Up to 80mn more people at risk of hunger by 2050: UN assessment

PARIS: Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades, according to a draft UN assessment that lays bare the dire human health consequences of a warming planet.

After a pandemic year that saw the world turned on its head, a forthcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), seen exclusively by AFP, offers a distressing vision of the decades to come: malnutrition, water insecurity, pestilence.

It warns of the cascading impacts that simultaneous crop failures, falling nutritional value of basic foods, and soaring inflation are likely to have on the world’s most vulnerable people.

Depending on how well humans get a handle on carbon emissions and rising temperatures, a child born today could be confronted with multiple climate-related health threats before turning 30, the report shows.

The IPCC’s 4,000-page draft report, scheduled for release next year, offers the most comprehensive rundown to date of the impacts of climate change on our planet and our species.

It predicts that up to 80 million more people than today will be at risk of hunger by 2050. “The basis for our health is sustained by three pillars: the food we eat, access to water, and shelter,” Maria Neira, director of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization, said.

Even as rising temperatures affect the availability of key crops, nutritional value is declining, according to the report. The protein content of rice, wheat, barley and potatoes, for example, is expected to fall by between six and 14%, putting close to 150 million more people at risk of protein deficiency.

As climate change reduces yields, and demand for biofuel crops and CO2-absorbing forests grows, food prices are projected to rise as much as a third at 2050, bringing an additional 183 million people in low-income households to the edge of chronic hunger.