le temperature del 2017 rispetto agli anni passati sono decisamente al rialzo.
Lo dice la stampa estera, con Le Monde
ma anche quella italiana con La Stampa.
Gli aspetti esaminati vanno dalle api con La Repubblica al glifosato che continua a far discutere l’ Airc e le associazioni ambientaliste.
Ci sono poi i dati sulla deforestazione che che sono inquietanti: la raccolta di soia ogm, che serve per alimentare i bovini utilizzati nei fast food è passata da 30 milioni di tonnellate nel 1960 a 300 milioni di tonnellate l’anno scorso.
La coltivazione di soia è diventata la causa principale della distruzione della foresta amazzonica : la deforestazione si è “mangiata” 4 milioni di ettari in Sud America (Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina..), dei quali 2,6 in Brasile.
Nel 2006 è stato firmato un protocollo- che esclude i fornitori che continuano a deforestare – tra Mc Donald’s e varie associazioni ambientaliste ma Burger King (catena controllata dal fondo 3G Capital) non si è ancora associata e, in Francia , è stata presa di mira da Mightty Earth che recentemente ha fatto firmare una petizione da 500’000 persone in due giorni (fonte Le Monde).
Ma la vicenda più inquietante è quella che riguarda i migranti climatici :
nel 2011 erano stati 18 milioni
nel 2016 42 milioni
nel 2017 se ne prevedono 48 milioni
nel 2050 potrebbero essere 250 milioni
fonte : La Repubblica del 27 febbraio 2017
Climate change is perhaps the most significant threat to global food security today. You don’t need a science degree to see that our world is already changing dramatically. Nineteen of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the past two decades. If you’re 29 years old or younger – and most of you look younger – then you have not lived through a single month that was cooler than its 20th century average. Think about that. It means that what we used to consider normal is no longer normal, and we’re only going to see more changes unless we take action now.
In recent years, nearly every single part of the world has reported a record-breaking extreme weather event. In some places, the kind of flooding that used to happen once every 500 years, once every hundred years, is now expected to happen once every 25 years. Americans living in California – you may have seen it on television today – huge mudslides, unbelievable size balls of hail. At the same time, they’re living with the most extreme drought in the entire state’s history. Not too long ago, New Zealand suffered through a drought so severe that some farmers had to kill their dairy cattle and sheep because they didn’t have enough food and water to be able to keep them alive – in New Zealand.
Even the chemistry of our ocean is changing – and changing rapidly. Why? Because nearly a third of the greenhouse gases that are coming out of tailpipes and smokestacks end up getting absorbed by the ocean. Now, you may say, well, that’s pretty helpful. Yeah, it is, except that when carbon dioxide dissolves into salt water, it forms an acid – carbonic acid. And as a result, the ocean is acidifying 10 times faster today than at any point in its history, and that stunts the growth of shellfish, it degrades coral reefs, and it puts the entire marine web at risk.
And here’s the point. We cannot have food security if farmers and fishers around the world are having a more difficult time growing crops, catching fish, raising livestock. It just doesn’t happen. It won’t compute. The hard truth is that unless the global community comes together to address climate change, every one of these challenges – droughts, floods, extreme weather, ocean acidification, hunger, malnutrition – all of them will only become more pronounced. And that means that feeding the world – which is the most basic job that we have – is going to become an even more elusive goal than it is today unless we take action.
Make no mistake: The implications of this extend well beyond just hunger. This isn’t only about food security; it’s about global security, period. If people who can no longer make a decent living farming and fishing and herding, the way their families have for generations in many cases, they will have no choice but to seek other opportunities, and they may seek them in other places where you don’t have the ability to support them. If they migrate to cities – which is today happening at an unprecedented rate – they will bring hunger and malnutrition with them.
And what about the families who can’t afford to buy food for their children because the prices have skyrocketed and supermarket shelves are literally empty? They too could become desperate and they could begin looking for other means to survive.
It is not a coincidence that immediately prior to the civil war in Syria, the country experienced the worst drought on record. As many as 1.5 million people migrated from Syria’s farms into Syria’s cities, and that intensified the political unrest that was beginning to brew. Now, I’m not telling you that the crisis in Syria was caused by climate change. No. Obviously, it wasn’t. It was caused by a brutal dictator who barrel bombed, starved, tortured, and gassed his own people. But the devastating drought clearly made a bad situation a lot worse.
Climate change is – to borrow a term from the Department of Defense in America – a “threat multiplier.” Even if it doesn’t ignite conflict, it has the ability to fan the flames and to make situations much more complicated for political leaders to deal with.
Now, my friends, this is not really a complicated equation. It’s not hard to figure it out. Human beings are just like any other species on the planet: When our environments no longer provide us with the things that we need to survive, we will do everything we can to find a new place to live.
Here in Europe, you’re in the middle of one of the worst refugee crises in decades. And I would underscore, unless the world meets the urgency of this moment, the horrific refugee situation that we’re facing today will pale in comparison to the mass migrations that intense droughts, sea-level rise, and other impacts of climate change are likely to bring about.
For all of these reasons, it is essential that we address the challenges of food security and climate change in a way that is coordinated. In government, we talk a lot about what we call “climate-smart agriculture.” Basically, that means ensuring that solutions we pursue are aimed at achieving three specific goals, all at the same time:
First, that we increase agricultural productivity in a way that is sustainable over time.
Two, that we make sure our food systems are able to adapt to the climate impacts that we’re already experiencing.
And three, that we find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural sources. Most people don’t realize that agriculture as a sector itself is actually one of the leading drivers of climate change. It emits as much agricultural – as much greenhouse gases as all of our cars, ships, trains, and airplanes combined. People don’t think about that. And when you add in deforestation, much of which is driven by agricultural expansion, we’re talking about one-quarter of global emissions.
Parte del discorso di John Kerry, Secretary of State (Ministro degli Esteri) all’ Expo di Milano il 17 ottobre 2015
Grazie a Marco Gualtieri
