Our world is faced with a changing climate.
It changes fundamental weather patterns, drying up regions and inundating others.
It changes a formidable challenge that strikes at the core of water and food supplies, and
climate models show that arid countries are at the greatest risk.
Human populations in those stressed regions will be pushed to critical tipping points.
Many of us take for granted our access to food and water, buying what we want, when we
want it at a price we can afford. But one in six people don't get enough to eat.
And for many millions, hunger has become a fact of life.
In the years to come, that's what many more of us could face as climate change pushes
us to the brink.
We have been put on alert. Within the first decade of the 21st century, at least a dozen
major food crises or famines have occurred with climate change as a direct cause.
In 2008, global food cost doubled. 100 million more people went hungry.
Instability and political unrest increased as food stocks ran low. It was a stark warning
of what could lie ahead.
It's assured to just threaten to reduce the global food supply by more than 10% over the
next 30 years. And as oil costs rise, so the cost of food will soar in a world that consumes
more than we produce.
Today, as on every day, around 18,000 children will die of starvation. And yet, by 2050,
there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed.
So is the future written in stone?
Need more families know famine as the world's population expands and its precious natural
capital is used up.
Not if we act now, together.
It is now ever more urgent to solve the issue of climate change as without a solution to
climate, food security will continue to elude us.
We can mitigate against these threats if we work with a common purpose to lay the foundations
of a better tomorrow.
We can support small scale farmers and develop new technologies in science to increase crop
yields and irrigate dry lands.
If we devise new ways to get food produced to market and work to build sustainable communities
and viable and stable economies, and if we make better, clever use of our planet's scarce
resources and its abundant gifts, we can secure our future.
The impact of climate change will know no boundaries. It will affect the very core of
our common livelihood. If we all want food and water for life, our fate is in our hands.
