Famine risks to rise

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 22

Famine risks to rise

An Associated Press report from Vienna.

Warmer world temperatures caused by the greenhouse effect could cause agricultural disasters in some parts of the world and boost harvests in others, according to an international survey. The climatic changes could also increase the risk of famine in Asia, Africa and South America, it says. The report was produced by an international team of scientists for the United Nations Environment Programme and the Austrian-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. It foresees a doubling of carbon dioxide in

the atmosphere by the year 2100. “There could be geographical shifts in growing patterns,” says the British project leader, Martin Parry. “It will also certainly increase the frequency and magnitude of severe shocks to agriculture from major floods, persistent droughts, soil erosion, forest fires and crop pests.”

Parry says the report’s case studies, made in 11 regions of the world, could not be seen as predictions since a number of variables, such as rainfall, could not be forecast. Crop production in northern and southern regions of the Soviet Union could benefit from the climatic changes, the report says, provided agricultural poli-

cies are altered to favour crops that thrive under warmer conditions. But in semi-arid areas, such as the wheat belt of the United States and Canada, the rise in temperature could exacerbate drought and wind erosion, reducing the area to a landscape similar to the “dust bowl” of the 19305. Northern countries such as Iceland and Finland, which are not major agricultural export-

ers, could profit from the warmer climate in terms of larger harvests, but this would also lead to acute food surpluses. “This new bounty, from increased crop yields and the expansion of cultivable land, will exacerbate current problems with expensive agricultural policies that subsidise farm production and exports of surplus products,” Parry says. A warmer climate could also affect the rice growing regions of northern Japan, resulting in a massive rice surplus in a country where the crop is already subsidised.