World Food Day Countdown: The climate-hunger connect

October 15th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

One more day until World Food Day! The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.

Today’s Action: Write a story, op-ed, or letter to the editor for your school newspaper or local newspaper on how climate change is impacting the hungry in Africa. Send a copy to us so you can get points. Not a writer? Pass on the video below where Thievery Corporation sees the impacts of climate change in Nepal.

To get started, check out ONE’s issue page on climate and development, here.

Way up on the ‘Roof of the World,’ the great Himalayas that thrust across the middle of Asia rule a domain that many scientists view as the “Ground Zero” of climate change.

The Himalayan glaciers comprise the largest store of fresh water outside the poles of the earth, feeding seven major Asian rivers. This gigantic watershed is source of life — and livelihoods — for more than 1 billion people in Nepal, India and China; they rely on it for agriculture, drinking water, sanitation, even hydroelectric power.

Alarmingly, as temperatures rise, these glaciers are melting and thinning rapidly — at rates scientists say have doubled
since 2004 alone. This phenomenon carries profound implications for food security, especially when combined with unpredictable monsoons, a rise in extreme weather, and years of unusually dry winters that have depleted snowpack and soil moisture essential for farming.

Gatlang, a picturesque Himalayan village of stone houses, exemplifies a dangerously shifting landscape in Nepal that has suffered a “sharp and sustained decline in food security.” Forty percent of the population is already under-nourished.

A mountain stream that flows through town powers a flour grinding mill – and prayer wheels that spin out blessings. Yet nature’s blessings have not been bountiful in recent years.

Chersingh Tamang, a 60-year-old farmer we met during a recent visit, has seen dramatic declines in rain and snowfall in his lifetime. Gesturing toward majestic Mt. Langtang in the distance and the tightly terraced slopes of his village, he says: “We used to see all snow on that mountain – now we see much bare rock … we used to produce abundant harvests of barley, potatoes and wheat. No longer.”

The World Food Programme works with Nepalese farmers like Chersingh to try new crops like red rice, medicinal plants, and gourmet mushrooms, while improved seeds are growing better yields from traditional crops. Our food-for-work programs build and rehabilitate miles of dikes, dams, irrigation systems – plant trees – and reclaim land.

It is a race against time — and the elements.