climate change

Climate change is already making people hungry, and the use of fossil fuels is largely to blame, representing the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Rising food costs, climate change and dramatic changes in land tenure are increasing the reality of hunger and leaving food-insecure people feeling they “are rated as the cheapest of the cheapest”.

One in four people in South Africa do not have enough to eat, and half the population is at risk of hunger, despite the country producing more than enough food.

South Africa is considered a ‘food-secure’ nation, producing enough calories to adequately feed every one of its 53 million people. However, the reality is that one in four people currently suffers hunger on a regular basis.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso gave a speech at the UN Climate Summit today, claiming the EU is setting a good example in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

The cost of weather-related disasters in the five years since global leaders last met to discuss climate change is almost half a trillion dollars ($490 billion) – three times more than for the whole of the 1970s.