FRAGILE CLIMATE PUTTING FOOD SECURITY AT RISK: UN REPORT

Feeding a hungry planet is growing increasingly difficult as climate change undermines food systems, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said on Wednesday as it appealed for better policies to reach “zero hunger”.

Population growth requires supplies of more nutritious food at affordable prices, but increasing farm output is hard given the “fragility of the natural resource base” since humans have outstripped the planet’s carrying capacity in terms of land, water and climate change, the report said.

About 820 million people are malnourished. The FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute released the report at the outset of a global conference aimed at speeding up efforts to achieve zero hunger around the world. Food security remains tenuous for millions of people. Poverty apart, it’s also endangered by conflicts.

In Yemen, where thousands of civilians have died in airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition, the aid group Save the Children says 85,000 children under five may have died of hunger or disease in the civil war. In Afghanistan, severe drought and conflict have displaced more than 250,000 people, according to UNHCR.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva noted that the number of hungry and malnourished people in the world has risen to levels last seen a decade ago. AP