The United Nations' top climate change official said on
Tuesday that food shortages and rising prices caused by climate
disruptions were among the chief contributors to the civil
unrest coursing through North Africa and the Middle East.
Christiana Figueres, in white blouse, met with children in
Sehwan, Pakistan, who have been displaced by floods.Agence
France-Presse - Getty Images Christiana Figueres, in white
blouse, met with children in Sehwan, Pakistan, who have been
displaced by floods.
In a speech to Spanish lawmakers and military leaders,
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations
climate office, said that climate change-driven drought, falling
crop yields and competition for water were fueling conflict
throughout Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. She
warned that unless nations took aggressive action to reduce
emissions causing global warming such conflicts would spread,
toppling governments and driving up military spending around the
world.
"It is alarming to admit that if the community of nations is
unable to fully stabilize climate change, it will threaten where
we can live, where and how we grow food and where we can find
water," said Ms. Figueres, a veteran Costa Rican diplomat and
environmental advocate. "In other words, it will threaten the
basic foundation - the very stability on which humanity has
built its existence."
Rising food prices were a factor in the January riots that
unseated Tunisia's longtime president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali,
although decades of repression and high unemployment also fed
the revolution. The link between food and resource shortages and
Egypt's revolution is less clear.
But Ms. Figueres said that long-term trends in arid regions did not look promising unless the world took decisive action on climate change. She said that a third of all Africans now lived in drought-prone regions and that by 2050 as many as 600 million Africans would face water shortages.
“On a global level, increasingly unpredictable weather patterns will lead to falling agricultural production and higher food prices, leading to food insecurity,” she said in her address. “In Africa, crop yields could decline by as much as 50 percent by 2020. Recent experiences around the world clearly show how such situations can cause political instability and undermine the performance of already fragile states.”
She said that rising sea levels, more frequent and severe natural disasters, pandemics, heat waves and widespread drought could lead to extensive migrations within countries and across national borders. Military leaders around the world, including those in the United States, have warned that such effects of a changing climate can serve as “threat multipliers,” adding stresses to nations and regions that already face heavy burdens of poverty and social insecurity.
“All these factors taken together,” Ms. Figueres concluded, “mean that climate change, especially if left unabated, threatens to increase poverty and overwhelm the capacity of governments to meet the basic needs of their people, which could well contribute to the emergence, spread and longevity of conflict.”