Poverty will increase as climate change alters rainfall and temperature patterns around the world, said the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change on Monday. In a report forecasting conditions in coming decades, the panel said reduction in yields of corn, wheat, rice would be smaller if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius rather than 2 degrees.
“Reductions in projected food availability are larger at 2 degrees C than at 1.5 degrees C of global warming (above pre-industrial temperatures) in the Sahel, southern Africa, the Mediterranean, central Europe and the Amazon. Livestock are projected to be adversely affected with rising temperatures, depending on the extent of changes in feed quality, spread of diseases and water resource availability,” said the report.
Warming is likely to exceed 1.5 degrees C as soon as 2030 and no later than mid-century if the world fails to act, said the panel. “Rapid and far-reaching changes” in human activity would be needed to meet that goal and would require a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from human activity by 2030. “Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, a co-chair of the IPCC working group.
Techniques to reduce greenhouse gases, such as removal of carbon dioxide, “could have significant impacts on land, energy, water or nutrients if deployed at large scale. Afforestation and bio-energy may compete with other land uses and may have significant impacts on agricultural and food systems, biodiversity and other ecosystem functions and services,” said the report.
The global corn crop could shrink by 10 percent if temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees, said Bloomberg. “A drought in one place can impact food prices anywhere,” said University of Leeds professor Tim Benton. “As weather becomes more extreme, there is the risk of increasing volatility in food supply and prices.”