IIMSAM Official urged Governments to ensure better food security management

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 5, 2010 --

While expressing his deep concern over increasing rates of malnourishment amid global climate hazard Dr. Naseer S Homoud, Goodwill Ambassador and Director of Middle East office for the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina against Malnutrition (IIMSAM), the Permanent Observer to the United Nations Economic and Social Council asserted that climate change directly affects food security and nutrition. It undermines current efforts to protect the lives and livelihoods and end the suffering of the over 1 billion food insecure people and will increase the risk of hunger and malnutrition by an unprecedented scale within the next decades. “Malnourishment is already the single largest contributor to the global burden of disease, killing 3.5 million people every year, almost all of them children in developing countries. Unless urgent action is taken, I am of firm opinion that it will not be possible to ensure the food security for the growing world population under a changing climate”. Dr. Homoud said in his press statement.

It is an irony that in present world of plenty extreme poverty is a grim reality, affecting around a quarter per cent of the world population. While extreme income poverty –- defined by a dollar-per-day threshold -- has been declining in East Asia and the Pacific, scant progress has been made in all other regions. Dr. Homoud highlighted some of the projected impacts of climate change on food security. “To address this unmatched challenge, a strong commitment of the international community, particularly the developed countries, is needed. The current negotiation process offers opportunities to identify and endorse some of the actions needed. However, large efforts will be required beyond Copenhagen summit” Dr. Homoud contended.

In the last fifty years the world population has more than doubled: from 3 billion to 6.7 billion people. Over one billion of them are undernourished – an unacceptable situation and a big challenge to global efforts to end hunger and poverty. In the next forty years, world population will increase by another 50 %, reaching more than 9 billion by 2050. Meeting the demand of such a large population will put enormous additional pressure on food production systems. “Notwithstanding climate change, demand for food will increase, while resources needed for its production, such as land, water and petrol-based fertilizers – are becoming scarcer and scarcer. The risk of hunger is very likely to increase by a large extent in the next decades due to a number of factors attributed and the world community has to prepare itself to meet the demands amid present supply mechanism” Dr. Homoud said.

Dr. Naseer Homoud     IIMSAM     Spirulina