Rome: Climate change could sink up to 122
million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, mostly in South Asia
and Africa, where small farmers would see their output plummet, the UN
warned Monday.
In an annual report, the UN’s Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned that a worst-case scenario
involving high-impact climate change would pound the communities that
rely on agriculture for their livelihood.
It called for a
“broad-based transformation of food and agricultural systems” to adapt
to a warmer world, and doubling down on support for the world’s 475
million smallholder farm families.
“There is no doubt climate change affects food security,” FAO chief Jose Graziano da Silva said.
“What
climate change does is to bring back uncertainties from the time we
were all hunter gatherers. We cannot assure any more that we will have
the harvest we have planted.”
Farming is both a driver of climate
change, responsible for some 21 percent of global greenhouse gas
production, and a victim, with crops adversely affected by drought and
floods.
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