Caritas says climate change will drastically increase world hunger
November 6, 2009
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November 5, 2009
Caritas Internationalis and other humanitarian organizations want world leaders to know that without bold action, global warming will have a disastrous effect on the world's poor and hungry.
Climate change is already undermining efforts to help the more than 1 billion people now suffering from lack of food, and without drastic measures to limit its effects, "the risk of hunger and malnutrition could increase by an unprecedented scale within the next decades," according to a Nov. 4 press release from Caritas Internationalis.
Caritas, the umbrella organization for 164 Catholic charities, said it has signed a joint statement addressed to environmental ministers and other officials who will participate in the U.N. Summit for Climate Change Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The message includes both dire warnings and practical suggestions for action.
The U.N. World Food Program and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Federation of the Red Cross, Oxfam, World Vision and Save the Children are the other co-signers of the statement. In their message, the organizations stressed that it is the world's most vulnerable people, especially children, who will suffer the most from the effects of catastrophic climate change.
"Climate change will act as a multiplier of existing threats to food security," the joint statement read. "It will make natural disasters more frequent and intense, land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in productivity even harder to achieve."
"The implications for people who are poor and already food insecure and malnourished are immense," the statement warned.
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