Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/01/2008 4:00:07 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Impoverished areas of Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from climate change in 20 years
Many of the world’s poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). Their findings will be published in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Science.
“The majority of the world’s 1 billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods,” said lead author David Lobell, a senior research scholar at FSE, which focuses on environmentally sustainable solutions to global hunger.
“Unfortunately, agriculture is also the human enterprise most vulnerable to changes in climate,” Lobell added. “Understanding where these climate threats will be greatest, for what crops and on what time scales, will be central to our efforts at fighting hunger and poverty over the coming decades.”
Climate change and hunger hotspots
In the study, the researchers focused on 12 regions where a large share of the world’s malnourished populations reside, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, including much of Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Temperature and rainfall are key factors affecting crop yield. To determine the impact of global warming on agriculture in these regions, the authors analyzed 20 climate change models and concluded that by 2030, the average temperature in most areas could rise 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while seasonal precipitation in some places—including South Asia, South Africa, Central America and Brazil—could decrease.
“To identify which crops in which regions are most under threat by 2030, we combined projections of climate change with data on what poor people eat, as well as past relationships between crop harvests and climate variability,” Lobell explained.
Their analysis revealed two hunger hotspots where climate impacts on agriculture look particularly dire: Southern Africa and South Asia. “We were surprised by how much and how soon these regions could suffer if we don’t adapt,” said study co-author Marshall Burke, a researcher at FSE. “For example, our study suggests that Southern Africa could lose more than 30 percent of its main crop, maize, in the next two decades, with possibly devastating implications for hunger in the region.”
Potential losses in South Asia are also significant, he added, with projected losses of 10 percent or more for many regional staples, including millet, maize and rice. “For poor farmers on the margin of survival, these losses could really be crushing,” Burke said.
Prioritizing investments
With such large projected losses in many poor regions, adapting agriculture to a changing climate will be a crucial global task, the authors said.
“By looking systematically across regions and at a wide range of crops of importance to the poor, we hope to provide a way to prioritize investments in adaptation,” Lobell said. “Say you’re an organization with finite resources that’s interested in alleviating hunger and concerned about the effects of climate change. Our study asks, given the data we have, where would you spend your money first" And while the data are not perfect, we have to make decisions based on available data.”
Although relatively inexpensive adaptations, such as planting earlier or later in the season or switching crop varieties, could moderate the effects of climate change, “the biggest benefits will likely result from more costly measures, including the development of new crop varieties and expansion of irrigation,” the authors write. “These adaptations will require substantial investments by farmers, governments, scientists and development organizations, all of whom face many other demands on their resources.”
In addition to specific areas, such as Southern Africa and South Asia, where urgent investment in agricultural adaptation is needed, the authors pointed to other regions where uncertainties about climate change are higher and, therefore, investment priorities might differ among institutions.
“Areas of West Africa and the Sahel stand out as regions with very high rates of food insecurity and with a very high dependence on agriculture, but also with a fair amount of uncertainty regarding climate change impacts,” Burke said. “For these regions, you get half of the climate models telling you it’s going to get wetter and the other half giving you the opposite. As a result, our study raises the potential for very bad impacts in these regions but with much less certainty than in other regions.”
The study also pointed to a few developing regions, such as the temperate wheat-growing areas of China, that could benefit in the short run from climate change, he added.
Investing for change
In the face of these uncertainties, where should organizations be investing money, and what kind of adaptation investments make the most sense"
“There are the sure bets, such as maize in Southern Africa and rice in Southeast Asia, where all models agree that impacts will be negative,” Lobell said. “Then there are those cases where things could get really bad, such as for sorghum in the Sahel or millets in Central Africa, but where we are less certain. In the end, if a choice has to be made, individual institutions will have to decide for themselves whether to pursue the sure bets or the riskier but potentially high-payoff investments.”
