Sustainable irrigation policies threaten food security in Africa and South Asia

11th November 2016 Jack Aldane

Farmers and consumers in South Asia and Africa facing food insecurity as a result of climate change could see conditions worsen in 2050 if sustainable irrigation policies cause food prices to rise for the world’s poorest.

Speaking at a panel session at the COP22 climate change summit in Marrakesh yesterday, Thomas Hertel, executive director of the department of agricultural economies at Purdue University, said policies that reduce unsustainable irrigation by taking areas of irrigated land out of production could inflate the price of food for the poorest in developing countries by decreasing the overall production of crops.

“We saw this in the last food crisis: Who responds most to higher food prices? It’s the poorest households. I didn’t change my rice consumption much when rice prices doubled, but there are many people in Asia who had to reduce theirs, because food is a large share of their income,” Hertel told Development Finance.

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia currently are enduring a food crisis unseen in scale and severity since the mid-eighties, the cause of which is linked to climate. In 2015, people living Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Swaziland were overwhelmed by drought in the aftermath of a disruptive El Nino weather event that broke records on a previous occurrence in 1982. El Nino’s return ravaged innumerable crops and threw millions into a crisis of food security from which the affected populations are still reeling today.

study co-authored by Hertel shows that almost 60 percent of people without enough food live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The study also looks at both recent and long-term effects of climate change on crop yields, which it links to a 20 percent rise in malnutrition across South Asia and Africa.

“Depending on the success of these meetings [at COP22], the picture will look different. It will look different because temperatures will be lower, hopefully,” added Hertel.

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