Climate change and world hunger. These are undeniably two of the largest problems the world is facing, but they’re linked in a way that might surprise you. Climate change kills an average of 400,000 people per year, mostly due to climate-related hunger and disease, and this number is still projected to increase.
Hunger is primarily caused by poverty, and, according to the Mercy Corps, 75% of poor people on Earth “rely solely on agriculture and natural resources to survive.” For the everyday citizen of the United States, climate change is a faraway problem, with predicted effects that sound like problems out of a distant world. We hear about how global temperatures are rising from the comfort of our air-conditioned homes, but for many, the effects of climate change are a matter of life and death.
Weather-related natural disasters have more than tripled since the 1960s according to the World Health Organization. The world has faced increasing numbers of hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heatwaves, and the increase in variable rainfall patterns has affected the supply of fresh water as well -- problems that only exacerbate the situation of the poor who rely on agriculture to survive.
Farmers are forced to toil under increasingly hot conditions, with droughts starving out crops and drying up rivers and floods wiping away crops and contaminating water supplies. Climate change has caused huge decreases in yield of crops, and it is projected that this problem will only grow worse.
The graph above shows projected changes in crop yields due to climate change, with cool colors indicating an increase in yield, and warm colors indicating a decrease. Already we can see a decrease in yield, and this problem is projected to grow far more severe.
Combining our world’s growing population with the quickly decreasing rate of crop yield only points to a hungrier, sicker future ahead of us. As easy as it is to ignore climate change, we need to take action to protect not only our planet, but our people.
Sources:
https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/hotter-planet-hungrier-world
https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
