Unabated climate change will cause more conflict and hunger

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva warned of increased conflict and hunger if climate change is left unabated.

Graziano da Silva made the remarks at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum 2018 panel discussion on how to solve the climate crisis, with 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former US Vice-President Al Gore as keynote speaker.

“We will not be able to produce enough for the (world’s) growing population,” Graziano da Silva stressed. Noting 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. He said that when climate change promotes conflict, such as over access to increasingly-scarce land and water resources, it further promotes food insecurity.

The Director-General noted that a major obstacle for 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 $7 billion per year.

“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.

FAO’s work on climate change

Climate change is a cornerstone of FAO’s work. FAO believes that agriculture adaptation must be promoted through the implementation of climate-smart approaches, practices and techniques that also preserve the environment and biodiversity, and adaptation must help build the resilience of millions of poor family farmers.

FAO supports countries in the implementation of sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture. Over the last 5 years, FAO has executed more than 300 of this type of projects and programmes.

Original source: FAO
Published on 11 December 2018