By Jayati Ghosh, Social Europe
Climate change is posing immediate threats to humanity, and indeed to all living organisms on the planet, in extreme weather events across the globe. Other environmental stresses include rising water levels or falling water tables, desertification and salination.
Agriculture—especially industrial agriculture requiring chemical inputs—is cause and victim of these changes. Cultivation patterns such as mono-cropping, with heavy reliance on groundwater and chemical inputs, have reduced the food sovereignty of poor countries and generated growing environmental problems.
These, along with the impact of climate change, have affected food security and caused more severe and widespread hunger, so that the number of hungry people in the world started increasing in 2015. That’s the year when zero hunger by 2030 was declared a Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations.
So when the very first UN Food Systems Summit meets this week, its biggest concern should be how to make the necessary changes in our food production, distribution and consumption patterns, to adapt them better to nature and make them more resilient. Obvious, right?