World food day 2009

October 16 is World Food Day 2009 – and an opportunity for the world to focus its attention on the serious hunger that persists among many millions in the developing world, and to draw the link that these problems will be exacerbated by cliamte change.

The recent food crisis has added over 150 million hungry people to the one billion globally, meaning close to one in six aren't getting enough to eat.

The world's poor, already suffering from record food prices, have to contend with the impact of climate change on food production as well as the devastating effect of the global recession on incomes.

Public focus is once again fixed on the drought in the Horn of Africa, where future climate change will only increase the risks to food production. The UN estimates that 19 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance across the Greater Horn of Africa. An additional 14 million are vulnerable.

The worst for a decade, the drought has parched large areas of Ethiopia and Kenya and affected Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan and increased acute malnutrition rates in children under five across the region.

A combination of climate change leading to less predictable rainfall as well as conflict and insecurity across the Horn and problems with food access - rising prices and internal corruption - have left the number of acutely malnourished children in parts of Kenya as high as 30 per cent.

That is double the World Health Organisation's (WHO) emergency level.
The World Heatlh Organisation says that climate change is a significant and emerging threat to public health, and changes the way we must look at protecting vulnerable populations.