Food Fight: Climate Change and the Coming International Food Crisis

[marmar]

from the Civil Eats blog:



Food Fight: Climate Change and the Coming International Food Crisis
February 11th, 2011 By Cary Fowler


Every year, in a tradition dating to the 1940s, thousands gather in the Spanish town of Buñol for La Tomatina, a giant “food fight,” in which participants gleefully pelt each other with tomatoes and get very, very messy. There’s blood in the streets, but it belongs to the tomatoes. However, according to a study in the prestigious journal, Science, and two in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), we are about to experience food fights of a very different, more deadly type.

One group of researchers examined the historic links between climate change and incidents of war in Europe and Asia. Going back a millennium, they uncovered a “strikingly high” correlation between temperature variation and the number of wars. Their explanation? Climate change has “significant direct effects on land-carrying capacity” which in turn “affects the food supply per capita.” In their words, “the paths to those disasters operated through a reduction in agricultural production.”

As one might guess, these researchers, working from institutions in China, the U.S., and U.K., found that the highest correlation between climate change and war occurred in arid regions, precisely the areas where food supplies were must vulnerable to climatic perturbations.

Another group of researchers, based at Berkeley, NYU, Harvard and Stanford, focused on Africa. They too found “strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature…with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war.” What might we then expect to happen in Africa in the future? The researchers point out that, “When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 54% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars.” ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2011/02/11/food-fight/

[Overseas]

1. Sad K&R. //nt