Friday, August 29, 2014

Good morning,

Thomas Malthus was a 19th century English cleric and scholar who became widely known for his theory that population growth would eventually lead to famine and disease as the number of people out-grew the ability to feed them.

This became known as a Malthusian catastrophe.

In the roughly 200 years since Malthus proposed this theory, the technology of food production and distribution has been able to keep pace with even the massive population explosion of the last 100 years, but if the World Bank is right, even modern technology might not be able to help the world cope with global climate change.

Thanks for reading,

Your Living Green editor

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The world is headed "down a dangerous path" with disruption of the food system possible within a decade as climate change undermines nations' ability to feed themselves, according to a senior World Bank official.

Rising urban populations are contributing to expanded demand for meat, adding to nutrition shortages for the world's poor. Increased greenhouse gas emissions from livestock as well as land clearing will make farming more marginal in many regions, especially in developing nations, said Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group Vice President and special envoy for climate change.

"The challenges from waste to warming, spurred on by a growing population with a rising middle-class hunger for meat, are leading us down a dangerous path," Professor Kyte told the Crawford Fund 2014 annual conference

"Unless we chart a new course, we will find ourselves staring volatility and disruption in the food system in the face, not in 2050, not in 2040, but potentially within the next decade," she said.

Agriculture and land-use change account for about 30 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. Feed quality can be so low in arid parts of Africa, where livestock typically graze on marginal land and crop residues, that every kilo of protein produced can contribute the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide - or 100 times more than in developed nations, Professor Kyte said.

A two-degree warmer world - which may occur by the 2030s on current emissions trajectories - could cut cereal yields by one-fifth globally and by one-half in Africa, she said.