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The run-up to COP28, which begins shortly in Dubai, is a good time to reflect on how climate change is affecting a key element in the life of humanity: its ability to produce food that sustains life.
I am going to focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, although the situation in the region has a profound global impact. Despite representing just over 8% of the world’s population, Latin America and the Caribbean produces 14% of the food exported in the world. In addition, it is home to a very significant amount of natural resources (the largest reserve of arable land in the world and 30% of the world’s biodiversity are just two examples).
All that wealth is in danger. According to a recent report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, in 2019, 22% of the fertile lands in the region had been degraded (in Mexico, more than 70%). According to data from the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), with current trends, corn yields will have been reduced by 25% by 2050.
These events represent a serious problem for regional and global food security. Let us keep in mind that humanity will have to increase its food production by 50%-70% (compared to 2020) if in 2050 it wants to cover the needs of a continuously growing population and that on that date will far exceed 9 billion people.
Solving the dilemma of producing more food with fewer resources is not easy. There are many forces and factors at play. But one thing is clear: science and innovation are called to play a decisive role in the search for the exit from the labyrinth.
That’s how it was in the past.
Between the sixties and eighties of the 20th century, collaboration between national and international agricultural research institutions made possible the rgreen evolution. Investments in research to improve seeds of essential crops such as wheat, corn and rice allowed the growth of agricultural productivity, contributed decisively to the fight against poverty and hunger, saving the lives of millions of people.
We must find a way to make this successful collaboration work again.
The situation in the region is not ideal. According to him Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), “the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean continue to lag behind in the allocation of sufficient resources” to agricultural research. However, the IDB itself estimates that the region “is well prepared to increase its scale of trade and agricultural production”.
It is therefore a time of challenges, but also of opportunities that need vision and audacity to be taken advantage of.
At CGIAR we believe that this vision and that audacity have to take the form of a regional agricultural research and innovation agenda that seeks to multiply regional agricultural production, but incorporating the factors of ecosystem sustainability, preservation and promotion of biodiversity and socioeconomic resilience. of rural populations.
And, unlike the times of the green revolutionwe are now aware of the threat of climate change, the main reason why the progress made in the last century in terms of reducing food insecurity and poverty has been lost and is beginning to turn into setbacks.
This regional agenda must be able to combine the capacities and resources of the private and public sectors (ministries of agriculture and environment) of the region, national research centers (such as EMBRAPA in Brazil) and international (such as CIMMYT, CIP or the Bioveristy-CIAT Alliance, of the CGIAR), regional articulation organizations (such as IICA) and global (such as FAOc), international financiers (such as the IDB, the Banco World, IFAD or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and civil society.
The true paradigm shift that this agenda would bring about would not only resolve the problems of hunger and food insecurity in a region in which, according to the latest data from the United Nationsmore than 43 million people are hungry and almost 248 million experience moderate or severe food insecurity.
It would also allow us to maximize the already decisive contributions of Latin America and the Caribbean to global food production and the preservation of global biodiversity.
Some organizations in the region are already working actively to put together that agenda. Without a doubt, in light of the latest data, we have to deepen and accelerate the conversation.
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