Children born in 2021 to face climate-health related threats by 2050: UN report

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed in its upcoming report that millions of people across the world will suffer from hunger, drought and disease within the coming decades. The 4,000-page report, which is set to release next year, provides details with regard to the impacts of climate change on the planet and the species.

According to news agency AFP, the draft report offers a “distressing vision” of the upcoming decades- malnutrition, water insecurity and pestilence. The report highlighted that making policy changes at the present times, such as promotion of plant-based diets, can limit the impact of these health consequences. However, they are simply unavoidable in the short term.

The UN IPCC draft report has also warned of impacts of crop failures, falling nutritional value of basic food items and spiking inflation on the most vulnerable people across the world. Depending on how well people get a handle on increasing temperatures and carbon emissions, children born in 2021 can face multiple climate-health related threats by 2050, when they turn 30, it said, adding up to 80 million people more than today will be at the risk of hunger in the next 50 years.

Increasing temperatures have not only affected the availability of key crops, but have also caused a decline in their nutritional value. The UN IPCC draft report said the protein content of crops such as rice, wheat, barley and potatoes is likely to drop by 6-14 per cent ,because of which nearly 150 million more people will be at the risk of protein deficiency. Essential micro-nutrients, which are already in severe shortage in a majority of diets in poorer countries, will also face a decline as temperatures increase.

Ten million more children than now across Africa and Asia will suffer from malnutrition and stunting by mid century. “If you overlay where people are already hungry with where crops are going to be most harmed by climate you see that it’s the same places that are already suffering from high malnutrition,” Elizabeth Robinson, professor of environmental economics at the University of Reading, told AFP.

As the world is already battling the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, the draft report has warned that 50 per cent of the global population could be exposed to dengue, Zika virus and yellow fever as rising temperatures expand habitable zones for mosquitoes and other disease-carrying species. The impact of climate change will also increase the burden of non-communicable diseases along with soaring risks of food and water-related contamination, the report added. And here too, the most impacted people will be the vulnerable sections of society.

Speaking to AFP, Stefanie Tye, research associate at the World Resources Institute’s Climate Resilience Practice said, “The effects and shocks of climate change will strain health systems even more, for a much longer period, and in ways that we are still trying to fully grasp.”

(With AFP inputs)