Search For Crops That Can Survive Global Warming
David Adam
Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute, said: "The impacts of climate change on agriculture will add significantly to the development challenges of reducing poverty and ensuring sufficient food production for a growing population. The livelihoods of billions of people will be severely challenged as crop yields decline."
The Stern review of the economics of climate change said a 2-3C rise in average global temperatures would put 30-200 million more people at risk of hunger. Once temperatures rise 3C, 250-550 million extra people will be at risk, more than half in Africa and western Asia. At 4C and above, global food production is likely to be hit hard. The British scientist James Lovelock warned last week that such food shortages could trigger a growing number of conflicts this century between nations desperate to find fertile land to feed their people.
The initiative will be launched in Washington DC by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an umbrella group for 15 agricultural research centres across the world. Louis Verchot, a climate change expert with the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, said the research must tackle the twin problems that photosynthesis and the ability of flowering plants to reproduce start to shut down as temperatures rise.