Food Security Threatened by Climate Change

Food Security and food production are a growing concern with the continued effects of Climate Change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produced a report on climate change impacts, vulnerabilities we face and ways to adapt. One of the areas of concern is food security and production, especially in developing nations. These issues are wide spread and will have detrimental effects on population if the world does not come together to reduce our green house gas emissions. Climate change and its related issues are not an issue we can sit back and wait to see the results of, we have to take action now.

 

Definitions:

• ‘all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. (WFO 1996)
• Food systems refers to all processes and infrastructure involved in satisfying a population’s food security, for example, the gathering/catching, growing, harvesting (production aspects), storing, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming food, and disposing of food waste (non-production aspects). Climate change has negatively affected these two systems, threatening the lives of millions. (IPCC 2014)

 

Food security is closely tied to poverty, the greater the presence of poverty the more likely the population will be food insecure. Climate change is amplifying food insecurity due to increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation in many areas. These physiological processes have a negative effect on growing cycles of crops, shortening the time of maturity of a crop, declining the flowering time, and increasing the need for water. These changes will decrease the amount of food produced as well as the quality of yields. This will increase the number of people who will suffer from a loss in the quantity and quality of food produced.

 

Climate change does not only affect agriculture but other food systems such as fisheries and livestock. If there is not more focus put on decreasing the negative effect of climate change then there will not be enough food to feed the global population. Whether you believe in climate change or not the reality is global temperatures are increasing which is going to have a detrimental effect on the availability of food. I’d love to hear comments and concerns on this issue in the comments!

 

Will leave you with a list of climate-related hazards and the negative impact they will leave on the global population:

 

• Climate-related hazards, including subtle shifts and trends to extreme events, affect poor people’s lives

directly through impacts on livelihoods, such as losses in crop yields, destroyed homes, food insecurity, and

loss of sense of place, and indirectly through increased food prices

• Changing climate trends lead to shifts in rural livelihoods with mixed outcomes, such as from crop-based to

hybrid livestock-based livelihoods or to wage labor in urban employment. Climate change is one stressor

that shapes dynamic and differential livelihood trajectories

• Urban and rural transient poor who face multiple deprivations slide into chronic poverty as a result of

extreme events, or a series of events, when unable to rebuild their eroded assets. Poverty traps also arise

from food price increase, restricted mobility, and discrimination

• Many events that affect poor people are weather-related and remain unrecognized by standard climate

observations in many low-income countries, due to short time series and geographically sparse, aggregated,

or partial data, inhibiting detection and attribution. Such events include short periods of extreme

temperature, minor changes in the distribution of rainfall, and strong wind events

(IPCC Report, 2014)

 

Here is the link to read the IPCC report and find out more about the impacts of climate change.

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/