National Seminar On Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities: Responses to Climate Change

St. Josephs College, Jakhama, Nagaland, 2-3 July, 2010

CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD SECURITY

N JANBEMO HUMTSOE Lecturer & Head Department of Economics. Bailey Baptist College. Wokha Nagaland. Director, Green Foundation Wokha. Post Box No. 171. P.O. Wokha Nagaland. 797111. India. Email- janbemolotha@gmail.com

CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD SECURITY

N JANBEMO HUMTSOE

Food security can be defined as, when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary and food preferences for an active and healthy life, (FAO 1996). In a broader sense, food security involves every individual gaining physical, economic, social and environmental access to a balance diet that includes the necessary macro and micro nutrients, safe drinking water, sanitation, environmental hygiene, primary healthcare and education so as to lead a healthy and productive life1. The FAO defines the four aspects of food security in the following manner: Food availability is determined by the physical quantities of food that are produced, stored, processed, distributed, and exchanged. Food accessibility is the ability to secure the resources (including legal, political, economic, and social) to access food. Food utilization refers to how food is used and how people secure essential nutrients from food and includes the nutritional value of the diet, social values of foods, and the quality and safety of the food supply. Food system stability or sustainability is determined by the temporal availability of, and access to, food (FAO 2008). Food security depends on self-production of food grains in sufficient quantities and ability to transport and store grains on a large scale, commensurate with population size, economic strength that allows import/export of grains in required quantities, and availability to meet the demand of grains in the international market2. On the other hand, food production relies entirely on ecosystems ability to provide water, nutrient-rich soils, climate regulation, pollinators, and to help control infestations (Ericksen 2008). An efficient food security system should therefore be one that withstands any challenges posed by calamitous weather conditions unfavorable for agricultural production over successive seasons. Climate change has been identified as one of the major threats facing biodiversity and one that negatively affect the size of habitats and ecosystems, as well as the abundance and distribution of certain species thereby acting as a multiplier to the existing threats to food security. The UNFCCC claims that Climate change will make natural disasters more frequent and intense, land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in productivity even harder to achieve. The implications, for any such an eventuality, will therefore be severe for those who are already poor, malnourished and food insecure. A study by Schmidhuber3 et al finds that Climate change affects all four dimensions of food security: Climate change affects food production and availability directly through changes in agro-ecological conditions and indirectly by affecting growth and distribution of incomes, and thus the demand for agricultural produce. Reduced food availability due to decreasing yields as a result of climate change has additional direct implications for food accessibility: As food becomes scarce, prices increases and food becomes unaffordable and expensive, i.e. inaccessible, for a growing part of the population.

Weather conditions are expected to become more variable in the future, with increasing frequency and severity of extreme events. Hence greater fluctuation in crop yields and productivity can adversely affect the stability of food supplies. Climate change may also initiate a vicious circle where infectious diseases, including water-borne diseases, cause or compound hunger, which, in turn, makes the affected population more susceptible to those diseases. Results may include declines in labour productivity and an increase in poverty, morbidity and mortality. Research shows that one of the impending dangers to global food security, and particularly to the developing countries will be climate change and variability as it negatively affects productivity in agriculture. Extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, will lead to crop shortfalls, destruction of plantations and infrastructure, and an increase in the degradation of farmland. More irregular distribution of precipitation, will also results in crop shortfalls, reduced yield potential, deterioration of groundwater regeneration and the loss of usable land. And a slow but steady temperature rise, will lead to a drastic reduction in the quantity of water available to humans and the environment, loss of the water storage function of glaciers, salinization of fertile river deltas and to an altered distribution of pests and weeds4. It is well known that the food business is the single largest businesses in the world, and India is one country that relies heavily on agriculture. Though the share of agriculture in GDP has come down from 55 percent in 1951 to 15.7 percent in 2008-09, still the sector provides livelihood security to 65-70 percent of the population and employs two thirds of the countrys workforce. Food security is therefore indispensable from all social, political, economic and strategic point of view. If a power from outside wishes to control this countrys destiny today, says Dr. P M Bhargava, it is not going to drop a nuclear weapon; it only has to control Indian agriculture. And to do that, it just needs to control seed and agro-chemicals production5. The FAO report indicates that 1.02 billion people in the world are hungry and around 30 million children die of malnutrition every year. The impacts of climate change sea level rise, droughts, heat waves, floods and rainfall variation could, by 2080, push another 600 million people into malnutrition and increase the number of people facing water scarcity by 1.8 billion (UNDP 2008). In spite of its rapid economic growth in the recent years, India miserably fails to solve the problem of poverty and hunger. In the words of M S Swaminathan, India has the unenviable reputation of being the home to the largest number of undernourished children, women and men in the world. The national Family Health Survey (2006) showed that the child under nutrition rate in India is 46 percent while the global Hunger Index surveyed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (2008) ranks India 66th among 88 countries. It comes below Sudan, Nigeria and Cameron, the poorest among the sub-Saharan, and slightly above Bangladesh. The blame for this nutritional emergency has to be shared by the persistence of widespread poverty, poor implementation of government programmes and ancient methods of cultivation all in the background of precarious climatic conditions. The BPL populations are rising at a staggering rate and the current unprecedented double digit food inflation is a living testimony of the evils of food insecurity, which is unbearable even to the well to do: the poorest of the poor are driven to desperation and suicidal tendencies are on the rise6.

