EMBARGO 10 JULY 2001 10 am http://www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se/fr2.html
Climate Change puts Food Production at Risk
Media briefing, 10.15 am 10 July at the RAI, Amsterdam Phone # at the Press Room: +31 20 549 1295
To register to attend or report from a distance visit the Media Room at www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se
Forty of the world's poorest nations are likely to suffer food production losses of as much as 25% due to global warming, predicts a new report to be released at a conference on global change in Amsterdam next week.
The new report from IIASA (the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis), "Global Agro-ecological Assessment for Agriculture in the 21st Century", quantifies food production potential in all countries, developed and developing, and the impact of climate change.
Although studies on agriculture and climate change have been done for individual countries, this is the first time that a standard methodology has been used to assess the impact of climate change on food production across all regions of the world.
While increased atmospheric CO2 is expected to improve growing conditions in some areas, higher temperatures and changes in precipitation will impact on land suitability and productivity. In some areas this will intensify pest and disease problems leading to crop losses. Drier conditions resulting from global warming and dwindling water resources in some countries will compound the problem.
While over half the developed nations are expected to gain from climate change in terms of their food production capacities, some countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and Australia are likely to lose out.
The vulnerable developing countries, says the report, include India, Bangladesh, Brazil, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The forty countries with most to lose have a current combined population of about 2 billion, of which some 450 million are already undernourished.
"It's not simply a matter of increasing temperatures and precipitation changes," says Dr Mahendra Shah, one of the authors of the report. "Many of these countries already have a food gap and there is no margin for loss in cultivation potential. Added to this are a range of other factors such as land degradation, water scarcity, pest and disease epidemics, and, in some cases, political instability, all of which exacerbate the situation."
"At present there are a total of some 780 million undernourished people in 78 developing countries. For a third of these countries, (accounting for about half of the total number of undernourished people), the current annual cereal food gap totals some 10 million tons. In this group of countries, with a total population of some 2 billion, more then half of the population derive their livelihood from agriculture.
"Agriculture accounts for about a quarter of the GDP in many of these countries, often lacking foreign exchange to finance food imports. In the 2080s this group of poor countries could lose over 60 million tons of cereal production due to projected climate change, thus severely hindering progress against poverty and food insecurity", says Guenther Fischer, co-author of the report.
"The report raises issues of equity and fairness," he adds. "Developing countries have so far contributed relatively little to the causes of global warming. Yet many of these countries will bear the brunt of climate change through loss of food production. The burden will undoubtedly fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable."
Such impacts will lead to additional pressure to intensify and expand agricultural land. Harrij van Velthuizen, another co-author of the report, says, "What will be the spatial extent and productivity of arable land in each country? What will be the availability and adoption of agricultural technology? What will be the impact of climate change on specific crops? We have adopted a scenario approach, enabling assessments and a distribution of outcomes that facilitate policy and decision making in the face of uncertainty"
The severity of the problem facing developing countries depends on future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. "The release of this report is particularly timely, with the Kyoto Protocol negotiations set to continue in Bonn in July," adds Mahendra Shah.
"It is now up to the world community of nations to meet this challenge and help avoid a food crisis in the poorest countries by implementing equitable and environmentally and economically effective international agreements on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions," he says.
The report will be released at a major Open Science Conference on global change, Challenges of a Changing Earth, to be held in Amsterdam from 10-13 July.
The conference will bring together for the first time, four major international global change research programmes (the IGBP, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) representing some 15,000 scientists from all over the globe.
Other speakers include Professor Paul Crutzen (1995 Nobel Prize winner for his work on ozone), Professor Robert Watson (Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Professor William Clark (Harvard University), P.J. Pronk (Minister for the Environment, the Netherlands and Chair of the Kyoto Protocol Talks in Bonn) and Michael Zammit Cutajar (Secretary General of the United Nations Federation on Climate Change).
Notes to Editors: Hard copies of the report will be available at the media briefing and electronic copies will be available on the OSC web site on Monday evening
Visit the OSC web site at www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se <http://www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se> for the full conference programme. On-line registration for the media is now open via the "Virtual Media Room"
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For more information contact Susannah Eliott (Susannah at igbp.kva.se <mailto:Susannah at igbp.kva.se>), Clare Bradshaw (Clare.Bradshaw at igbp.kva.se <mailto:Clare.Bradshaw at igbp.kva.se>) or Paola Fastmark (Paola.Fastmark at igbp.kva.se <mailto:Paola.Fastmark at igbp.kva.se>) - Phone: +31 (0)20 549 1295 Mobile: +46 708 346 463 OR Lex Linsen (local contact in Amsterdam), linsen at worldonline.nl <mailto:linsen at worldonline.nl>, Mobile: +31 6-1202-55-45. ooooooooo Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ***Visit http://www.yaysoft.com for the latest in computers, politics and strange off-the-wall news and discussions!*** ICQ # 8616001 ooooo
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