Perilous Times and Climate Change
Wild and Erratic global weather threatens food security
By Nina Larson (AFP)
STOCKHOLM — The drought in Russia and floods in Pakistan are part of a
global trend of unpredictable weather patterns and rainfall that
threaten food security, experts gathered in Stockholm said.
"We are getting to a point where we are getting more water, more rainy
days, but it's more variable, so it leads to droughts and it leads to
floods," Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and
Environment in India, told AFP on the sidelines of the World Water Week
conference.
"That is leading to huge amounts of stress on agriculture and
livelihoods," she said, adding that "climate change is making rainfall
even more variable."
Narain was one of around 2,500 experts from 130 countries gathered in
Stockholm for the 20th edition of the World Water Week, which opened
Sunday and is set to run until Saturday.
Her comments came as eight million people in Pakistan remain dependent
on handouts for their survival after monsoons caused devastating floods
throughout the country.
Russia is also still struggling with the aftermath of its hottest
summer on record, during which drought and fires destroyed a quarter of
the country's crops and prompted the government to slap a highly
controversial ban on grain exports to protect domestic supplies.
This contributed to soaring global wheat and overall food prices and
sparked worries of a crisis in global food supplies.
But it is not only in such extreme cases that changing weather patterns
and unpredictable rainfall is causing problems.
"Millions of farmers in communities dependent on rain-fed agriculture
are at risk from decreasing and erratic availability of water," head of
the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Colin Chartres said in a statement.
IWMI published a report Monday stressing that the unpredictable weather
required large investments in a diverse array of water storage options
to counter the uncertainty.
Some 66 percent of total crops in Asia are not irrigated, while in
Africa a full 94 percent is rain-fed, according to the institute, which
estimates that around 500 million people in Africa and India would
benefit from improved agricultural water management.
World Water Week director Jens Berggren agreed that unpredictable
rainfall was wreaking havoc.
"Climate change will lead to different weather patterns, and that is
what we are already seeing in many places like Pakistan and Russia. It
doesn't rain the way it used to," he told AFP.
Farmers in Uganda for instance used to know when to sow to get the best
crop, but now they can no longer predict when the rain will come,
Berggren pointed out.
"So they sow a little bit all the time to be on the safe side. They
know their harvest could at any moment be washed away or dry up, so
they try to spread the risk as much as possible," he said.
"But this means that they get much smaller harvests than before," he
added.
While accepting that the world has recently experienced extreme weather
shifts, Jan Lundqvist, who chairs the Stockholm International Water
Institute's Scientific Programme Committee, is wary on blaming global
warming.
Pointing out that there have been periods of extreme weather patterns
before, he said: "These kinds of fluctuations are part of human
history, but climate change is probably making them more extreme."