A withered sunflower crop in Central Russia during the 2010 heatwave. Photo © climatesignals.org via peopleandplanet.net31 March 2011, Rome (FAO) – “Potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes are expected to increasingly hit the developing world in the future and action is needed now to prepare for those anticipated impacts, FAO warned today in a submission [pdf] to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Currently the world is focused on dealing with shorter-term climate impacts caused mainly by extreme weather events,” said Alexander Müller, FAO Assistant-Director General for Natural Resources. “This is absolutely necessary,” he continued. “But ‘slow-onset’ impacts are expected to bring deeper changes that challenge the ecosystem services needed for agriculture, with potentially disastrous impacts on food security during the period from 2050 to 2100. Coping with long-term changes after the fact doesn’t make much sense. We must already today support agriculture in the developing world to become more resilient,” he said. “While these changes occur gradually and take time to manifest themselves, we can’t simply ignore them,” said Müller, adding: “We need to move beyond our usual tendency to take a short-term perspective and instead invest in the long-term.” …

Potentially catastrophic climate impacts on food production over the long-term