food security – Page 2 – Anne-Maria Yritys

Why Take Climate Change Seriously?

October 12, 2017January 4, 2018 by Anne-Maria Yritys, posted in Change Leadership, climate action, climate leadership, Global Climate Change

“FAO. Climate Change threatens our ability to achieve global food security, eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development.”

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Anthropogenic climate change is altering our environment heavily through a number of factors, including the increase in ocean acidity, extreme droughts in a number of geographical locations worldwide, more rainfall in other regions – leading to a huge increase in floods even affecting current agricultural practices and crop yields, thawing permafrost in the Arctic, and overall problems with agricultural soils around the world due to a number of reasons, such as poor soil management. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) states in its updated strategy (Rome, July 2017) that we have to implement sustainable agriculture and farming techniques to ensure global food security. This alone is not enough, however, since the risks and threats of human-caused climate change expand to all our activities, and our consumption habits.

Despite of the many problems we are facing in today´s world, where climate change is the number one threat to our planet and its ecosystem, progress is being made all over the world e.g. in terms of transforming local energy systems into renewable sources, such as solar energy. The question is, whether this transformation is rapid enough to meet the goals that were set and signed in the Paris Agreement?

Watch this video presentation, published by IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency – “Are we deploying renewables fast enough to stay below 2 degrees of global warming”?

Connect with me on Twitter @annemariayritys. For climate/environment-related posts only @GCCThinkActTank. Subscribe to Leading With Passion to receive my latest posts.

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Climate Change Expected to Reduce Crop Yields

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017 by Anne-Maria Yritys, posted in Change Leadership, climate action, climate leadership, Global Climate Change

“WHO. Increasing temperatures and more variable rainfalls on our Planet are expected to reduce crop yields in many tropical developing regions, where food security already is a problem.”

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Note from author: Although WHO´s statement refers only to crop yields in many tropical developing regions, anyone who has even the slightest experience/understanding about agriculture and farming, along with general comprehension about biology/geography will realize that one of the major risks of agriculture involves weather. It also depends much upon fresh water, healthy soils and a healthy environment. If and when weather patterns change (drastically) by becoming less and less predictable, with e.g. too much rain, it can have significant impacts upon crop yields, or at worst, even destroy a whole crop.

With agriculture being the largest consumer of fresh water resources worldwide, there is a need for optimizing fresh water usage in the agricultural sector. FAO (2012) has published a report, Crop yield response to water with the purpose to serve primarily agricultural practitioners along with a number of other target groups with important information on how to possibly optimize fresh water usage in agricultural/farming practices. The complete report can be found here: Crop yield response to water

At another TEDx Talk, Mark Owen speaks about the future of water:

Connect with me on Twitter @annemariayritys – for climate-related posts only @GCCThinkActTank & to receive my newsletter delivered personally to you, subscribe to Leading With Passion