Environmental Issues and Food Insecurity in Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
Climate Change: Threat to Agricultural System and Food Security in Africa
Global Scientific Research in Environmental Science, 2021
Climate change is unequivocal and nothing hides itself from its negative repercussions. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa will continue to be impacted due to their low adaptive capacities and geographic position. Unfavourable weather trends coupled with climatic variations will have adverse effect on agricultural sector which is the main source of livelihood to rural households on the continent. This literature review article assessed the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security in Africa. The lives of several in Africa cling on agriculture as it supports majority of the population. However, since over 90 percent of agriculture system in the region depends on rainfall, livelihoods of the citizens on the continent have been hit hard due to rising temperature, erratic rainfall and extreme weather conditions.
Review of Impact of Climate Change on Food Security in Africa
Food Security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. African continent is found to be the most susceptible and vulnerable places to climate change impacts, which is marked as the most food insecure region in the world, because of its reliance on climate sensitive and vulnerable economic sectors (rain fed agriculture) and its lower financial, technical, and technological capacity to adapt the climate change risks, and climate change is considered as posing the greatest threat to agriculture production and food security in the 21st century, particularly, in many of the poor, agriculture-based countries of Africa. Climate change affects food security in various ways: through impacting on all four components of food security (availability, accessibility, affordability, utilization and nutritional value and food system stability), through impacting on crop production and yield, through impacting on water availability, through impacting on fisheries production, through impacting on agricultural pests (weed, insect and disease pests), and through impacting on livestock production. African continent specially, Sub-Saharan African region is found to be the most drought prone area in the World. The severity of climate change extreme events/or drought induced food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa is emphasized. In Africa, food insecurity and malnutrition became chronic induced by repeatedly occurring drought. Due to climate change extreme event/or drought drive food crises/hunger many Africans were badly affected For instance, more than 100 million people were affected by drought driven hunger in Africa. So, Africa especially, Sub-Saharan Africa is marked as the most food insecure region in the world, and has the highest proportion of food insecure people, with an estimated regional average of 26.8% of the population undernourished and this rates could be over 50%. Moreover, the risk of hunger will increase by 10-20% in 2050. Similarly, in Africa, due to climate change impacts, the number of malnourished children is projected to be increased in 2030 and 2050 from the baseline (33 million) to 42 million and 52 million respectively. Thus, climate change impacts on food security has to be taken as key issue and impact reduction strategy options have to be implemented.
Food security and natural resources management: Overview on climate change implications for Africa
In Africa, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change because of its seasonality, the lack of resilience to disaster of the peasant farmers, the presence of major non-climatic stressors that influence sensitivity to changes in climatic conditions, and endemic poverty. This paper examines the implications of climate change for food security and natural resource management in Africa. It presents information on the current state of knowledge on the vulnerability, impact and adaptation of African agriculture and natural resources to climate change. Though the impacts of climate change on smallholder and subsistence farmers will be locally specific and hard to predict, research has shown clear crop physiological and agronomic evidence that climate change will significantly reduce productivity in some cases while increasing productivity in others. An increase in the frequency and severity of flooding will result in the loss of agricultural land and yield. Changes ...
Climate Change and African Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities
2020
Climate change impacts on the productivity of the agricultural sector through processes such as weather uncertainty, environmental changes and pest or disease distributions, land degradation, land grabbing, heat and migration. A number of solutions can be tested and scaled to reduce climate change impacts. These solutions include diversification of livelihood options, early warning systems and use of ICT to provide climate services, smart and sustainable crop and livestock management strategies/practices, alternative renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, preventive measures that reduce the chances of developing heat stress, and overarching regional adaptation governance strategy to tackle borderless climate risk.
Climate Change: Causes and Effects on African Agriculture
Climate is the primary important factor for agricultural production. Science has made enormous efforts in understanding climate change and its causes, and is helping to develop a strong understanding of the current and potential impacts that will affect people today and in the future. This understanding is crucial because it allows decision makers to place climate change in the context of other large challenges facing Africa and the world. This study reviews the causes and effects of climate change on agriculture in Africa. The main interests are findings concerning the present and potential impacts to agricultural systems, role of human adaptations in responding to climate change, and potential changes in patterns of food production.
Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture across Africa
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, 2017
Confidence in the projected impacts of climate change on agricultural systems has increased substantially since the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In Africa, much work has gone into downscaling global climate models to understand regional impacts, but there remains a dearth of local level understanding of impacts and communities’ capacity to adapt. It is well understood that Africa is vulnerable to climate change, not only because of its high exposure to climate change, but also because many African communities lack the capacity to respond or adapt to the impacts of climate change. Warming trends have already become evident across the continent, and it is likely that the continent’s 2000 mean annual temperature change will exceed +2°C by 2100. Added to this warming trend, changes in precipitation patterns are also of concern: Even if rainfall remains constant, due to increasing temperatures, existing water stress will be amplified, putting even more ...
2016
Africa’s agriculture is at a crossroads. Under optimistic lower-end projections of global warming, climate change may reduce crop yields by between 10‒20 percent in most parts of Africa (Schlenker and Lobell 2010). Increased warming, drought and aridity will contribute to loss of 40‒80 percent of Africa’s cropland suitable for growing maize, millet, and sorghum by the 2030s‒2040s. By 2050, for example, three percent of Africa’s land will no longer be suitable for growing maize—a major staple crop for over 200 million people in East and Southern Africa. Food security, therefore, will be the overarching challenge, with increased droughts, flooding, and changes in rainfall patterns.