'Heat stress' to thwart global food supply

Canberra: Climate change is likely to first hurt developing countries, which could become almost too hot to successfully grow essential crops, international experts told a conference Wednesday.

World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Katherine Sierra told a scientific conference in Canberra that "heat stress" from global warming posed a serious threat to food supply.

Increasingly crops are coming under stress due to rising temperatures/ Photo credit: Stanford News Service

"Rising temperatures will create heat stress in some species of livestock, less stable crop yields and lead to more frequent outbreaks of pests and disease," said Sierra, who also chairs the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

"Developing countries are likely to suffer the earliest, and the most, from climate change."

Sierra said these problems were being compounded by "stagnating" support for agricultural research in the past decade, the consequences of which had become dramatically evident in recent months with a global food prices crisis.

Destructive results on crops

Trevor Nicholls, chief executive of CAB International, a group involving 45 governments, which focuses on agricultural and environmental research, said extreme weather events had already become more intense and more frequent with increasingly destructive results on crops.

"Although these extreme events have very visible destructive impacts, climate change will also have much more subtle impacts but much more drastic impacts on crops," Nicholls told the conference.

He said while crop yields could benefit in the short term from rising temperatures, they are predicted to shrink significantly with a 5 degree Celsius increase, which the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts could happen by 2050.

"Most disturbingly, the biggest increases are predicted to impact on the tropics where crops such as maize and rice are already near the upper limits of their optimum temperatures for growth," Nicholls said.

Sub-Saharan Africa

He said climate change was likely to be most extreme in the tropical regions of Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa where countries were already struggling to feed growing populations.

Climate change was also influencing the range and prevalence of crop diseases and pests, creating a "continuing biological arms race" for farmers, he said.

Bananas and plantain, staples across India, Africa and the Caribbean, are particularly susceptible to pests and diseases.

The fungal disease black sigatoka originated in Fiji but is now appearing throughout the tropics, Nicholls said.

Banana weevil also has become widespread, and banana bacterial wilt has spread from Africa, he said.

Billions needed for climate change mitigation

At another conference at Accra, Ghana, the World Bank has said a total of 170 billion US dollars was required between now and 2030 to enable developing countries mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change, according to the official News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday.

Eduardo Dopazo, World Bank fund manager of Carbon Finance Unit told newsmen at the sidelines of the Accra Talks that the private sector was expected to account for 80% of the sum.

He said the huge financing gap for developing countries to contain the impact of climate change is beyond current funding under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

According to him, developing countries will also require 85 billion US dollars to provide electricity that would cover 100% of their citizens by 2030, and that an additional 35 billion US dollars per year is required to ensure that the electricity utilises green energy technologies.

Dopazo said within the same period, developing countries would require massive technology transfer, capacity building and technical assistant to manage whatever green technology is adopted.

He said the situation would require that developing countries take commitments under the post Kyoto protocol treaty expected to be ratified at Copenhagen in 2009.

World’s first legal research centre

A study center billed as the world 's first legal research center into climate change will be opened in Canberra, Australia, on Friday, a statement from the Australian National University said on Wednesday.

Subjects on the researchers' agenda include the international legal regime for tackling climate change post-Kyoto, climate litigation, encouraging renewable energy, and the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from transport and forestry.

The center is located in the Australian National University (ANU). The ANU Center for Climate Law and Policy has been established in response to a growing awareness of the legal dimensions of global warming, the statement said.

The center will offer postgraduate courses in climate law and policy, as well as conduct research.