Photo: Raimundo Pacco / Getty Images
By: EFE
Tuesday, November 19
Study affirms that global warming will increase world poverty levels in the coming years
Poverty and the consequences of climate change are interrelated , because of the 35 countries most threatened by it 27 already experience “extreme food insecurity”, according to the report “Climate Change: A Crisis in the Making ”, Prepared by Action Against Hunger (ACF) and distributed these days to the world political leaders of the COP 26.
This means that 117 millions of people in the world live with a critical level of hunger or worse , or that almost a third of its child population suffers from chronic malnutrition and stunting .
“The great injustice of this is that the people most affected due to climate change they are the least responsible for causing it ”, according to the document, which ensures that the joint emissions of these twenty-seven countries do not exceed 5% of those belonging to the G7 members.
In economic terms the differences are more exaggerated, since the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per inhabitant in these threatened countries is less than 2.5% of the GDP per person of the members of the G7.
As an example, the text compares the cases of the United Kingdom and Madagascar: in the former, the average wealth per person is 80 times greater than in the second, where the worst drought in the last forty years is causing almost half of the population to live in a food crisis and that four out of ten children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
“ Madagascar faces the first famine due to climate change “, alert.
The document warns developed countries that it is “on the way to a 2.7 ° C warming and many of the effects are already fixed”; in fact, it assures that “tipping points” are being reached, such as the melting of permafrost (permanently frozen soil layer) and the Amazon recoil .
If you continue this trend, the report predicts that for 2040 up to 3, 900 millions of people will be exposed to major heat waves, 400 millions will not be able to work and there will be 10 million more deaths per year.
In addition, crop yields will drop by 50%, which will lead to a drop in levels of food available.
However, it adds, “ there is still little understanding by world bodies , health professionals and civil society on the relationship between climate change and nutrition. ”
Crops and “gender roles”
This relationship increases if one attends to the low levels of biodiversity as a consequence of human action.
The homogenization of crops around the world has caused that of the 250, 01 – 250, 000 known edible plant species, rice, corn and wheat represent “almost the 60% of calories and proteins that humans obtain from plants. ”
The threat is that “the production of trig or it could be reduced to 2050 a 49% in South Asia and a 36% in sub-Saharan Africa ”, states the document.
As the main affected, the study cites women and children and recalls that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that the 80% of people displaced by climate are women.
At least the 70% of those living in poverty live in rural areas and depend on small-scale agriculture to survive and, of that percentage, half are women who see how in many cases “traditional gender roles” end up leading to limitations in land ownership and financial security .
Faced with all this, the text proposes greater involvement of the signatory countries of the Paris Agreement of 2015, in addition to greater investment in policies from a support for water, sanitation and hygiene, or training and tools for transformative agricultural adaptation .
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