By Miguel Grinberg
The World Bank (WB), based on figures provided by the Organization of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that 936 million hungry in the world.
Bank economists warned that to feed a world population of 9,000 million people, agricultural output should increase by 70% by 2050.
They added that due to urbanization, desertification, rising sea levels and increasing salinity of the water, many agricultural lands were lost during the next 40 years.
The Bank, headquartered in Washington, held during the 14th and April 15th Open Forum on the Internet, "to assist in finding ways to overcome the food crisis and providing food to 1,000 million hungry people worldwide. "
The international body reported in this forum that" the price Global Food remains volatile after the recent events in the Middle East and Japan, and after the events in the Middle East, oil prices rose 21% during the first three months of 2011. "
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Similarly, a recent FAO study highlighted the need for governments to give full consideration to food security vulnerabilities in the context of the severe climate changes that disrupt the productive capacity of many peoples.
The document stresses that the primary measure to confront this crisis, "is to develop varieties of staple foods are better adapted to weather conditions expected for the future."
FAO warned that the prevailing climate disorders are a threat to food security worldwide, and commented that "rising food prices are causing pain and suffering in the world, and in recent months have pushed extreme poverty to 44 million people. "
Alexander Müller, FAO spokesman said that "the world is only concerned with climate impacts in the short term, without paying attention to climate changes that would place at risk the necessary ecosystems for agriculture, with catastrophic impacts in the 2050 cycle -2100.
Jake Caldwell, director Center of American Progress, an organization specializing in issues of agriculture, trade and energy, said the global food prices have risen for the eighth consecutive month, with record numbers during the month of February.
The specialist said that "without doubt, the rising price of oil is affecting the increased cost of food, given its impact on agricultural inputs, from fertilizer to fuel the machinery used by farmers, producers and carriers. "
In his recent book "World on the Edge" (World on the edge), the celebrated American sociologist Lester R. Brown has evoked an apocalyptic picture that briefly ran the news at the time, to dissolve quickly after.
In the European summer of 2010, record temperatures hit the city of Moscow. At first it seemed just another heat wave, but the hot weather began to stifle the Russians in late June continued fiercely until mid-August of that year.
Consequently, Brown evokes the climate of the western part of Russian territory became so hot and dry every day, unleashing 300 to 400 fires, burned millions of hectares of forest, burned thousands of homes, and mass culture became withered.
In his book, the veteran environmentalist Brown completes the picture by referring to the gradual melting of the polar platforms and high glaciers, which eventually flood large deltas in Asia, where rice is grown today that feeds millions of people.
As early as 2009, John Beddington, the British government's scientific adviser, had declared that the world faced a "perfect storm" of food shortages, reduced water and rising oil prices, plus a boom in climate change and migration mass.
A week later, Jonathon Porritt, former chairman of the Commission on Sustainable Development in the UK, wrote in The Guardian that matched the alarm Beddington, stressing that "the crisis could break out around 2020 and not 2030, as a kind of supreme recession which there would be no recovery."
In turn, two other experts, Shalmali Guttal and Sofia Monsalve, international team of Focus on the Global South, have pointed out that agriculture and fisheries are highly vulnerable to climate change, with negative impacts on many communities.
indicated that "today, 75 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas of developing countries and depend on smallholder family farming, artisanal fisheries and pastoralism."
also stressed that the destruction caused by global warming goes beyond the physical, as the unpredictable and changing weather conditions undermine local knowledge and resilience that have been the basis of community survival.
(From newspaper El Comercial.com.ar)
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