The human ecology of climate change - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 425

Countries in
transition
4%

Near East and
North Africa
5%

Industrialised
countries
1%

Sub-Saharan Africa
24%

India
25%

Latin America
6%

China
16%

Asia and Pacific
19%

Fig. 7.13 Thelocationoftheworld's842millionundernourishedpeople(1999-2001).BasedondatafromFAO(2004).

There are also compelling arguments suggesting that, in addition to being higher,
food commodity prices will also be more volatile in the future. If the frequency of
extreme weather events increases, production shocks will be more frequent, which
will tend to make prices more volatile. Furthermore, biofuel policies have created
new links between the price of oil and the price of food commodities. When oil
prices increase, demand for biofuels will increase, thus raising food prices, with the
opposite happening when oil prices decrease.
With regards to where food security is currently the greatest problem, as can be
seen from Figure 7.13, Africa is the continent bearing the brunt.
Perspectives on the prospects for improved food security extend beyond the FAO.
An analysis by Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute is not encouraging (Brown,
1995; incidentally, the Worldwatch Institute contributed to the aforementioned 2001
FAO food-security report). Lester Brown noted that two of the four largest grain
producers (the USA, China, the former Soviet block and India), which historically in
1950 were either net exporters or virtually self-sufficient, had by 1990 became net
importers, with only the USA increasing its production to a level that more than offset
the decline in the others. However, over the same period this US surplus was also
offset by declines in production by the nine other most-populous countries. Taking
into account the anticipated future growth in population it becomes clear that we
cannot continue to feed the world as we now do.
Contrary to initial impressions, this is not a doom-and-gloom conclusion. In 1972
the report for the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth , was prophetic (Meadows
et al., 1972). The report predicted that resources would run out unless we changed the
way they were exploited and used. Fortunately, this happened. For example, since its
publication the efficiency of copper extraction has improved, so remarkably the spent
tailing mounds from previous copper extraction can now be mined, while at the other
end of the production cycle material recycling has boomed (see Chapter 8). Such is