World Bank presents bleak picture of future food production
Posted on May 14th, 2008Nathanial Gronewold, special to ClimateWire
ClimateWire: In the midst of a global food security crisis brought on by rapidly rising commodity prices, yesterday the World Bank added to the chorus of alarms by issuing a warning that climate change will sharply cut the amount of food that the world can potentially produce in the future.
Without any adaptation measures, by 2080 global warming will probably reduce world agricultural productivity around 15 percent, the World Bank said. The alarming figure was highlighted at a launch of its annual report of global environmental statistics in New York.
“Looking at the potential impact on agricultural productivity in the year 2080, for the world as a whole we see negative numbers, depending on whether you count the fertilizing effect of CO2 in the air,” said Kirk Hamilton, World Bank environmental economist and the lead author of the assessment. “You could have a loss of up to 15 percent of world agricultural production.”
Relying on data and an analysis compiled by climate researcher Bill Cline, the World Bank sees the sharpest drops in productivity in the Third World, which could suffer potential output declines as high as 20 percent. Richer nations comprising the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are less affected but can also expect productivity to drop by as much as 6 percent, the Bank says.
The warning comes right as the U.N. system is ramping up its efforts to organize governments toward a coordinated response to the global food crisis. The U.N. food agencies are reporting that record high food price increases are devastating the world’s poorest countries, where families often must devote 70 percent or more of their income to food.
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held the first ever meeting of the High Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis, a crisis management team he announced last month. Immediately afterwards, the task force issued a call for governments to lift food export restrictions that they believe are causing prices to rise even further.
Adverse weather activity will become more ‘normal’
A drought in Australia that largely destroyed the wheat harvest there, flooding in parts of Africa that wrecked cereal crops and even the recent cyclone that damaged Burma’s rice harvest have all contributed to food price spikes. These are precisely the types of weather activity that the world can expect to see more of as climate change becomes more pronounced, World Bank economists said yesterday while launching the latest edition of the bank’s annual “Little Green Data Book.”
The 2008 version of the book provides economic and environmental statistics for more than 200 countries and territories, looking at agriculture, forests and biodiversity, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Among some of the more worrisome findings highlighted by this year’s edition is the World Bank’s warning that climate change will damage agriculture in South Asia and Africa the most. Ethiopia and Bangladesh top the list of countries at risk, suffering from climate-induced droughts and coastal storms, respectively.
And in another sign of the shifting dynamics of global climate change, the Bank says that the developing world will very soon surpass the rich members of OECD as the largest source of carbon dioxide pollution. That shift could occur even before 2010, since the rate of increase in emissions levels is much faster in the Third World than in the OECD countries.
The bank also recommends measures that governments can take to help protect their agricultural industries against adverse weather, such as developing coastal storm buffers. World Bank economist also point out that most developing nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, must put a halt to a decades-long stagnation in the growth of agricultural productivity and, with the help of aid agencies, develop better irrigation systems and ensure farmers’ access to fertilizers.
“Dealing with climate change impacts is possible, and win-win opportunities can be found,” said Warren Evans, director of environment at the World Bank. “For example, planting mangroves to buffer the effects of storm surges on infrastructure near the coast can also sequester carbon.”
Can planting carbon-storing trees provide some respite?
In the spirit of mobilizing local populations against climate change, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) also announced yesterday that it is ramping up its worldwide tree planting campaign.
The “Billion Tree Campaign” recently reached a better-than-expected milestone as participants reported the 2 billionth tree planted in the world, according to UNEP.
That success is leading the agency to raise the ante on the initiative, with executive director Achim Steiner launching an appeal from U.N. Headquarters for governments and communities to plant 7 billion trees — or roughly one for every human on the planet — by the time governments assemble for international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2009.
“Just a few days ago, we passed the 2 billion mark of trees planted,” Steiner said at a press conference. “That led us to reflect on if this such an empowering and in some ways popular way of getting people to connect to each other … then let us take this to the next level.”
In reference to concerns over agricultural productivity and meeting future food demand, UNEP was careful to stress that the tree planting campaign does not threaten to take arable land away. Rather, Steiner pointed to evidence that trees provide important wind breaks for farms and stabilize water sheds in highlighting how the two issues go hand in hand.
UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign is an entirely grassroots-led initiative. The agency is not funding any of the tree planting campaigns, and Steiner admits that it has no means to verify whether any trees are actually planted, relying instead on government and private sector pledges and reporting.
Nevertheless, UNEP officials are convinced that there is enough proof in the response, as well as from anecdotal evidence and their own investigations on the ground, to show that the campaign is having a major impact. If the momentum is kept, the world could easily reach the 7 billionth tree before the Copenhagen talks, Steiner said.
“It is an ambitious target, but it also a very practical expression of this idea that people can do something about climate change and they can also send a very powerful message,” he said. “It’s not a given that we will reach this target, but we believe that we have so much support now from governments, from individuals, from the corporate sector, that it is a target that is achievable.”