Impact of Climate Change and Bioenergy on Nutrition
Despite a dozen years of solemn pledges
by global leaders to take action to drastically decrease world hunger -
promises made at the World Food Summit in 1996, the Millennium Summit of
2000 and high-level follow-up meetings held during the course of the present
decade - food security in the world has deteriorated since 1995. This
has contributed to the unacceptably slow pace of cutting the prevalence
of malnutrition: between 1990 and 2005, the prevalence of child underweight
in the developing world only fell from 30 to 23 percent. At that rate,
it will not be possible to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target
of halving the underweight prevalence between 1990 and 2015.
Against this very disappointing background,
three major challenges have arisen that threaten to drastically complicate
efforts to overcome food insecurity and malnutrition: climate change, the
growing use of food crops as a source of fuel (bioenergy) and soaring food
prices. As a result of climate change, agricultural production and the
availability of and access to food are likely to decline drastically in
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. That will increase the risk of hunger
and malnutrition in the two regions that are home to three of every five
undernourished people. Furthermore, climate change is expected to increase
undernutrition through its effects on illnesses, such as diarrhoea and
other infectious diseases. The expected increases in the frequency and
intensity of droughts and floods and their potential impact on crops and
cattle losses are especially worrisome. Drier weather may reduce the transmission
of malaria in some places in Sub-Saharan Africa, while in others, the geographical
range will expand and the transmission season may be changed (Metz et al.,
2007).
For its part, rising bioenergy demand
is likely to affect nutrition through a number of pathways. First, production
of staple food crops, particularly maize, for biofuel markets can have
a negative impact on the availability of grain for direct consumption as
food and for use as feed for livestock to produce meat and milk. As demand
for biofuels is likely to remain high and to be met with food crops for
the foreseeable future, this may lead to the clearing of biodiversity-rich
land for cultivation, including tropical forests and wetlands. Burning
of forests will mean additional emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs)
that cause global warming. Intensified production of energy crops such
as sugarcane, as well as increased cereal production to meet competing
demand for food, feed, fibre and fuel, may mean excessive or poorly managed
use of water and farm chemicals, causing illnesses and deterioration in
environmental health, with negative implications for nutrition.
In addition, bioenergy demand is a significant
driver of recent dramatic increases in food prices; according to an analysis
by IFPRI, it accounted for 30 percent of the escalation in global cereal
prices between 2000 and 2007 and for nearly 40 percent of the increase
in the real global price of maize (Rosegrant, 2008). Increased food prices
are likely to result in calorie deficits, but even more importantly, they
will probably cause micronutrient malnutrition, as low-income people may
reduce their consumption of micronutrient-rich foods (such as animal products,
fruit and vegetables) in an effort to maintain consumption of increasingly
expensive staples. Jean Ziegler, the former Special Rapporteur on the Right
to Food of the UN Human Rights Council, has gone so far as to call the
growing use of food crops to produce biofuels "a crime against humanity"
(Ferrett, 2007).
Nevertheless, strong bioenergy demand
also offers opportunities to smallholder farmers. If the right policies
are in place, they may be able to boost their incomes and take advantage
of technological spillovers to improve food crop production alongside their
energy crops. This has positive implications for both food availability
and access, key inputs for good nutrition.
A human rights-based approach - a conceptual
framework that is normatively based on international human rights standards
and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights -
can provide the tools for balancing many factors, reaching easier consensus
and conducting a more effective and complete analysis, as well as a more
authoritative basis for advocacy and for claims on resources. The human
rights framework also offers the opportunity of embracing environmental
concerns more explicitly and is thus highly relevant to assessing the challenges
of climate change and bioenergy for nutrition.
To explore these issues in greater depth,
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has organized
a special event on Climate Change and Bioenergy: Implications for Nutrition,
Food Safety and Human Health, to be held during the High-Level Conference
on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy,
on 5 June 2008 in Rome. This paper is one of three background documents
prepared for this side event. It was jointly written by teams from FAO
and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The paper
examines the consequences of climate change and rising bioenergy demand
for sustainable development, food security and nutrition throughout the
lifecycle.