Some of the world’s leading humanitarian organisations have issued a joint statement pressing for urgent action amid changing climate conditions.
The organisations, which include World Vision and Caritas, say that unless such action is taken, it will not be possible to ensure the food security of the world's growing world population.
But, unlike many groups, they are not pressing industrial countries to cut carbon emissions to keep the rises in global temperature within two degrees centigrade.
Instead the groups, which also include the Red Cross, Oxfam, and the World Food Programme, are appealing to the world to move “urgently" towards embracing a two-fold approach.
That approach includes investing in and supporting the development of more efficient, sustainable and resilient food production systems; as well as improving access to adequate food and nutrition by the most vulnerable and at risk populations and communities.
“Only if we succeed in making significant advances on all fronts – increasing food availability, enhancing access to food, and strengthening resilience and development – we will reduce the risk of dramatic increases in the number of hungry people among the poorest countries in the most vulnerable regions of the world,” the groups expressed in their joint statement, titled “Climate Change, Food Insecurity and Hunger.”
Presently, the humanitarian organisations say climate change is undermining current efforts to end the suffering of over one billion people already affected by hunger and malnutrition. Furthermore, climate change will increase the risk of hunger and malnutrition by an “unprecedented” scale within the next decades, they say.
“Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the aim of eradicating hunger and poverty,” the groups stated.
But the groups’ focus is notably different from many other groups that have been eying the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next month.
