Climate change threat to crop yield and world health

THE recent study by the medical journal The Lancet into the threat posed by climate change has introduced an important new voice into the discourse on the effects that global warming will have in the decades ahead.

The Lancet warned climate change could be the biggest global health threat of this century, citing water and food insecurity, changing patterns of disease, together with extreme climatic events and population migration among the biggest risks that will be posed to humankind. Food insecure areas of sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to the effects of changing global climates. In many of the semi-arid regions where Self Help Africa works agriculture and agro-ecological systems are vulnerable to climate change because rainfall patterns are unpredictable and the climate is already too hot.

Elsewhere on the continent tropical regions have witnessed extreme rainfall and flooding, with devastating effects.