Climate change is having a major impact on food production worldwide. The food security early warning advisor of the UN World Food Program (WFP), Menghestab Haile, told a gathering in Bali in December that “climate change is real and is posing great threats to the availability of food around the world. The WFP is currently fighting hunger and destitution brought about by floods, droughts and other extreme events spurred by climate change.” While poor countries are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, Haile warned his audience, “climate change threatens agriculture in both developed and developing countries. It has a multiplier effect.”
Climate shocks, such as droughts and floods, will cause grave setbacks in efforts to rid the world of hunger. The availability of food will decline, prices will rise, employment opportunities will disappear and, consequently, many more people will face hunger and starvation. The statistics are pretty frightening. According to a recent projection by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), by 2080, the agricultural potential of rich countries, mainly situated in temperate climate zone, could increase by 8% because of a longer growing season. The growing season in Ireland and Britain has increased by, at least, two weeks in the past few decades. In poor countries, located in the tropics, things will be different. The report calculates that agricultural production could fall in these areas by up to 9%. As a result, by 2080, the number of additional people at risk from hunger could reach 600 million. Since 800 million are experiencing hunger today, the total number would amount to 1.4 billion hungry people. This would leave the Millennium Goal of halving the number of hungry people, by 2015, in tatters. According to Haile, WFP is in the process of implementing a number of approaches to address the problem. These include more efficient and targeted humanitarian responses, accurate vulnerability analysis, based on better mapping, and the integration of traditional coping skills into an overall program.
BANGLADESH’S WARNING
You have to look no further than Cyclone Sidr, which devastated Bangladesh in November, to see what is happening. Rezaul Chowdhury from Bangladesh, representing the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), told participants at the Bali conference that “Sidr killed thousands of people and destroyed more than 40% of our land. This is a huge setback in terms of the efforts to eradicate poverty in Bangladesh.” Apart from losing their houses and personal belonging, people also lost their animals, which are such an important element in the life of rural people. They represent more than a source of food, as they are used as collateral for obtaining loans and as part of dowry in marriage negotiations. Many western friends of mine, who visited me in Lake Sebu when I worked among the T’boli, were often amused when they heard that, in negotiating a wedding arrangement, a certain number of horses and carabaos were often stipulated as part of a dowry.
Furthermore, with climate change, life does not return to normal when a typhoon or cyclone has passed. Chowdhury spoke about his own home on the island of Kutubdia in Bangladesh. The island is gradually being submerged as sea levels rise. Salt water is entering the aquifer and contaminating the water used for drinking, personal hygiene, and agriculture. All the signs are staring him in the face that, as climate change bites, life will be very difficult for the 40 million people who live in the delta area of Bangladesh.
WOMEN ARE THE MAIN VICTIMS
It is against this background that I spent some time at a meeting hosted by the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Working Group on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction. The ISDR is attempting to develop a twin-track approach. On one hand, they are promoting policies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the driving force behind climate change. On the other front, it is attempting to reduce the vulnerability of societies with limited resources to inevitable climate change impacts. They offer four proposals for the post-2012 agreement. These include: making adaptation to climate change a fundamental pillar of any post-2012 agreement; ensuring that disaster risk reduction and climate risk management are core elements of the Adaptation Fund to climate change; establishing mechanisms to provide sufficient funding for adaptation to climate change and risk reduction in order to protect the most vulnerable; taking immediate action to implement adaptation to climate change and risk reduction in vulnerable countries in the period 2008 to 2010.
I would add a further proposal to the ones enunciated above. This would focus on being sensitive to gender issues when designing risk management strategies. This point was made by, Ellen Teague and Theresa Polk, two participants at the Columban Climate Change Conference in September 2007. They pointed out that the death rate in the massive storm which hit Bangladesh in 1991, with the loss of almost 200,000 lives, was five times higher among women than among men. A recent publication, Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, gives the reason: “Men were able to warn each other as they met in public spaces, but they communicated information to the rest of the family only sporadically. Many women, too, are not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative. They waited tragically for their relatives to return home and take them to a safe place. Moreover, as in many Asian countries, most Bengali women have never learned to swim.” (Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific: The threat from climate change to human development and the environment, December 2007, page 7).
THE CHURCH’S ROLE
Reflecting on my experience as a missionary on the Island of Mindanao in the Philippines, I believe that missionaries and Catholic development organizations ought to help local Churches develop effective capacities for adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction. This would help avoid major losses and disruptions to peoples’ lives and their environment, between now and the 2012 agreement. The planning needs to be based on good science, capacity-building for agencies that deal with disasters, and adequate funds from a variety of sources to help countries and regions manage the growing consequences of climate change.
