“Slow-onset” climate changes could have a bigger impact in developing countries in the future, including “potentially catastrophic” effects on food production, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday in a report (.pdf) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, The Hindu reports (Parsai, 4/1).

“In its submission, FAO outlines steps that governments could consider in climate change negotiations to ensure that food security is not threatened. The agency recommends that food security be used as an indicator of vulnerability to climate change, saying that agriculture systems and the ecosystems it depends on are highly sensitive to climate variability and climate change,” U.N. News Centre writes.

“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,” said Alexander Muller, FAO assistant-director-general for natural resources. Without addressing the ‘slow-onset’ effects of climate change, there could be “potentially disastrous impacts on food security during the period from 2050 to 2100,” according to Muller (3/31).

An FAO press release says the organization “recommends that food security be used as an indicator of vulnerability to climate change” and “suggests that within the global adaptation architecture, greater space be given to the risks linked to slow-onset impacts of climate change, particularly food security risks” (3/31).

The KFF Daily Global Health Policy Report summarized news and information on global health policy from hundreds of sources, from May 2009 through December 2020. All summaries are archived and available via search.

KFF Headquarters: 185 Berry St., Suite 2000, San Francisco, CA 94107 | Phone 650-854-9400
Washington Offices and Barbara Jordan Conference Center: 1330 G Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005 | Phone 202-347-5270

www.kff.org | Email Alerts: kff.org/email | facebook.com/KFF | twitter.com/kff

The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news, KFF is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California.