Heavy rains, hurricanes, droughts, floods. Natural disasters induced by global warming could lead to depletion of agricultural commodities. The shortages caused by this decline in agricultural productivity could be responsible by 2050 for an additional 500,000 deaths worldwide if nothing is done.
Researchers from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) are sounding the alarm at the prestigious The Lancet magazine. Their study, which sounds like a call to awareness, points to the urgency of taking measures to fight against global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchecked, climate change could reduce “by about a third” the expected improvement in the amount of food available by 2050, they warn, in the study taken up by AFP.
In detail, compared to 2010, each individual would see their quantity of food decrease by an average of 3.2% in 2050. The consumption of fruits and vegetables would drop by 4% and that of red meat by 0.7%.
An unprecedented estimate
Low-income and middle-income countries like those in the Pacific and Southeast Asia would be most affected by the impact of climate change on food. For example, India and China could account for three quarters of additional deaths linked to climate change, ie 136,000 and 248,000 deaths respectively, Le Monde points out.
This is the first time that researchers have calculated the risk associated with climate change on feeding people. So far, “a lot of research has looked at food security, but little has focused on the broader health effects of agricultural production,” Marco Springmann, author of the study, told AFP.
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