المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Getting the right messages across to everyone

I can remember my Regional Agricultural Officer once rounding on me at a monthly staff meeting with the comment: ‘It’s better to have contaminated food than none at all’, when I had drawn attention to the iniquities of our current recommendations at that time for use of DDT in vegetable gardens. Nutrition and climate change has similar contradictions – concern for the former becomes lost in the urgency to take account of the latter. Simply producing sufficient food irrespective of quality may come to dominate – and our descendents may be eating foods from a mix of traditional, non-traditional and synthetic biological systems.

Preamble

This has been an excellent debate with participants criss-crossing the spectrum of issues that for me, at least, has emphasized the overwhelming complexity of the many challenges involved when linking nutrition and climate change. It makes the debate difficult to focus. Where to start? How to make a contribution that has not already been covered? How to encourage the FSN network of enthusiastic people to continue to develop and share information, send messages and highlight the dramatic risks involved by downgrading – side-lining even – the projected impacts of climate change (and this long after the debate has concluded).

Not so much ‘nutrition’ then – and here you can sympathize with Team Leader Florence Egal the lack of focus of which she complains – but lower quality foods, lack of food, reduced agricultural production, insufficient natural resources and more that could arise as ambient global temperatures shift above 2degC during the latter part of the 21st century. Issues of this kind have been gaining momentum and have been described by the IPPC (2013) and others for the risks involved with our current ‘business as usual’ approach to socio-economic development just about everywhere.

Greenhouse gas emissions

These include recognition that current levels of atmospheric CO2, CH4 & N2O are the highest they have been for almost a million years. Think about that. We occupy a planet that is 4.5 billion years old, the modern version of our species has been around for just 200,000 years (but with ancestry dating back another six million years) and we seem to have blown it in little more than 250 years as our species has multiplied, occupied the entire planet and then, as a society, ‘industrialized’ in unsustainable manner.

We need to hold cumulative atmospheric CO2 emissions to around 1,000 Gt with which to manage that 2decC rise. It seems increasingly unlikely that this will be achieved, and that temperature rises may be twice this target, with the movement of regional climates, the instability of weather patterns including extreme events that will follow and, for best, rises in average sea-levels that have been estimated at 600 mm. Seas cover two-thirds of the surface of the planet and they are a natural sink for surplus GHGs but, the downside, this increases levels of marine acidity. Further, estimated 40% of the world’s people live within 100 km of the coast.

The main culprit is geological carbon released from the fossil fuels that once lay deep beneath the surface of the planet – originally separate from atmospheric carbon cycles, but currently widely exploited for the ease with which energy can be extracted and used, thereby releasing stored carbon as a by-product of combustion. Of the order 6 Bt of carbon continue to be released each year and this is changing our climate. On human scale, this kind of change will be irreversible.

What to do about it?

The solution is a relatively easy one to suggest – leave the remaining unexploited fossil fuels in the ground and shift to alternative energy resources. However this is, as everyone knows, easier-said-than-done. It will simply not take place fast enough given the entrenched position of these fuels in international energy models, and given the power of those who own and exploit them within world commerce.

Lower quality foods

Projections for the quality of foods that will be grown as CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise are typically based upon a scale of parts per million (ppm); from 250 ppm before the industrialization of human society to around 400 ppm today (a staggering 60% increase in a little over 250 years) and projected levels of around 570 ppm by 2050 (and this with serious effort to curb emissions by governments, starting now). R&D with popular staples such as rice, wheat, maize, etc. shows diminished levels of essential nutrients such as iron, zinc and others, and reduced protein content – the quality of foods suffer.

Boosting food intake to compensate for is an obvious approach, but with food production required to double to meet increased populations estimated at 9-10 billion before stabilization, and greater demands for higher value foods – dairy foods, meats, fish and similar – as a function of higher economic growth, the reality of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is likely to become more, not less, pronounced. As-of-now there is already around one billion food insecure people worldwide.

Focus

Having set the scene, as-it-were, my contribution to the debate is concerned with ‘Messages for people who are not aware of the implications of climate change - what can you do?’

You only have to explore the language of ‘climate change’, to look around you at the lack of concern by the man and woman in the street (as-it-were) and the limited cooperation that is underway between the various countries and blocs that are talking about change mitigation[1]. Leave aside the iniquities of blame, economic growth linked to levels of emissions (and those responsible today and historically) and, importantly, the ‘catch-up’ requirements of the industrializing countries. Consider instead the messages that should be promoted, shared and taken up by everyone.

I have recently been exploring ‘value chains’ in the countries of NW East Africa – resource poor communities, rural densities >450/km2, income levels

Project planning has been reasonable, a budget estimated at US$8M was well-spent during an investment period of more than five years and the development and intermediate objectives were largely met. At no time, however, was there reference to climate change and the practices required for security of production into the future; markets dominated thinking – not climate. What resources did the central governments of the recipient countries have available to boost their awareness of climate issues – who knows? These were not included within the public services described and/or available.

The point being that no effort was made to include ‘climate change/mitigation’ where issues of agronomy, economic performance, crop/livestock care, transport and more took priority. And why not? National planning rarely has a 50 year cycle; a rolling five year plan is more typical where poverty, employment, livelihoods and similar remain the main focus of national development objectives.

And not just the low income countries. In my country things are much the same. Like most other people, I continue to drive my petrol/diesel powered car, eat preferred foods irrespective of conversion ratios, live in a house that leaks heat energy, and give little thought to my personal carbon footprint. I am aware that this is probably around 15 tCO2e annually of which 60% comes down to personal choice – housing, travel, food, non-food products and services. I am also aware that I pay little more than lip-service to reducing my footprint. (And, in fact, this year I have already blown things by flying from Melbourne to Rome). That smallholder in East Africa to whom I referred earlier – living with few modern resources – will probably already have a footprint of 1 tCO2e or less – the level required for everyone on Planet Earth to provide the basis for atmospheric GHGs to stabilize.

The bottom line, however, is a requirement for government imposed guidelines that eventually become taken up such that they become the norm for everyone. This means, in reality, those of us in the industrial and industrializing countries – the rich people; it means changes to current lifestyles, foods, services and more. And not just governments either for that is a ‘pass-the-buck factor’; we all have personal responsibilities to make a difference.

Failure to make it happen will bring changes that are hard to envisage; your children’s children will eventually reap the ineptitude, indecision and challenges of the current day in their unpredictable world of 2100.

Peter Steele

Rome

16 April 2015