Global Climate Change & Why You & I Matter:

Feeding the world

We are living during times when the ability of parts of the world to feed itself, be it sustainably or at all, is dependent on the choices each of us makes in our daily lives.

The fact is that each of us is responsible for the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are contributing to global climate change.

The choices we make in how we use energy and how we manage the land all have consequences. Yet, all of us will not be equally affected by global climate change.

People living in poverty will be worst affected by climate change, and the poorest of the poor will be worst hit. Think Africa and Asia.

Yet, the people of Africa and Asia have contributed only a very small percentage of the fossil fuel emissions that have played the biggest role in the global warming experienced.

Those who have benefited least from the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution and its fossil energy consumption will suffer the most from its climatic consequences.

Photograph by Daniel Stiles, UNEP

• The poor – particularly those living in developing countries – will bear the heaviest burdens of a changing climate.

• Those least able to deal with climate change will be the most affected by it.

The Carbon Atlas 2006: An Interactive Emissions Map

• By 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change.

• By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50%. Agricultural productions, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.

• Local food supplies are projected to be negatively affected by decreasing fisheries resources in large lakes due to rising water temperatures, which may be exacerbated by continued over-fishing.

• Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity.

• Freshwater availability in Central, South, East and South-East Asia, particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease due to climate change and could adversely affect more than a billion people by 2050.

• By mid-21st Century crop yields could increase up to 20% in East and South-East Asia while they could decrease up to 30% in Central and South Asia. Taken together, and considering the influence of rapid population growth and urbanisation, the risk of hunger is projected to remain very high in several developing countries.

Western Africa faces challenges arising from climate variability—especially in the arid Sahelian zone where drought is recurrent—and from the predicted impacts of climate change on food production, freshwater availability, and desertification.

West Sahel Countries

Conditions in the Sahel grasslands of Africa are a striking example: This arid, drought-prone region lies on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and is home to millions of pastoralists who depend on cattle herds and subsistence farming for survival.

In recent decades, the Sahel's climate has become even drier, resulting in repeated droughts and the spread of the desert 50 to 200 km farther south (UNEP, 2007).

These changes have placed large stresses on countries such as Sudan, which are ill-equipped to deal with it. The subsequent social and economic instability has helped fuel violent conflicts resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees (UNEP 2007).

P. Ward/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

The West African Sahel drought, which began in the late 1960s and lasted until the early 1980s, was the worst drought of the 20th century. The agriculture and livestock of much of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad were devastated, and the countries’ economies suffered.

Sources: earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/225;http://hdr.undp.org/en/climatechange/footprints/; IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policy Makers. In: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 7-22; encarta.msn.com/media_461569860_761572628_-1_1/Sahel_Drought_Devastation.html; http://www.unep.org/dewa/Africa/publications/AEO-1/056.htm

Photograph by

A starving child collapsed on the ground, struggling to get to a food center during a famine in the Sudan in 1993. In the background, a vulture stalks the emaciated child.

The Sahelian drought that began in 1968 was responsible for the

• deaths of between 100,000 and 250,000 people,
• disruption of millions of lives, and
• collapse of the agricultural bases of five countries.

More than 750,000 people in Mali, Niger and Mauritania were totally dependent of food aid in 1974.

LEAN DECADES: Scientists are researching how climate triggered the drought in Africa's Sahel, site of one of the world's most devastating famines, which has caused widespread starvation. AP/FILE

Sources: http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/stricken-child-crawling-towards-a-food-camp-1993.html; http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981431,00.html; http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertification/; http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1120/p21s01-sten.html; http://www.unep.org/dewa/Africa/publications/AEO-1/056.htm .

Aid agencies say the crisis - caused by locusts and a long drought - was foreseen months ago but nothing was done. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4696149.stm

Food for sale at a market in Maradi, Niger, is too expensive for farmers whose incomes plummeted because of the drought. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4696149.stm

An emaciated child weeps at a centre in Niger set up to help some of the 3.6m people said to be facing starvation in the south of the country. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4696149.stm

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England, offers this for our reflection:

“I don’t think it is compatible with a Christian ethic to ignore the environmental degradation we face; it is . . . a moral question for everyone and therefore a present imperative.

. . .[I]f we look at the language of the Bible on this, we come across a situation where people are judged for not responding to warnings.

It is deeply built in; there are choices we can make, each one of us, to change things now and I think what the Bible and the Christian tradition suggest is that those who have that challenge put before them, but not only the challenge, but the evidence for it, and don’t respond, bear a very heavy responsibility before God.”

It is especially important for us to remember what Jesus says in Matthew (25:40,45) we are held accountable for what we have done and what we have failed to do:

• “Truly I tell you, just as you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did to me. . . .

• Truly I tell you, just as you did not do to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did not do to me.”

In addition, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” Luke 12:48

The Conditions of Discipleship

Then Jesus said to his disciples "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct." Matthew 16: 24-27