Climate change will severely impact global food production, causing an estimated 529,000 deaths by 2050 from resulting diet shifts compared with a future without higher carbon emissions, a study says.
Changes in temperature and precipitation “are expected to reduce global crop productivity” and drive people to eat less red meat and less water-intensive fruit and vegetables, says the study published in The Lancet. This would counteract ongoing efforts to improve nutrition among the world’s poorest people.
“Climate change takes away around 30 per cent of the progress [in nutrition improvement] that you would otherwise expect” if we limited carbon emissions to curb global warming, says Marco Springmann, the study’s lead author.
In contrast with previous models, this study looks at the quality — not just the quantity — of food available on a warmer planet to estimate how this will impact health. “Even quite modest reductions in per-person food availability could lead to changes in the energy content and composition of diets that are associated with substantial negative health implications,” the paper says.
Most climate-related deaths in this model are projected to happen in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region, in particular in China and India. The study modelled deaths from coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and an aggregate of other causes related to unhealthy food.
“If you take India for example, they will [be likely to] substitute vegetables and fruit with potatoes and rice that have less health benefits than leafy vegetables,” says Springmann, who is a policy researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food in the United Kingdom.
“I hope that the traditional focus on calories [only] will be questioned and people start looking at whole diets,” Springmann tells SciDev.Net.
A 2014 report by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) found that climate change would cause 85,000 deaths of under-fives due to malnutrition in 2050, but this did not take into account changes in diets.
The strongest factor determining death rates in the new study is the estimated reduction of fruit and vegetable consumption, says Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, one of the editors of the 2014 report and WHO team leader on climate change and health.
“This is plausible as we know that low levels of consumption of these types of foods are now a major killer,” he adds. “But it is important to point out that there has been much less research on the effect of climate change on the production, and then the availability, of fruits and vegetables, than there has been on staple crops.”
Campbell-Lendrum praises the new study for “broadening the range of evidence beyond simply calories” and for increasing understanding that climate change is a great threat to public health, and food and nutrition security.
He also points out that the eventual impacts of climate change on agriculture, the availability and price of food, and diet “are not set in stone”.
“They will depend at least as much on our policy and individual choices, including what we do in response to climate change, as to the effects of climate change itself,”
Meanwhile, the effects of the current, extreme episode of El Nino are being felt throughout South-East Asia.
Vietnam is experiencing its worst drought in 90 years. It has damaged 139,000 hectares of rice paddy in the Mekong Delta as seawater moves inland, according to government statistics.
Bui Chi Buu, former director of the Institute of Agricultural Science for Southern Vietnam, told dpa that the effects of El Nino were worsened by damming upstream in Laos and China.
"Saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta is a warning message to the leadership of Vietnam because they had downplayed this situation," Buu said.
Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat told a March 7 emergency government meeting the situation was likely to get worse in the region known as Vietnam's "rice bowl."
"If the drought continues until June, some 500,000 hectares of the summer-autumn rice crop will not be able to begin on time," Phat said, according to Toui Tre news.
A report from the ministry said freshwater will be scarce or nonexistent up to 45 kilometres inland, while the Mekong River's mouth will be too salty to use.
Saltwater has already intruded 90 kilometres inland in some places due to low river levels, reaching "places it had not for the last 90 years," Le Thanh Hai, deputy director of the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News Agency.
Non-governmental organizations in the region say the traditional drought periods caused by El Nino have been compounded by climate change.
Tara Buakamsri, Thailand country director for Greenpeace International, said warming temperatures in the western Pacific have forced storms toward higher latitudes, drawing rainfall away from mainland South-East Asia.
"The [current situation] comes from a combination of an intense El Nino effect and warming temperatures caused by climate change," he said. "Even during the last rainy season we saw an uneven distribution of rainfall."
According to Greenpeace, countries in the region must collaborate
with local authorities and improve infrastructure so water resources are not stretched too thinly.
"In Thailand, water management is too highly centralized," Tara said.
"We have to remember that in these situations the people most affected are the poorest of the poor. We have to do more in addressing them when talking about solutions."
In neighboring Malaysia, authorities have been contending with sizzling weather as well, thanks to the El Nino phenomenon. The situation is perceived to be so serious that the government is setting up a special committee to handle hot and dry weather matters. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak indicated that schools may even be ordered to close if the hot spell persists.
Relief from the heat does not seem to be imminent. Especially searing temperatures are predicted in Malaysia this week.
Even Malaysian wildlife are doing their best to escape the heat. According to Bernama, authorities said they received a markedly higher number of complaints about snakes taking shelter at homes. The reptiles are believed to be fleeing the heat as well as bush and forest fires.
The United Nations has also alerted the Philippine authorities about El Nino-caused drought that may result in food shortage as well as the spread of diseases in the worst-affected areas in the southern island of Mindanao, especially among people displaced by natural calamities and armed conflict.
In its latest report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs pointed out that while the ongoing El Nino has affected large areas of the Philippines, the most severe damage to agriculture is concentrated in Mindanao.
“About half of the total 194,000ha of affected farm areas are in Mindanao, 87 percent of which (crops) have no chance of recovery,” the UN Ocha was quoted as saying by Inquirer.
The report zeroed in on Zamboanga City, where the local government expects that up to 30 percent or 3,500ha of rice fields “may be lost in the coming months” as drought persists.
The UN Ocha also reportedly noted that the City Health Office was concerned that water shortage may raise the risks of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases among children and other vulnerable groups, adding that six evacuees reportedly died last December and January.
The agency added that, with fears of the mounting impact of El Nino on food security and health of the evacuees, city authorities are resuming food distribution to all transition sites for 11 months starting March.
“However, temporary assistance to address the immediate needs of the IDPs alone cannot provide durable solutions to their displacement,” the UN Ocha was quoted as saying.
“As of mid-February, just over 2,000 out of the planned 6,500 permanent housing units under the government’s Zamboanga Recovery, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation (Z3R) were completed,” it said. “With an increasing delay in the Z3R implementation timeline, aid agencies fear that most of the remaining (evacuees) may be left in limbo into the third year of displacement.”
Evacuees were left homeless when a group linked to the Moro National Liberation Front attacked the city in September 2013, reported Inquirer.