Regardless of climate change, demand for food will increase, while resources needed for its production, such as land, water and fossil fuel-based fertilizers are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Study in India reveals that, between 1991 and 2001 the number of agricultural laborers increased from 86 million to 106 million. Between 1990 and 2005, the respective cropped areas under cereals and pulses fell from 103.3 mha and 24.7 mha to 97.7 mha and 22.5 mha. And the daily per capita availability of food grain fell from 510 grams to 438 grams. Among the poorest 30 percent, average daily consumption fell from 1830 Kcal per person in 1980 to 1600 Kcal in 1998; this group spends 70 percent of its income on food. Malnourished children number 57 million of the worlds 146 million, and 47 percent of Indian children are underweight7. Therefore, it is evident that maintaining and building efficient food systems in the face of climate change, growing population pressures, economic development and urbanization and a situation of diminishing resources is one of the most serious challenges that the world face today. Although technically it seems possible to feed the 9 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by mid-century, diminishing returns, rising input prices and the difficulties of logistics, institutional arrangements, and security constraints in some areas mean that the world food economy is likely to reach a ceiling long before this technical potential is realized8. Food at affordable price is a prerequisite for peace, progress and social security. Hence, the awareness on the importance of climate and biodiversity on food, health and livelihood security is crucial. A detail analysis on the impact of climate change on crops yield and GDP in India by Kumar and Parikh9 (2001) finds that change in temperature between 2.5o C to 4.9o C will results in yield losses for rice and wheat between 32 and 40%, and 41 and 52%, respectively while GDP would drop by between 1.8 to 3.4%. Using an alternative methodology10, they estimated that with a temperature change of +2C and an accompanying precipitation change of +7 %, farm level total net-revenue would fall by 9%, whereas with a temperature increase of +3.5C and precipitation change of +15%, the fall in farm level total net-revenue would be nearly 25 %. An expert team constituted by FAO , in its report submitted in September 2009, concluded that for each 1 degree C rise in mean temperatures, wheat yield losses in India are likely to be around 6 million tons per year, or around 1.5 billion $ at current prices. There will be a similar losses in other crops and our impoverished farmers could lose the equivalent of over 20$ billion in income each year. The Peterson institute for international economics also predicts that agricultural production in developing countries may fall between 10-25 percent and if global warming continues unabated, India's agricultural capacity would fall as much as 40 percent. A similar study by Auffhammer11 et al (2006) found that the brown cloud formed as a result of carbon emissions reduced the mean annual rice harvest in India by nearly 4 percent in the period 1966-1984 and by nearly 10 percent in 1985-1998 . Ericksen12 (2008) in a study claims that soil erosion has already led to a 40 per cent global decline in agricultural productivity. A global mean warming of 2C by 2100 could have catastrophic effectsalthough the precise nature of these effects is still being debated. The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report predicted that drought, higher temperatures, and severe weather would affect food productivity, threaten up to 30 per cent of species with extinction, and cause the bleaching of much of the worlds coral reefs .