The study arrived at a particularly useful time, said co-author Rosamond Naylor, director of FSE and senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “The international donor community is starting to invest once again in agricultural productivity in the developing world, and our study will help show where these investments might be the most worthwhile,” she said. “We know we can’t do everything right away, but this helps us know where to start.”
Naylor and her colleagues at FSE have begun looking at other aspects of climate and agriculture, including two multi-year studies on the impact of biofuels expansion on climate change and the world’s poor.
Source: Stanford University
Ping!
The Lord controls the climate of the earth.
sooooo poor ppl are gonna starve from global warming....scare me into submission?
NEVAH!!
” To determine the impact of global warming on agriculture in these regions, the authors analyzed 20 climate change models...”
Garbage in, garbage out.
And THAT’S never happened before! Oh for the good ol’ days when the whole world was 70 degrees and temperate year around!
“Impoverished areas of Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from climate change in 20 years”
_____________________________________________________
However, impoverished areas in the north of Asia and south of Africa will experience longer growing seasons -due to global warming- and thus benefiting. But since this won’t scare you into supporting the eviro-scam that is “The Global Warming Movement”, we’re just gonna print the potential negatives.
It CAN’T be that incompentent or corrupt governments, ethnic cleansing and war have anything to do with lower crop yields!
Women, children and poorest hit hardest.
I have begun to wring my hands and weep, as demanded by the Council of Correctness.
I do want it to be known that because of the additional actions I am now required to take, that I will have less time to devote to asteroids that may hit the earth, or super volcano's that may wipe us out.
I ask forgiveness.
My computer models show the deserts will turn into a tropical rain forest.
Personally I think Sam Kinison had the right idea - Don't send them food, send them Uhauls. That way they can move to WHERE THE FOOD IS!!
to this?
to this one too?
I'm confused as heck?
I thought the Left applauded change in name sake of diversity??
to this?
to this one too?
I'm confused as heck?
I thought the Left applauded change in name sake of diversity??
excuse the double post...please
Curiously (or not), the biggest threat to third-world food supplies comes not from “glo-bull warming”, but from the left’s hysterical responses to the imagined threat. The surge to use my tax dollars to subsidize biofuels means that a very large percentage of farmland is being converted from growing food to growing ethanol. More unfarmed land is also being converted, with all the attendant environmental repercussions that that brings. The other thing these unhinged loony lefties haven’t considered is this “organic foods” foolishness. While they’re busy making themselves feel good about imaginary heath benefits, it takes more land to raise the same amount of food, since the yeilds are lower when you don’t use fertilizers or pesticides. That’s part of the (much) higher cost of the product. (The rest is an outrageous ripoff.) Result? More agricultural land eaten up by narcissistic Feelgod Foolishness. That equals more starvation for the most stressed people on the planet, i.e., poor people in third-world countries.
But it will be the Consevatives’ fault, just wait and see.
“Impoverished areas of Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from climate change in 20 years”
Correct headline:
Impoverished areas of Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from Marxist dictators and useful idiots at universities
Strong men dictators who take enormous bribes and graft rampant throughout third-world governments simply bleed the aid to the point of a trickle where it cannot benefit any of the intended recipients.
What these countries need is strong rule of law and property rights and let capitalism and entrepenaurialism take hold and all will be right.
The World Left doesn’t want to acknowledge this because Socialism cannot compete with the simple egalitarianism of the market place. That market place needs protection from brutal thugs and corrupt bureaucrats and then will make up for any deficits in any economy. If this was not so, Desert regions in the developed world would be Hell holes, too.
The UN is nothing more than a thug protection racket. The thugs want the Global Warming dollars from the guilty Liberal West, but could really care less for the plight of their own people.
The rulers of the various despotic countries of the World make up the majority of the UN's voting members. Until this changes, nothing will really help the poor overcome their poverty.
Zimbabwe - major tourist destination and food exporter until Comrade Mugabe ran the country and his people into the ground.
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