www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

An unprecedented effort to protect the world's food supplies from the
ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international
consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious
changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that
society must begin to adapt, December 2006 by David Adam.

Some ?200m a year will be poured into the research by governments across
the world to help agricultural experts develop crops that can withstand heat
and drought, find more efficient farming techniques and make better use of
increasingly fragile soil and scarce water supplies.

Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research
Institute, said: "The impacts of climate change on agriculture will add
significantly to the development challenges of reducing poverty and ensuring
sufficient food production for a growing population. The livelihoods of
billions of people will be severely challenged as crop yields decline."

The Stern review of the economics of climate change said a 2-3C rise in
average global temperatures would put 30-200 million more people at risk of
hunger. Once temperatures rise 3C, 250-550 million extra people will be at
risk, more than half in Africa and western Asia.

At 4C and above, global food production is likely to be hit hard. The
British scientist James Lovelock warned last week that such food shortages
could trigger a growing number of conflicts this century between nations
desperate to find fertile land to feed their people.

The initiative will be launched in Washington DC by the Consultative Group
on International Agricultural Research, an umbrella group for 15
agricultural research centres across the world. Louis Verchot, a climate
change expert with the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, said the
research must tackle the twin problems that photosynthesis and the ability
of flowering plants to reproduce start to shut down as temperatures rise.

www.checkbiotech.org

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