Impact of Climate Change on Food Security.
The impact of climate change on food security has become a leading global problem directly or indirectly affecting all sectors across — public health, ecosystem, health, and economy.
Agriculture has always been at the mercy of unpredictable weather, but a rapidly changing climate is making agriculture an even more vulnerable enterprise — Azeez Salawu.
There is no doubt that climate change harms plants, animals and the environment. Some of the effects of climate change include frequent and intense extreme weather events, increased heat-related deaths, food and water shortages, forced migration etc.
As the world population grows, the demand for food has become increasingly high. Still, the impact of climate change on food security has become a growing threat due to climate change’s adverse effect on agriculture.
On the 7th and 8th of May, Revamp Rave Network had her third session of the Virtual Cohort training programme, themed “Impact of Climate Change on Food Security’ taught by Albert Kure – Founder of Frontiers, and Azeez Salawu — Agriculturist and Climate Activist.
The first phase of the session held on 7th May, 2020 had Azeez Salawu saying climate change can increase weather variability, directly aggravating agricultural production risks.
He stated that water is essential to food production and at the same time detrimental to it. Many regions already suffering from high hunger and food insecurity levels — sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are predicted to experience the most significant declines in food production.
He mentioned that scientists have also confirmed that the impacts of climate change — higher temperatures, extreme weather, drought, increasing levels of carbon dioxide and sea-level rise — threaten to decrease food quantity and jeopardize the quality of our food supplies.
Already, a United Nations Climate Change report says, “25% — 30% of our food is lost or wasted globally”. He concluded his session explaining that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is expected to lower levels of zinc, iron, and other essential nutrients in crops.
With these changes in rainfall patterns, farmers face dual threats from flooding and drought — which dries it out, making it more easily blown or washed away — both extremes can destroy crops.
The second phase of the session held on 8th May 2020 had Albert Kure discussing food security dimensions, the relationship between climate change and agriculture and how climate change affects food production.
He said Climate change aggravates the risks in agriculture, but carbon sequestration mitigates climate change. Agriculture, he said, is the practices of crop and livestock. It increases Green House Gasses’ concentration in the atmosphere by emitting emits CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide.
He explained that as Climate change reduces global food availability, the heatwave has formed a serious threat to agriculture because it amounts to the various loss of arable land. Therefore, agricultural processes in such cases can be destroyed, leaving farmers with no land for use.
He mentioned further that food insecurity is characterized by a state of being without reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, safe and nutritious food.
According to Haile, von Braun et al. 2016 “warmer temperature and changing rainfall patterns may reduce global food production by about 10% by 2030 and by more than 20% in 2050”.
According to an inventory of U.S Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990–2015 (EPA, 2017), CO2 accounts for about 76% of greenhouse gas emissions. Methane, primarily from agriculture, contributes 16% of greenhouse gas emissions and nitrous oxide, mostly from industry and agriculture, contributes 6% to global emissions. Methane is 21 times more harmful to our planet than carbon dioxide.
As a nation, he said we need to have short to medium Climate Actions and be limited to supporting rural governance and an innovation local action programme based on a territorial approach.
Moreover, there is a need to encourage sustainability, knowledge, innovation and networking initiative to transform agriculture and rural areas, improve access to private finance and European Union cooperation instruments for small and medium-size agriculture.
He concluded his session by saying “by 2050, climatic impacts on food security will be unmistakable”. There are likely to be 9 billion people on the planet with a high demand for food. What we need is strategic innovations in how we eat, farm and cope with climatic change stress.
Increasing our food security chances while creating climate action would require a long-term perspective and orientation about how climate change affects agriculture. There will be income and job creation through strategy development, invest in sustainable land and natural resources management — Albert Kure.
Read more here — https://rravenetwork.medium.com/impact-of-climate-change-on-our-health-c25325aa2c30
