According to research done by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change in the program’s signature publication, the “2016 Food, Water, Energy and Climate Outlook,” even if all pledges made at last year’s COP21 are adhered to, the risk to water supplies upon which most of the global population depends and staple crops in major “breadbasket” regions.
According to the report, all the national commitments that were made in Paris meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions actually fall way short of COP21’s overarching climate target. The report lays out a different set of emissions scenarios that are consistent with achieving the goal of meeting the 2 C target by 2100.
The authors of the study say that drastic changes need to be made to the global energy mix. Joint Program researchers developed and employed statistical models to replicate complicated, numerically demanding globally gridded crop models to visualise future productivity of Earth’s “breadbasket” regions.
Their projections showed overall increased yields of maize in the U.S. and wheat in Europe through 2100, significantly north of where these crops are currently being farmed, as well as an increase for upland rice in Southeast Asia and soybean in Brazil. Much of agriculture’s gains from climate change can be attributed to an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations, which can act like a fertiliser as well as improve crops’ water-use efficiency. This may sound great, but the flipside of it is that this type of yield increase may be accompanied by reductions in nutrient and protein content.
Authors of the study caution that while climate change can afford some areas an advantage, the extreme heat and drought linked to climate-change can also increase the frequency of major crop failures. This could lead to costly relocations of farming operations.
The 2016 Outlook also projects that under COP21, water stress will increase in most regions due to the population explosion, economic growth and climate change; the largest of these will occur in Africa, driven by economic growth and increases in population.
According to the study, an additional 1.5 billion individuals worldwide will experience stressed water conditions by 2050; approximately 1 billion of these will experience heavy to extremely stressed water conditions.
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