Proteting Farmers from the threat of Climate Change

Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
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Climate change is putting our food systems at risk. It threatens farmers around the world, particularly in communities with fragile and vulnerable ecosystems – drylands, coasts, and mountains – as higher temperatures and extreme climate events reduce yields and make crops unviable. These are often the communities that most depend on agriculture for survival.

By the end of this century, the Earth’s temperature will somewhere between 1.8°C and 4°C. When that happens, the average sea levels will rise dramatically. The fifteen plant species and eight animal species that we depend on for 90 per cent of our food energy will not be suited to the new temperatures, drought, water scarcity, or flooding. As a result, food availability will decline, particularly for the world’s poorest citizens. Rice, for inastance, feeds half the world’s population, but yields will decline by at least 20 per cent over the next three decades. India’s prime wheat-growing land will shrink by 51 per cent by 2050 due to hotter, drier weather.

Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
Right now, plant varieties that could provide food in new climatic conditions - securing our food future - are being lost at a dizzying pace. The world’s reliance on an industrial agriculture approach has cost us too many of our plant varieties and animal breeds. In Mexico, 80 per cent of maize varieties grown in the 1930s are gone. China has lost 9,000 of 10,000 wheat varieties that were grown a century ago. In the United States, 90 per cent of fruit and vegetable varieties have disappeared in the last century.

This loss has weakened our ability to adapt to climate change. We’ll need to use varieties that are more resilient to warmer weather and extreme climate events. Most of this diversity is in the global South, where more than a billion small scale farmers, fishers, and livestock keepers are struggling to adapt our food systems to a climate that is already changing.

Invaluable genetic resources from the global south have rescued the modern food system before. Genes from Ethiopian farmers’ varieties were used to save the North American wheat crop from in the last century. U.S. wheat and barley farmers lost US$3B between 1990 and 2002 due to a scab disease, and the only defense was found in a Chinese variety.

Genetic diversity created by small-scale farmers is the planet’s most vital resource for developing crops and livestock that can survive hotter, drier conditions and resist pests and diseases. These farmers must be recognized and supported as the most valuable soldiers in the battle against climate chaos.

Take Action
It’s easy to get down about Climate Change. But you can still take action to reduce climate change and help others cope! Here are some basic steps you can take:

• Reduce your emissions footprint: Simply reduce your use of fuels and products whose production causes carbon emissions. While governments debate endlessly the best way to reduce production and consumption, you can take the initiative – with simple steps like reducing car use, not overheating the house, avoiding taking airplanes, reducing consumption of things made with petrochemicals, buying organic foods, and reducing consumption of meat products, which involve large-scale production of animal feed and encourage deforestation.
• Tell the government you want policy change: Send an email, write a letter, or call your MP and tell them you want an ambitious post-Kyoto 2012 international climate change regime. Be sure to note that you view this kind of mitigation effort as essential to reducing poverty around the world, and that stopping climate change is necessary for both sustainable development and the well-being of future generations here in Canada. Encourage your government to adopt a carbon tax program like the government of BC has done – or at least stop obstructing international and provincial moves to deal with this crisis. You can contact Prime Minister Harper via Avaaz.org’s online campaign.
• Get sustainable at work: Approach your boss and ask what your business is doing to help stop climate change. From offsetting emissions from flights and manufacturing to reducing packaging, businesses offer real opportunities for reducing environmental harm in our society.
• Help the vulnerable adapt:

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Research has shown that some of our planet’s poorest and most vulnerable people, overwhelmingly in Africa and South Asia, are on the front lines of dealing with the impacts of climate change.

They are the least responsible for creating this problem, but they’re the ones who have to deal with hunger when crops fail.

USC Canada is helping them develop sustainable, resilient agricultural systems that will allow them to adapt to climate change and safeguard the right to food. Make sure that climate change doesn’t create a human development crisis.

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