March 2, 2016

expert reaction to research on climate change and food/health

The effect that climate change could have on future food production and wider health is the subject of a paper published in The Lancet journal, with the authors reporting their use of a model which suggests reductions in global food availability and an increase in related deaths by 2050.

Prof. Andrew Challinor, Professor of Climate Impacts at the University of Leeds, said:

“This is a valiant attempt to quantify the effects of climate change on the future of food production. The authors highlight some potentially important issues about the impacts of climate change on our future health.

“Of course it’s very difficult to estimate exactly what those impacts will be. What we can say for certain is that the pressures on agricultural production will certainly be greater because of climate change. Year to year variability of food production will become greater, which will make global food markets more unpredictable. And extreme climatic events will become more common, such as the wheat harvest failure in Russia in 2010 which affected UK food prices.

“The effects of these events on global food availability and prices will be felt in the UK and around the world.”

‘Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study’ by Marco Springmann et al. published in The Lancet on Wednesday 2 March.