem to me any definitive prediction can be made concerning population until the phenomenon can be tested without the human greed factor built into distribution.