Posted on December 11, 2007 in Latest News
Agriculture will suffer considerable economic losses due to global in the next 13 years.
Significantly, even technology may not help to prevent these losses entirety.
The worst affected will be the developing countries of South Asia, including India and Africa where the crop outputs will tumble down much deeper than in the developed countries.
This has been revealed in the bi-annual overview of the world food situation released last week by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
It reckons that the agriculture output in developing countries is likely to decline by monstrous 20 per cent by 2020, against only 6 per cent fall in industrialized nations. The world agricultural gross domestic product as a whole will decrease by 16 per cent by 2020 due to global warming.
Indicating that the global food grain prices, too, may be affected by the climate change, the report points out that more than 3 degrees Celsius increase in temperature can generate up to 40 per cent rise in food prices. This will put food and nutritional security at risk, particularly for the poor people.
Besides, the unpleasant impact of the climate change risks on food production will compound the challenge of meeting global food demand. Therefore, food import dependence is estimated to rise in many regions of the developing world, the report adds.
It also maintains that the crop yield losses are about to happen due to expected increased risk of droughts and floods as a result of rise in temperature.
Though, in the long run (between 1990 and 2080), the cumulative impact on cereals may be small — a decrease in production of less than 1 per cent — but large reductions of up to 22 per cent are likely in South Asia, which includes India. In contrast, developed countries and Latin America are expected to experience supreme gains.
The need to guard farmers against the threat of global warming will boost the demand for ground-breaking insurance mechanisms, such as:
This is a new area for the institutions to explore, the report indicates.
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