The crux of the problem is that, it is not only climate change that affects agricultural productivity, but that agricultural expansion in order to increase food productivity can significantly affect climate change. The worlds two billion famers are the guardians of much of what is left of the natural landscape. They hold the fate of thousands of threatened species as well as the worlds remaining forests. Agriculture currently uses three-quarters of the worlds fresh water. Its run-off has degraded the earths major rivers, estuaries and even seas. It occupies 40 percent of the worlds free land surface and is responsible for 30 percent of green house gas emission13. Projections suggest that global food production will need to double over the next halfcentury; either by intensification of existing production systems or by expansion into new lands. Either way, there will be major impacts on biodiversity and climate. This means that sustainable agricultural management has to be an essential part of any overall strategy for biodiversity conservation and climate change. Therefore one of the biggest challenges in the 21st century will be to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable way, mitigating rather than contributing to climate change14. Highly productive agriculture has a future only if it uses natural resources in a much more sustainable way. The conservation of natural resources and soil fertility, along with a reduction in GHG emissions are crucial to enable a lasting productivity. Agriculture should therefore contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through reduction of deforestation, better control of wildfires, improving nutrition for ruminant livestock, more efficient management of livestock waste, and agro forestry systems15. The potential adverse effects on global and local food supplies due to climate change could also be avoided through efficient irrigation and watershed management, improved land cultivation and livestock management and the development of crop varieties and breeds that could adapt or are adapted to changing climatic conditions. An effective use of climate data and forecasts, through early warning systems, can assist in analyzing the impacts of climate change on agricultural production and the entire food chain. This could be achieved by sharing of knowledge, technology and resources between the advanced and developing nations, public-private partnership, and more importantlyspreading the awareness and seeking the active involvement and participation of the farmers and rural cultivators. Economic development, which is responsible for causing major environmental distress, could also be a powerful weapon to restore and regain environmental goods. Sustainable economic development could make economies less dependent on climatesensitive sectors, such as agriculture. It could also enhance the capacity of households to adapt and mitigate by increasing productivity, income, health, and education. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the country adopts development strategy that could make significant advances towards increasing food availability, enhancing access to food, and strengthening resilience and development which will reduce the risk of dramatic increases in the number of poor, hungry and malnourished people.
(Concluded)

References:
1. M S Swaminathan. Synergy between Food Security Act & NREGA. The Hindu, June 1 2009. 2. Sushil Kumar An approach to sustainable food security Current Science, Vol. 83, No. 4, 25 August 2002. 3. Schmidhuber, J. and Tubiello, F. N. (2007) Global food security under climate change, PNAS 104 (50): 19703-08. 4. Dr Karl-Heinz Stecher et al. (2009) Food security and adaptation to climate change - a position paper. KfW Entwicklungsbank, Palmengartenstrasse 5 9, 60325 Frankfurt am Main/Germany. www.kfw-entwicklungsbank.de 5. Dr. P M Bhargava, Former Vice Chairman, National Knowledge Commission. The Hindu, August 11, 2009, questions of real national security. 6. Dr. V Rajagopal Food Crisis on the Horizon The Hindu, 18th April 2010. 7. A Sivaramakrishnan Food insecurity: a form of violence The Hindu, March 19, 2008. 8. Koning, N. and Van Ittersum, M.K. (2009). Will the world have enough to eat? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 77-82 9. Kumar, K.S.Kavi, Parikh, J., 2001 Socio-economic Impacts of Climate Change on Indian Agriculture, International Review for Environmental Strategies, 2(2). 10. Kumar, K.S.Kavi, Parikh, J., 2001. Indian Agriculture and Climate Sensitivity, Global Environmental Change, 11, pp. 147-154. 11. Auffhammer, M., V. Ramanathan, et al. (2006). "Integrated model shows that atmospheric brown clouds and greenhouse gases have reduced rice harvests in India." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(52): 19668-19672. 12. Ericksen, P.J. (2008). What is the vulnerability of a food system to global environmental change?. Ecology and Society, 13(2), 14. 13. Kadambot Siddique. Director, Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia. Challenge and opportunity in agriculture. The Hindu. May 02nd 2008. 14. International Food Policy Research Institute (2000) Food, Agriculture, and the Environment. Discussion Paper 32. Integrated Nutrient Management, Soil Fertility and Sustainable Agriculture: Current Issues and Future Challenges. Washington. 15. Food and Agriculture Organization. Climate change and food security. United Nations Joint Press Kit for Bali Climate Change Conference 3-14 December 2007. http://www.fao.org/nr/index_en.htm