Changes in climate are already undermining production of
major crops such as wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions
and, without building climate resilience, this is expected to worsen as
temperatures increase and become more extreme, says a latest UN report. http://bit.ly/2QAMylH
According to this report, 821 million people now hungry and
over 150 million children stunted, putting hunger eradication goal at risk. The challenge: number of hungry people in the
world is growing - reaching one in every nine people - while limited progress
is being made in addressing the multiple forms of malnutrition!
According to the report, hunger has been on the rise over
the past three years, returning to levels from a decade ago. This trend
certainly puts in jeopardy the proposed achievement of Sustainable Development
Goals of Zero Hunger by 2030.
The annual UN report found that climate variability
affecting rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, and climate extremes such
as droughts and floods, are among the key drivers behind the rise in hunger,
together with conflict and economic slowdowns.
Analysis in the report shows that the prevalence and number
of undernourished people tend to be higher in countries highly exposed to
climate extremes. Undernourishment is higher again when exposure to climate
extremes is compounded by a high proportion of the population depending on
agricultural systems that are highly sensitive to rainfall and temperature
variability.
Temperature anomalies over agricultural cropping areas
continued to be higher than the long-term mean throughout 2011-2016, leading to
more frequent spells of extreme heat in the last five years. The nature of
rainfall seasons is also changing, such as the late or early start of rainy
seasons and the unequal distribution of rainfall within a season.
The harm to agricultural production contributes to
shortfalls in food availability, with knock-on effects causing food price hikes
and income losses that reduce people's access to food, according to the report.
In my opinion, local food security efforts that take into
consideration indigenous good practices in conservation of local seeds, soil, forests,
and water resources; and supported with decentralised rainfall monitoring plus weather
forecasting, planning of multi-cropping climate variability response in farming;
and a solid weather based crop insurance that takes care of complete cost of
production are need of the hour for the farmers. Unless we achieve local food security, global
hunger and undernourishment will not decrease!
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Ranjan Panda
Convenor, Combat Climate Change Network, India
Email: ranjanpanda@gmail.com
Tweets @ranjanpanda
Tweets @MahanadiRiver
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