The world urgently needs to focus on maintaining and boosting the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, which face growing threats from human activity, to help ensure food security for a growing population, a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said.
The report is titled 'Avoiding future famines: strengthening the ecological basis of food security through sustainable food systems'. It was produced in collaboration with other international organisations, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
It finds that food security must embrace the environmental services nature provides if the world is to feed its 7 billion inhabitants, a population predicted to climb to over 9 billion by 2050. "Inefficiencies along the food delivery chain further complicate the challenge; an estimated one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to 1.3 billion tons per year. The debate on food security so far has largely revolved around availability, access, utilisation and stability as the four pillars of food security, barely touching on the resource base and ecosystem services that prop up the whole food system.
The report aims to increase the focus on these crucial environmental aspects, which are being undermined by overfishing, unsustainable water use and other human activities. It also frames the debate in the context of the green economy, calling for food production and consumption practices that ensure productivity without undermining ecosystem services.
While pointing out the current challenges, the report also offers clear ways forward to shore up the ecological foundations and improving food security. It issues recommendations on the redesign of sustainable agriculture systems, dietary changes and storage systems and new food standards to reduce waste. According to the report, while agriculture provides 90 percent of the world's total caloric intake, and world fisheries provide the other 10 percent, these life-supporting industries face many threats. Population growth, income growth and changing lifestyles/diets linked to urbanisation exacerbate all of these factors.
The report identified the several threats to these systems, including competition for water, impact of conventional agricultural practices on ecosystem, land degradation due to inappropriate use of traditional agricultural practices, deforestation and pesticide contamination of lands, and climate change. Its impacts will compound the preceding threats to agriculture by shifting crop-growing zones and bringing an eventual decrease in crop productivity, it added.
It also observed that over-fishing is the foremost force in undermining the ecological basis of fisheries. Moreover, it also showed concern over loss of coastal habitat (such as coral reefs and mangrove forests), bottom trawling, dredging and destructive fishing practices (which lead to habitat loss or modification), degradation of coastal water quality and climate change (which will lead to warmer water and a more acidified ocean). The IPCC projects a global loss of 18 percent of the world's coral reefs in the next three decades, shrinking a crucial fish habitat. Development of infrastructure (such as dam construction) in river catchment areas were destroying or modifying inland fishery habitats.
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