Peak Oil is You

Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)

Page added on December 7, 2015

Will Climate Change Break the Global Food System?

Extreme weather events scuttling harvests. Skyrocketing food prices causing famine for millions and driving multitudes into poverty. Governments toppling – again – in Pakistan and Ukraine. Massive floods driving millions of refugees from their homes in Bangladesh and putting pressure on neighboring India. Droughts devastating harvests in traditional bread baskets like the U.S. and Brazil. The E.U., in a panicked move, suspending its environmental rules for agriculture and instituting a tax on meat. The world’s top greenhouse gas emitters ultimately banding together to raise a global carbon tax.

The events described above are not the real world, but they could be. They were part of what transpired at Food Chain Reaction a few weeks ago, a high-level crisis simulation in Washington, DC that brought together 65 international leaders to explore how climate change may strain the world’s food system from 2020 to 2030.

What the simulation taught us, is that policymakers attending this week’s U.N. climate summit in Paris cannot afford to neglect food security. The world’s population is on a path to 9.5 billion by mid-century. That means we will have to grow up to 70 percent more food. To make matters more complicated, we’ll have to do so in a changing climate that alters the very way we grow our crops. We must figure out how we can make that happen within the limits of the Earth’s natural resources. We’ve talked long enough. It is time to decide on a course of action that will actually improve the situation.

Will climate change by itself break the global food system in the next 10 to 15 years? That’s unlikely. Prices right now are low and relatively stable. The system has enough resilience to absorb shocks. But add population growth, failed states, armed conflict and political instability to the mix and the picture starts looking a lot more combustible. Places that are already grappling with other strains may well be driven over the edge by climate-induced food price spikes.

That is not some far-fetched scenario. The Arab Spring of 2011 came on the heels of record food prices caused in large part by extreme weather events as far afield as Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Argentina. The protesters who poured into the streets of Arab capitals not only demanded political reform, but also the proverbial ‘bread’.

The current violence in Syria was preceded by a severe drought and widespread crop failures in that country, exacerbated by failed agricultural policies. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers fled to the cities. Mass protests led to civil war and the chaos we see today, most notably with a continued refugee crisis and the savagery of ISIS, that has now reached the streets of Paris.

To be sure, food and climate were far from the only causes here. But many smart observers have pointed out that they had an impact and added to an already volatile mix. It would be unwise to ignore these analyses.

Food security – ensuring enough safe, affordable and nutritious food for all – is often under-appreciated in climate discussions. It shouldn’t be. What we’ve already seen in recent years should serve as a warning. Increased volatility is the new normal. It’s not a matter of whether some hotspots will erupt, but when. It’s up to all of us to be ready to respond. Having enough food for regions vulnerable to climate-induced calamities is job number one.

As the Food Chain Reaction exercise showed, there are constructive ways forward. The players, an international cast of former cabinet secretaries, parliamentarians, high-level officials from national governments and international institutions, academics, business executives and think tank types, came up with a host of cooperative solutions. Among them: building cross-border information hubs and early warning systems, multilateral water management schemes, initiatives to curb food waste, technology exchanges and – most eye-catching – a global carbon tax.

All of these ideas merit discussion. Some may work, some may not. But what’s most important is that the simulation highlighted the prospects for cooperation. Faced with mounting environmental challenges and international tensions, the players chose long-term thinking and multilateralism over closed borders and the short-term national advantage.

Secluded inside a Washington conference center, far from the searing eye of the media and armed with high-minded intentions, that is, of course, a lot easier than in the real world, where the game is often perceived as zero-sum and national electorates stand ready to punish leniency. But it also shows what can be achieved if actors come together, determined to solve big problems.

That’s why organizations like Cargill, a multinational agricultural business, and WWF, a global conservation organization, are joining hands to delve into these defining issues. In different times we would have been seen as strange bedfellows, but the stakes are high and the clock is ticking. The longer we go without action, the deeper the problem will get and the more disruptive the measures we’ll ultimately need to take. We can meet the challenges ahead, but we must get started now, so we can avoid frantic steps at the eleventh hour.

This post is part of a “Climate Justice” series produced by The Huffington Post, in conjunction with the U.N.’s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. The series will put a spotlight on populations who are adversely affected by climate change. To view the entire series, visit here.

HuffPost

43 Comments on "Will Climate Change Break the Global Food System?"

Hello on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 7:25 am

Sometimes one has to wonder what life is all about.

Is there a reason for it?
Is it just a fluke?
Is it a plan towards something grander?

Kenz300 on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 7:51 am

China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..

If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.

Climate Change, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.

Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable…

Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm

JN2 on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 7:59 am

>> Extreme weather events scuttling harvests. Skyrocketing food prices causing famine for millions and driving multitudes into poverty. <<

Really? Maybe in the future, but right now food is at its lowest price for 5 years. http://bit.ly/1hyHzu5

joe on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 8:06 am

Most people even ‘doomers’ and ‘preppers’ will never realise to what extent their lives are managed and their feeble efforts only highlights their acute awareness of how weak they really are. To understand one has to look around the globe to people actually live the lives preppers seem to be hoping for. Say in Afghanistan where a farmer must sell his daughter to get enough dowry to see his son has enough to continue the family plot of land. Hmm, give me a social safety net any day ladies.

Davy on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 8:09 am

Our current food chain is an industrialized globalized system. It is dependent on fossil fuels and fossil fuel supported resources either directly or indirectly. It is a globalized economic system which operates by global trade, economies of scale, and liquidity from systematic confidence. Vast monocultures dominate the grain, fruit, and the vegetable side. Vast industrialized animal production efforts dominate the meat side.

Subsistence farming while important is not significant in the global arena. Increasingly the subsistence farmers are being driven off their lands into the city. In those areas where virgin land still remains they are pushed off their land into virgin land clearing exacerbating climate change. In the developed world permaculture effort while important are just a fringe niche affair when one considers the size of the requirements for our global food chain to deliver a wide variety of food goods to a growing global population. This population is growing with consumption and population.

There is little chance of this continuing regardless of any kind of breakthroughs. The physics are against it. There are too many obstacles to growth. Climate change will bring the food chain under pressure. Unstable climate in not supportive of good harvests.

Peak oil dynamics will slam agriculture at its heart. We have a mechanized agricultural system that delivers vast monocultures to market. A significant amount of that production is for export. We need production fuel and distribution fuel. In so many cases also food processing fuel.

The economic system is just as important as these other variables at least in consideration of this being a global system. Locally we can barter and do subsistence farming but globally we must have a healthy functioning economic system to make all these economies of scale operate properly. This system is tough on some levels as long as it is not compressed too far with any of the three variables of oil, climate, and economy.

We also have water stress and soil erosion issues but they are longer term events. I might add longer term events that are now becoming more and more important. This is not something the academics can wish or hope away with their excel goal seek numbers. We are facing a brick wall of limits to our food chain. All we need is 2 bad harvest to bring the world to its knees. Really one bad harvest could disrupt the world economy beyond repair.

ghung on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 8:47 am

joe said; “Most people even ‘doomers’ and ‘preppers’ will never realise to what extent their lives are managed and their feeble efforts only highlights their acute awareness of how weak they really are.”

The righteous ‘prepper’ knows these things, joe; is a problem solver and is taking steps to reduce reliance on systems that are failing. Avoiding traps; debt, reliance on long complex supply chains; while building some resilience into their lives. Promoting simple, local “social safety nets”, at least as a backup to utter dependence on top-down complex safety nets seems like a good idea these days. It’s all about having more, better tools in ones tool kit.

Rodster on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 8:50 am

“The current violence in Syria was preceded by a severe drought and widespread crop failures in that country, exacerbated by failed agricultural policies. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers fled to the cities. Mass protests led to civil war and the chaos we see today, most notably with a continued refugee crisis and the savagery of ISIS, that has now reached the streets of Paris.”

I call BULLSHIT.

Global warming, climate change, whatever had and has NOTHING to do with Syria. Syria’s problems were brought about by the US and it’s Allies, destabilizing the region. They brought death, destruction, violence and chaos to the MENA. They toppled and destabilized Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria and they continue spreading their love to other parts of the region including Russia and Afghanistan. No one in their right mind wants to live in a warzone with bombs going off and people being beheaded.

Next we’ll find out global warming and climate change is the reason the Chinese are down to 40% fresh drinking water when in fact the Chinese ruined and destroyed 60% of their fresh water supply due to its mfg base.

Sometimes we do it to ourselves. Blaming something else for our fuckups is a deservice to the real underlying problems. It’s like crying “wolf” or “rape”. Keep doing it and people will stop listening.

onlooker on Mon, 7th Dec 2015 9:02 am

I would say that the overpopulated countries that are not food self sufficient are the ones most vulnerable to disruptions in the global food system. Witness in 2008 how events then, bought about corresponding food riots as food prices went way up. Of course also poor people are the most vulnerable in so much as food is like most things commodity. So to those who point out the vulnerabilities of rich countries reliant on oil, their is leeway and flexibility in the superfluous use of oil, not so for the basic necessity of food. Most countries are not food self-sufficient nowdays. Few countries export substantial food stuff