Millions Face Hunger From Climate Change
Pastor Dale Morgan
Apr 10, 11:06 AM EDT
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Millions Face Hunger From Climate Change
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By MICHAEL CASEY
AP Environmental Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Warming temperatures could result in food
shortages for 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and cause
potentially catastrophic problems in Africa, wiping out one of the
continent's staple crops altogether, according to a U.N. report released
Tuesday.
Climate change threatens the ecologically rich Great Barrier Reef and
sub-Antarctic islands, and could melt the snow on Africa's Mount
Kilimanjaro, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.
A summary of the full, 1,572-page document written and reviewed by 441
scientists was released Friday. The latest document, the second of four
reports including the summary, tries to explain how global warming is
changing life around the world, region by region.
Further details were unveiled Tuesday in regional news conferences.
The report suggests that a 3.6-degree increase in mean air temperature
could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5 percent to 12 percent in China.
In Bangladesh, rice production may fall by just under 10 percent and
wheat by a third by the year 2050.
The drops in yields combined with rising populations could put close to
50 million extra people at risk of hunger by 2020, 132 million by 2050
and 266 million by 2080, the report said.
Water shortages will also become more common in India as the Himalayan
glaciers decline, while nearly 100 million people annually will face the
risk of floods from seas that are expected to rise in Asia between 0.04
inches to 0.12 inches annually, slightly higher than the global average.
"Unchecked climate change will be an environmental and economic
catastrophe but above all it will be a human tragedy," Achim Steiner,
executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement.
"It is absolutely vital that international action is taken now to avoid
dangerous climate change," he said. "Otherwise the consequences for food
and water security in Asia, as for many other parts of the world are too
alarming to contemplate."
The report said Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the effects
of climate change. The fallout from a swiftly warming planet - extreme
weather, flooding, outbreaks of disease - will only exacerbate troubles
in the world's poorest continent, said Anthony Nyong, one of the lead
authors.
The panel predicts that sea levels could rise on the eastern Africa
coast, leading to flooding that could cost 10 percent of each country's
gross domestic product. East African countries have limited or no
budgets for dealing with such emergencies and usually depend on foreign aid.
Wheat, a staple in Africa, may disappear from the continent by the
2080s, the report said.
Africa has "the least responsibility for climate change and yet it is
perversely the continent with the most at risk if greenhouse gases are
not cut," Steiner said.
But Nyong said African governments cannot rely on outside aid to fix
problems from climate change. "It is dangerous ... for African
governments to continually and perpetually depend on aid for such things
that have such a major impact on what we do," he told reporters in
Nairobi, Kenya.
In Europe's Mediterranean region, climate change will sap electric power
generation, reverse long-standing tourism trends, raise sea levels in
coastal regions and leave millions of people with water shortages,
scientists said.
Mediterranean ecosystems are among the world's most sensitive and will
thus be among those hardest-hit by global warming, said Jose Manuel
Moreno, a Spanish scientist who helped write the report on Europe. By
2070, between 16 and 44 million Europeans are projected to be suffering
water shortages, he added.
For Australians and New Zealanders, the warming temperatures will be
felt mostly through more extreme weather.
"Heat waves and fires are virtually certain to increase in intensity and
frequency," Kevin Hennessy, a lead author on the chapter for Australia
and New Zealand, said in a statement.
"Floods, landslides, droughts and storm surges are very likely to become
more frequent and intense and frosts are very likely to become less
frequent," he said.
In the South Pacific, rising seas are "expected to exacerbate
inundation, storm surge, erosion, and other coastal hazards, thus
threatening vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that
support the livelihood of island communities," according to the report.
While the South Pacific islands will struggle to adapt to climate
change, the report said Australia and New Zealand have "considerable
capacity" to adjust. Efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions should be
launched, although the report predicted immediate reductions would not
offset climate changes in these countries until at least 2040.
In Asia, the report calls for mainstreaming of sustainable development
policies. It also suggest improving public food distribution networks,
disaster preparations and health care systems to reduce the
vulnerability of developing countries.
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Associated Press Writer Tom Maliti contributed to this report in
Nairobi, Kenya.