2022 is an uneasy year. The pandemic, political conflicts, and climatic events are posing threats to worldwide food supply.
Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic have been taking so many lives that most of us put our focus on those two issues. Yet, should climate change take a back seat when people talk about all these global challenges?
An intense heatwave is sweeping through northern India with temperatures hitting a record 49.2C (120.5F) in parts of Delhi. This is the fifth heatwave in the capital since March, 2022, and the average maximum temperatures for the month were the highest in 122 years.
The record-breaking heatwave is hitting India’s main wheat-growing regions particularly hard. It not only exposes hundreds of millions to dangerous temperatures, but damages the country’s wheat harvest, which experts say could hit countries seeking to make up imports of the food staple from conflict-riven Ukraine.
Once green Madagascar turns into a desert
The once lush and green island of Madagascar is turning into a red desert and facing a severe food crisis.
Four years of drought, linked by the United Nations to climate change, along with deforestation caused by burning or cutting down trees to make charcoal and farming, have transformed the area into a dust bowl.
More than one million people in southern Madagascar are struggling to get enough to eat, due to what could become the first famine caused by climate change, according to the World Food Programme (WFP) in 2021.
Climate change is real!
“If nothing is done, hunger will increase exponentially in the coming years because of climate change,” said Alice Rahmoun, WFP Communications Officer, adding: “in any countries.”
We must be prepared for climate shocks, and we must act together to reduce severe impacts on the world’s most vulnerable people.