– It seems that everywhere one turns, there is a story like this about failing fisheries, dying forests, or plunging water tables. Each story is full of alarming statistics and dire predictions. If it was just a one-off story, we could dismiss it as some drama-queen’s moment in the media spotlight – but it isn’t. It is, rather, like the increasing drum of rain on the roof as the storm builds. It grows louder and the predictions more dire, but at the same time, the human tendency to acclimate to new situations and to desensitize to stimuli previously presented, dulls most of us to the rising urgency.
– Most of us turn away after seeing yet another story with many of the same features as the previous one and we seek, instead, for the next pseudo-adrenalin fix from the ever more extreme offerings of the mass media or from the acquisition of our next ‘gotta-have-it’ physical toy.
– Rome is burning – marginalized to the back pages of section three overshadowed by the fact that Britney’s not wearing underwear these days.
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By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
The global network of agricultural research centres warns that famines lie ahead unless new crop strains adapted to a warmer future are developed.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) says yields of existing varieties will fall.
New forecasts say warming will shrink South Asia’s wheat area by half.
CGIAR is announcing plans to accelerate efforts aimed at developing new strains of staple crops including maize, wheat, rice and sorghum.
At the network’s annual meeting in Washington, scientists will also report on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farmland.CGIAR links 15 non-profit research institutes around the world working mainly on agriculture in developing countries and the tropics.
“We’re talking about a major challenge here,” said Louis Verchot of the World Agroforestry Centre (Icraf) in Kenya, a member institute of CGIAR.
“We’re talking about challenges that have to be dealt with at every level, from ideas about social justice to the technology of food production,” he told the BBC News website.
“We’re talking about large scale human migration and the return to large-scale famines in developing countries, something which we decided 40 or 50 years ago was unacceptable and did something about.”
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