Climate Change and Food Security: setting the track for the ... - FAO

A quick note to agree with Thinlay Baap -- we really do need to look at the mechanisms of how
the rich countries--and those responsible for most of the impact -- can assist countries in
adaptation and mitigation. Is there potential to direct some carbon trading system to address
these issues? It would need to be a mechanism which looked at directly assisting communities,
who would in turn take on responsibilities. It may be expensive to implement and monitor
systems that are not government based - but it would be worthwhile if it really empowered
communities to invest in local adaptation and mitigation strategies and provided them with real
trading power.
In their analysis the HLPE also need to consider the impact on biodiversity and agrobiodiversity
in particular and the long term food security issues.
Thanks very much for an interesting forum.
Kay
Kay Muir Leresche
South Africa
12. K V Peter from India
In the name of development of infrastructure like 6 lanes road, there is cutting of well
established trees providing shade to pedestrians and greening the surroundings. Pollution level
is souring up in urban areas. Incidence of lung diseases, cancer and skin diseases are souring up.
It has to be mandatory, that a tree is cut only after establishing another tree to a reasonable age.
Garbage disposal is another disturbing fact in India. Climate change may be disastrous to
tropical agriculture but may be boosting productivity of temperate agriculture. The total global
production of agriculture may remain unaffected but the developing countries in tropics may
suffer. The strength of tropics like vast human power, water resources, soil resources and above
all the potential market need to be tamed to advantage.
K V Peter
13. Roy Stacy from the USA
Dear Moderator,
This is indeed a complex subject and the climate change/food security intersect will play out
very differently in diverse locations. There will be winners and losers when it to agriculture, for
instance areas of Canada and the Soviet Union. For others adaptation, particullarly farming
systems, will be a major challenge and one that demends international help. As much as climate
change is a concern, in the more immediate future it is climate and rainfall varability that has
been accelerating for the last 60 years that pose the biggest challenge to grain producers. In
Ethiopia for example, perhaps the most famine threatned country in the world, FEWS NET and
the USGS have published assessments that show a pattern of widening varaibility in seasonal
rainfall, but when the good and bad years are averaged out, there has been an annual decline of
some 5.8 millimeters of rainfall over the major grain producing areas. In a country of 70 million
people, where 97 of grain production is rainfed, this is a serious threat. We are told that for
longer term climate change, it is still uncertain what will transpire in the Horn of Africa, wetter
or drier? But we know what rainfall varability is doing right now. When mixed with the global
grain price volatility of recent years, and rthe enhanced short term food security threat is
worrisome.
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Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition
http://km.fao.org/fsn
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