DHAKA, Dec 12, 2018 (BSS) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) has warned of increased conflict and hunger if climate
change is left unabated.
“When climate change promotes conflict, such as over access to
increasingly-scarce land and water resources, it further promotes food
insecurity,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva told the Nobel Peace
Prize Forum 2018 panel discussion in Oslo on Tuesday.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former US Vice-President Al Gore
addressed the discussion as the keynote speaker on how to solve the climate
crisis, according to a FAO press release received here today.
“We will not be able to produce enough for the (world’s) growing
population,” the FAO director general stressed.
He noted that crop yields will be dropping even in irrigated areas and
that all cereals are expected to be affected by “low and erratic production”.
Graziano da Silva cited the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the
World 2018 report which found that hunger has increased over the last three
years, driven largely by conflict and the impacts of climate change.
The FAO director-general said that a major obstacle to implementing
climate change adaptation measures in agriculture is insufficient financing.
A major study carried out by the World Bank in 2010 estimates the cost of
climate change adaptation for agriculture to around US$ 7 billion per year,
he said.
“The simplest thing to do is plant a tree. We have a project called the
Great Green Wall in the Sahel. It is simple: we collect seeds from local
trees and multiply them for local women, as the main workforce, to plant. But
we don’t have money to scale it up,” he said.
Graziano da Silva said climate change also means that the food produced
will be less nutritious. “With the level of CO2 that we have, wheat has less
protein and minerals, like zinc and Vitamin A, so nutrition will decrease,”
he explained.
The director general said prices of food products would also increase
with FAO estimates suggesting that the price of maize will be up by a third
while wheat will double. “More and more people will not be able to afford the
food they need,” he said.
Graziano da Silva said higher temperatures and erratic weather patterns
are undermining the health of soils, forests and oceans. “Almost 40 percent
of the countries that experienced a rise in hunger since 2005 suffered from
severe drought during that same period,” he said.
The Nobel Peace Prize Forum 2018 was organised by the Norwegian Nobel
Institute and Nobel Peace Prize – Research and Information AS in partnership
with the University of Oslo.
Other panel members were Professor Katharine Hayhoe, Director of Climate
Science Center at Texas Tech University, Dr. Thina Margrethe Saltvedt, Head
of the Sustainable Finance Division of Norway’s Nordea Bank and Professor
Ricarda Winkelmann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.