Climate Action 2011-2012

© WFP/Amjad Jamal
Pakistan. After wreaking havoc in the mountainous north-west, the floods in Pakistan
descended on the heavily populated Punjab region, home to over half the country’s population.
this increase is likely to be seen in sub-Saharan Africa. The
number of malnourished children is also expected to increase,
with projections as high as a 21 per cent increase, or 24
million children (Climate Change and Hunger – Responding to
the Challenge, WFP 2009). This will come at a time when the
world’s population is likely to surpass nine billion. To ensure
adequate food and nutrition for the world’s population
under a scenario of no climate change will require us to raise
production by another 60 to 70 per cent (How To Feed the
World in 2050, UN Food and Agriculture Organization,
FAO 2010) – which makes the challenge under a climate
change scenario a daunting task indeed.
Disasters will increase in frequency and intensity. The
‘new normal’ in disasters is already characterised by more
unpredictability and severity. In 2010, climate-related extreme
events and disasters affected some 300 million people, most
often in countries which have very little capacity to cope.
Floods alone affected the lives of almost 200 million people,
the highest number of people impacted by floods in a decade.
Among the poorest communities, exposure to disasters
often means the loss of the few assets that support subsistence
livelihoods, and the triggering of ‘negative’ coping strategies
that may affect, for example, educational opportunities
for children, access to nutrition, the ability to manage the
natural environment on which the livelihoods of most poor
people still depend, and distress migration. Disasters push
vulnerable communities into poverty. For example, the 2010
floods in Pakistan displaced some 2 million people and
seriously set back earlier efforts to bring another 20 million
people out of poverty.
Environmental degradation will accelerate and worsen. In
Africa alone, some 650 million people already live on degraded
lands. Four times the amount of nutrients is being removed
from the soil as is being returned. With climate change, twothirds
of the region’s arable land could be lost by 2025 (FAO
2008, Challenges for SLM in Africa). Population growth and
over-use of water is already impacting food production and
health, and climate change will make water an even more
scarce and precious resource. Land and water degradation
will exacerbate resource competition and social tensions, and
accelerate unplanned population movement and urbanisation,
with serious consequences for governance and human security.
Food prices will become even more volatile. The fuel and
food price crisis of 2008 is a warning of what future global food
markets may look like, with hundreds of millions of people
suddenly unable to access food as prices rise. Multiple factors
contributed to the crisis, including drought and floods affecting
breadbasket regions and countries, the surging demand for
staple food from more affluent emerging economies, as well as
the displacement of food crops for biofuels.
Disasters push vulnerable
communities into poverty.
A volatile food market with rising prices for the most
common food crops will push more poor people into
hunger. Poor people spend up to 70 per cent of their
incomes on food, and for them the margin between earning
and spending, between food and hunger, is razor thin.
They have no savings accounts, no assets of value, and little
to fall back on when times get tough. The recent Oxfam
report Growing a Better Future estimates rising food prices
in the range of 70-90 per cent by 2030, without taking into
account the effects of climate change. With climate change,
the report concludes, food price rise projections for maize,
wheat and rice are as high as 120-180 per cent.
In sum, climate change will exacerbate underlying food
insecurity drivers, acting as a ‘hunger-risk multiplier’. The
scale of forces at play, the speed and irreversibility of the
changes under way, the new risk threshold – the number
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