A two-day conference took place in Dublin Castle on April 16th and 17th 2013 on the relationship between climate change, hunger and poor nutrition. The conference was sponsored by the Irish government and the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. It was organised in conjunction with the World Food Programme (WFP) as part of Ireland’s presidency of the European Union. More than 350 delegates from 60 countries attended the conference.
The conference brought together an interesting and unusual group of people. Some were policy makers with governments, others were working with United Nations agencies and civil society organisations. More than 100 came from communities where climate change was already having a devastating impact on the ability of their communities to produce food in sufficient quantities and in a sustainable way.
In her address to the conference, Mary Robinson was critical of governments and other global agencies for the slow pace in responding to hunger and starvation. In the year 2000, world leaders agreed to promote eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG), The first MDG was to reduce the number of people living in poverty by one half by 2015. In the intervening 12 years, more than 600 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Despite the progress, Mrs Robinson argued that much more needed to be done. She also emphasised the need to consult and work with those who were most vulnerable and to make sure that their knowledge and experience is factored into any scheme designed to alleviate poverty. Otherwise poor people will feel powerless, discriminated against and marginalised. I saw the importance of this myself during my years as a missionary on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.
The Irish Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore told the gathering that Ireland will continue to highlight the close connection between hunger and climate change in every possible forum – from the UN General Assembly to the forthcoming G8 Summit which will take place in Fermanagh in June 2013..
The former US vice president, Al Gore, also spoke at the conference. He told the participants that the world was spewing out 90 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day. According to Mr Gore, “the accumulation of this man-made global warming pollution now traps as much extra energy in the atmosphere each day than would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.”[1] Mr Gore went on to illustrate how this affects climate conditions in many parts of the world. “Last year Ireland, along with your neighbours the United Kingdom, had historic flooding – massive downpours. The rain patterns have changed.”[2] In so many places people are no longer able to predict weather patterns and this has a huge impact on subsistence.
According to Mr Gore, we do not have to continue doing what we have done in the recent past. We can draw inspiration from the way our ancestors faced up to important challenges in the past. He recalled the meticulous research of Dr John Snow in London in the 1850s, who discovered that cholera was spread by contaminated water and not by foul air. Dr Snow used to map and put dots where every case of cholera had occurred and overlaid this data on top of the sewerage system. This enabled him to connect up the dots and trace the cholera outbreak to a single pump in Broad Street. Mr Gore continued, “Well, now we have to connect the dots. CO2 is invisible, tasteless and odourless as are the other greenhouse gases. But we know where greenhouse gases are coming from, and we know the consequences if we continue to pump them into the atmosphere.[3] Connecting the dots in relation to climate change means acknowledging that the extreme weather which has occurred in many parts of the world in recent years, is directly related to greenhouse gases and climate change. Mr Gore told the audience that we have to win the argument about climate change. Everyone has a role to play. “When you hear people denying climate change, speak up. We cannot continue sleep-walking towards the edge of history’s cliff”, he added. [4]
Mr Gore paid tribute to the policy of successive Irish governments in tackling global hunger and malnutrition. During the conference, the Irish government signed a three-year partnership with the World Food Programme to contribute €7 million for three years to the WFP programme.
[1] Evelyn Ring, “Atmosphere ‘used like an open sewer,” The Irish Examiner, April 17th 2013, page 8.
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] Louise Hogan, “Gore warns of climate devastation,” The Irish Independent, April 17th 2013. Page 8.