Western consumption to cause persistent famines*

By Anita Purcell-Sjoelund in Sweden

July 01, 2007 11:06pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse

FOOD production in developing countries will halve in the next 20 years
unless wealthy nations lower their rate of consumption, a research group
has warned.

The livelihoods of more than three billion people in the world are being
undermined by the wealth of the privileged few, said the director of the
Stockholm Environment Institute, Johan Rockstroem.

"The risk is that we might halve... food production in sub-Saharan
Africa because of our lifestyles," he said at an international
conference on climate change and sustainable development, held in the
Swedish town of Taellberg.

Mr Rockstroem said that as wealthy countries increase consumption they
also increase their exploitation of the world's natural resources, and
in turn emit more greenhouse gases.

That ultimately speeds up the desertification of sub-Saharan Africa and
other parts of the world.

According to scientists and experts, greenhouse gas emissions are
continuing to rise by two per cent a year despite hundreds of
environmental agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol.

James Hansen, a climate expert and the director of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, said tree lines moving north and melting
glaciers were not only a consequence of global warming, they were also
an accelerating factor.

"Forests are moving forward and that... amplifies climate change. Ice
sheets are beginning to melt earlier in the season. They become darker
when they become wet and they absorb more sunlight" which warms the
planet's temperature, he said.

As a result, experts have predicted that the world has at least a decade
to lower emissions before it is too late.

The Stockholm Environment Institute is one of the world's top five
research organisations in climate change and it is pushing for a broader
dialogue on social and economic change.

"We have come to the end of the road of sustainable development as we
know it today. Science alone cannot deal with this. The risk of
environmental refugees, the risk of societal collapse is imminent," Mr
Rockstroem said.