Chapter 6: Resource Use and Management
(...)
6.8 Food Security
6.8.1 Introduction
Over the last 50 years, technological advances in irrigation, mechanization, pesticides, fertilizers, and crop and livestock breeding have stabilized and increased agricultural production in many parts of the world. Our ability to produce food and fiber is greater now than at any time in the past. Yet we have not succeeded in ensuring food security for all the world's population.
It is estimated that between 500 and 700 million people in the developing world do not have access to enough food. Malnutrition contributes to the deaths of 35,000 children each day. Despite great progress in countries such as India, many less developed countries already have a serious food security problem. Food security is determined by the availability of food and the ability to acquire it by "dependable long-term access to food through local production, or through the power to purchase food via local, national, regional, or international markets." Even in the absence of any climate change, several countries will find it difficult to maintain or enhance food security given expected population growth.
To ensure food security for the world's increasing population, it will be necessary to sustain and enhance the natural resources on which we depend. Economic growth and equity are also musts. But most important, the spatial and temporal uncertainties about the impacts of greenhouse gases and associated climate change may demand the development of flexible policies that allow and encourage local adaptations/solutions, allow course corrections, and take a long-term approach.
