Farmers in many parts of the central Manipur valley areas lodged compliant with the Government on the failure of the monsoon rains and of parched fields leading to crop failure. Some places like Khundrakpam in Imphal East District declared poor harvest and asked land owners not to claim their share of the produce this season.
By Salam Rajesh
The Covid-19 pandemic threw open a whole lot of crises all over the world, including food insecurity particularly amongst the populations living marginally at the poverty line, as was seen widely in many of the sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia. This was an additional burden on the marginalized section of societies already impacted largely by changing climatic conditions that evidently influences water scarcity, droughts and crop failure.
The Nature Conservancy and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis recently brought out a report titled as ‘Foodscapes: Toward Food System Transition’ (2021) in which authors Deborah Bossio et al reflected on food dynamics in the context of climate change risk analysis.
Writing in the report, the authors say that, ‘The food system is responsible for as much as 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with most coming from land conversion, enteric fermentation from livestock, fertilizer production and application, flooding for rice production, logistics, and food processing’.
The climate change risks analysis that the authors discusses in the report bring to the fore the climate extremities that affect food production, wherein they opine that, ‘Extreme weather events, such as drought, flooding, and temperature anomalies threaten food production and can make field management difficult, hazardous or impossible. Agricultural workers, for example, are directly exposed to the effects of extreme heat, and climate also affects pest and disease dynamics’.
‘The areas facing multiple climate-related risks include large parts of Iran, Bangladesh, northwest India, eastern Mexico, and several regions in southern Africa and Australia. Many of these regions include significant populations of smallholders, some of whom are already exposed to challenges such as heat and drought’, the report says.
The assessment, when viewed from the perspective of what can take place a decade or two later on the assumption that climatic conditions continue to get worse, is alarming as and when considered how extreme weather conditions can considerably impact the agricultural system to such level where the land degrades extensively resulting in poor crop production and consequently affecting the food delivery system.
During the pandemic, there were distressing instances where farmers had to destroy their produces – huge quantity of fruits and vegetables – as there were no buyers. This was a sharp contrast to many regions in sub-Saharan Africa where due to erratic climatic conditions crop failure was evident everywhere and there was food shortage in many poor countries.
Manipur has not been spared, either. Farmers in many parts of the central Manipur valley areas lodged compliant with the Government on the failure of the monsoon rains and of parched fields leading to crop failure. Some places like Khundrakpam in Imphal East District declared poor harvest and asked land owners not to claim their share of the produce this season.
There is another dimension to the deliberation on food dynamics in the context of climate change risk analysis. This has to do with the rapid commercialization of certain crops by extending the area coverage under which the crops are cultivated widely for global sell.
The TNC report reflects on this by stating that, ‘Climate crisis has made clear that the success of food systems in meeting this demand in the past has, ironically, created a critical new challenge for the future. Food production systems have intensified, but sustainable intensification has been the exception, not the rule’.
‘Intensification has meant greater pressure on soils, more biodiversity loss, increased agrochemical and fertilizer use and higher emissions. Climate change can lead to lower yields and threatens to destabilize production systems at exactly the moment when rapidly rising demand puts more stress on those systems’, the report further elaborates.
This then is translated on ground as the extreme pressure on forest lands for cultivation of highly commercialized crops like oil palm, for instance. The cultivation of oil palm necessitates cutting down large tracts of tropical rainforests and the conversion of peat lands for the mono-culture. Mass scale deforestation of biodiversity rich rainforests can lead to massive greenhouse gas emission, thus impacting the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
Cattle ranching or the rearing of large population of domesticated cow and buffalo for meat by laying bare wooded areas and grasslands, is also very much related to greenhouse gas emission. Cattle ranching in large scale is said to contribute in methane gas release, adding to the crisis on greenhouse gas emission and global warming.
The TNC report has a word of caution for the world community. ‘The next decade is crucial if we hope to keep Paris (Climate) Agreement targets and biodiversity thresholds within reach. Many critical food production systems around the world are already facing multiple pressures; their productivity and output is eroding, through over-exploitation of the ecosystem services like water, soil organic matter and agro-biodiversity that farmers, fishers and grazers depend upon’.
This, of course, fundamentally speaks of the multiple forms of human activities that are primarily extractive by nature, such as the overwhelming pressure on nature reserves to look for oil and natural gas, minerals, fossil fuel, and of stepping into pristine forest landscapes for large scale commercial plantation and cattle rearing.
At the local scale, Manipur has reeled under water crises to a level where major rivers almost run dry and the majority populations who live in urban areas have to depend on commercial water carriers for their domestic needs. The extensive depletion of forests in the upper reaches, where watersheds are scrapped clear, is primarily seen as a main factor for reducing the environmental-flow of the rivers. This, in its turn, impacts the livelihoods and agricultural activities of people living in the lower reaches.
The chain reaction is quite evident, then. Anthropogenic activities that encroach upon nature reserves and cause great damages result ultimately in life forms struggling to survive in the midst of water scarcity, drought and temperature anomalies. In other words, as the physics professor would say “Every action has an equal reaction”, so are the impacts evident when actions that are negative by nature are unleashed upon nature reserves.
(The writer is a media professional working on environmental issues. He can be contacted at [email protected])