The human ecology of climate change - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 422

at the expense of forest and woodland, which has declined by 18.7% from 6215
million to 5053 million ha (Turner et al., 1990). At sea the price of human success
has been the collapse of fisheries, such as in the North Sea. There have also been
effects elsewhere in the marine food web. For example, around Alaska the tripling of
the pollack ( Pollachius spp.) catch between the mid-1980s and the end of the century
saw the stellar sea lion ( Eumetopias jubatus ) population that feeds on the pollack
collapse by around 90% (Starke, 1999).
The second factor is that the growth in human population, and its modern fossil-
energy-intensive culture, appears not to have been sustainable, not just in food-
security terms, but also in terms of the sustainable harvesting of ecosystems. For
example, non-sustainable fossil fuels are the main source of urea that is used for
agricultural fertilizer. Again, regarding fresh water (another essential agricultural
input), the growth in demand for water in many parts of the planet is not sustainable.
In other words, not only are we quantitatively overexploiting ecosystems so that they
collapse, we are also doing this qualitatively, in a non-sustainable way.
However, whereas both these dimensions are real, combating hunger in modern
times has been arguably hindered by an enabling factor of economic development.
True, while much of the most productive land around centres of population has
been exploited, it is often possible to irrigate marginal lands, develop sustainable
agricultural systems or buy in food from elsewhere. However, this takes both finance
and a sound commercial framework within which to operate. This development
dimension is cited by the FAO as being one of the current key factors determining
food security. Unfortunately international trade barriers and development agreements
have in some instances undermined sustainable development. Whether 20th-century-
style economic development will remain in a more crowded future with climate
change remains to be seen.
7.4.2 Presentandfuturefoodsecurityandclimatechange
As discussed, without future climate change we know (from current human longevity
records and birth and death rates) that the global population will continue to rise
through to the middle of the 21st century. Given that we are continuing to push for
increased food production, what does the future hold? To begin to answer this we
need to know the current situation.
The 1996 World Food Summit set the goal to reduce the number of people under-
nourished globally by half to no more than 420 million by 2015. Since then the
FAO has produced annual reports on The State of Food Insecurity in the World
(FAO, various dates). In summary, its early reports point to a declining number of
people who are undernourished. In 1970 there were approximately 960 million people
undernourished. The FAO estimate that in the period 1997-9 this figure declined to
815 million. Of these, more than 95% were in developing nations, around 3% in
transitional nations and 1.4% in developed industrial nations. The FAO's 2001 report
noted that the (then) current decline in undernourished was 6 million a year, which
in the 1990s represented a reduction in the rate of decline in undernourishment
compared to the 1980s. In part this might be attributable to the increase in global
population (see earlier in this chapter) but nonetheless by 2001 if this reduced trend