Latin America’s climate: a threat to global food security
The latest report from the World Meteorological Organization says that rising temperatures, droughts, floods and other consequences of climate change have destroyed crops in Latin America in 2021, leaving thousands of people vulnerable to food insecurity and affecting global markets. Global warming is accelerating in Latin America and the Caribbean, with temperatures in the region increasing by 0.2°C per decade on average between 1991 and 2021, compared to a rise of 0.1°C per decade between 1961 and 1990, according to the second State of the Climate Report. In Latin America and the Caribbean issued by the World Meteorological Organization on Friday (July 22).
“It is unfortunate that droughts, heat waves, cold waves, tropical cyclones and floods have led to loss of life, massive losses in crop production and infrastructure, and displacement of people,” FAO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
The continued degradation of the Amazon rainforest remains a major concern for the region and for the global climate as well, given the forest’s role in the carbon cycle.” The planet has already warmed 1.1°C above the pre-industrial average and concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase.
And developing countries, including a large number of South American countries, which suffer the most from the consequences of global warming caused by carbon emissions, which are caused mainly by developed countries.
Research by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which was cited by the World Meteorological Organization report, indicated that lower rainfall in major agricultural producing countries such as Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay led to a 2.6% decline in the 2021 South American cereal crop. .
The shift in precipitation patterns was partly related to the climatic “La Nina” phenomenon, while it is very likely that climate change has a role in at least some of the extreme weather events in the region. The massive drought continued in Chile for the 13th consecutive year in 2021, making it the longest drought in the region in at least 1,000 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that there is moderate conviction that the drought in central Chile can be attributed to human influence. In the Paraná-La Plata River Basin, which flows through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, the worst drought since 1944 is affecting agricultural production, reducing soybean and corn production and affecting global food markets.
The export of grain, 80% of which is produced along the Paraná River, was also affected as the water level fell to its lowest level since the 1940s.
Even greater climate impacts are set to occur in the region, according to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with changing rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and melting Andean glaciers, and the two large oceans that surround the continent becoming warmer and more acidic; Pacific and Atlantic.
The report stated that the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased twice compared to the average for the period from 2009 to 2018 and reached its highest levels since 2009. The rainforests were also exposed to fires, with 75,000 fires monitored in 2021, most of them related to human activity. The Brazilian Amazon was also hit by floods in 2021, affecting more than 450,000 people and causing losses of about $40 million. In the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, the floods caused an estimated $3.1 billion in losses and affected more than 800,000 people.
“The exacerbation of climate change and the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have not only affected the region’s biodiversity, but also impeded the progress of decades of combating poverty and food insecurity and reducing inequality in the region.
* Journalist specializing in climate change.
Published by special arrangement with the Washington Post and Bloomberg News Service.
#Latin #Americas #climate #threat #global #food #security