To ensure that small-scale producers participate fully in meeting urban food demand, policy measures are needed that foster the adoption of environmentally sustainable approaches.
After steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger is on the rise again, affecting 815 million people in 2016. Exacerbated by climate-related shocks, increasing conflicts have been a key driver of severe food crisis and recently re-emerged famines.
The most impacted continent by climate change and weather induced disasters – Africa, which contributes only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – is now experiencing back-to-back droughts that have left at least 8.5 million people in Ethiopia in dire need of food aid. At the same time, severe drought has deepened in Somalia with the risk of famine looming for about half the population.
Imagine a world with as many as one billion people facing harsh climate change impacts such as devastating droughts or floods, extreme weather, destruction of land and natural resources, and the consequences of famine and starvation. The speed with which climate change has been taking place might lead to such a scenario by 2050. If so, 1 in 9 human beings would be on the move by then.
They are more than 370 million self-identified peoples in some 70 countries around the world. In Latin America alone there are over 400 groups, each with a distinct language and culture, though the biggest concentration is in Asia and the Pacific– with an estimated 70 per cent. And their traditional lands guard over 80 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019