December 17, 2024
KATHMANDU – The optimism we’ve employed in every climate Conference of Parties (CoP) over the last decade following the Paris Agreement to cut global carbon emissions by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 has only dwindled and proven naive. While we call out the big emitters for failing to meet their mitigation obligations, the spine-chilling frequency and ferocity of floods, landslides and droughts in the last decade have increased unabated, with some scientists even warning that we are heading for dangers not seen in the last 10,000 years of human civilisation.
Let’s imagine for a moment that Nepal meets its national climate goals of achieving net zero before the 2045 deadline and implements the adaptation activities spelt out in our national plans. Will we be shielded from the growing menace of such disasters in a world that continues to set new climate records every year? The answer is probably a big, resounding no.
While speaking at CoP29 in Baku last month, the former US Vice President, Al Gore, succinctly stated, “Some of the load-bearing elements of our entire earth ecological system are at risk” due to the relentless rise in global carbon emissions. We are to witness the consequences of these perpetually rising emissions on multiple fronts, from infrastructure to water and biodiversity to productivity. Perhaps its impact on agriculture has hurt civilians and communities the most. Starting from the global food crisis of 2008, we have been paying noticeably more for food each year. Certainly, there are multiple reasons for the higher food costs, but a closer look points to climate change being at the issue’s core. These climate impacts have entered our kitchens, weakening the family economy and subsequently affecting public health and nutrition—hitting the poorest sections of society the hardest.
Rising food price
The implications of climate impacts on our agriculture are unfolding incredibly. A cursory comparison of vegetable prices over the years exemplifies how we pay more as climate impacts intensify. For example, the cost of cauliflower, a popular and common winter vegetable, was Rs45 per kg in November last year, while its price in the same period this year hovered around Rs150 per kg. The prices of other vegetables remain equally high.
The price hike is believed to be due to the devastating floods and landslides of late September that damaged crops. Traders in Kathmandu’s vegetable market incurred a huge loss when their stock of vegetables was buried knee-deep under loads of silt twice this year.
When landslides and floods disrupt transportation, as we saw during the September floods, farmers suffer losses as vegetables go bad quickly without proper refrigeration, raising market prices. Consequently, most vegetables have been out of reach for consumers, especially those with fixed incomes, such as pensioners, daily wage workers, service holders and so on.
The price of imported food also shoots up when floods or droughts affect crops in the countries we import food from. One may recall that onion prices increased fourfold when India banned its exports following the loss of onion crops due to continued rain until late September 2019.
Climate stresses on agriculture
The rainfall distribution in recent years has become skewed, bringing heavy rain for a short period, usually concentrated in small areas—most of which flows out as runoff, leading to debris flows and landslides that often bury or destroy farms in the hills, rendering them beyond reclamation. Once destroyed, farmers are unable to reclaim the damaged land to bring it back to production. Similarly, floods in the plains damage standing crops and deposit sand and silt on the fertile land.
When most of the rain flows out as runoff, it leads to groundwater depletion, an unfortunate condition that results in a slow-building pressure on food production. Adding to these woes are frequent droughts, which have been identified as the foremost factor affecting farming.
Furthermore, there are subtle impacts on other areas. Degradation of soil water, soil chemistry and soil microbiomes caused by rising temperatures and extended droughts have deteriorated soil health. Moreover, we’re compelled to over-harvest nutrients to maintain production. We don’t know to what extent the soil health of our farms has degraded over the decades.
When farm incomes dwindle, it becomes beneficial for those in the sector to move on to other occupations like foreign labour. The psychosocial stresses caused by continued weather-related worries, which invariably start with water, force farmers to opt for the only logical choice—abandoning farming. According to a report published in 2020, a staggering 37 percent of the cultivated farmland in Nepal has been deserted. The figure must have increased significantly since floods, droughts and other agricultural plights like pests and crop diseases have intensified recently.
Enough of alarms
The challenges facing agriculture are born of years of policy failures, further exacerbated by climate change with far-reaching ripples that have continued and become too complex to rely on ad hocery. The changes in temperature, water regime and the subsequent changes in other spheres of the soil and their constituents have altered the existing environment, significantly impacting the agriculture system on all possible fronts. Hence, making agriculture climate resilient without addressing diverse climate-induced issues is unimaginable; unfortunately, many of these issues don’t fall within the ambit of our agricultural institutions.
How the agriculture sector addresses these changes will determine the state of our food security in the coming years. Otherwise, our food import bill will swell beyond a point that will make it hard for most of the lower middle class and the poor to afford adequate and nutritious food. The worst may come when food exports are restricted due to crop failure in the countries we import food from. A recent study in Pakistan warned that almost half of the country’s population could face food insecurity by 2030, a terrible blow to the global agenda of zero hunger set for the same year. Our situation isn’t much different, and we cannot afford to remain complacent. We must invest our limited climate-focused time in exploring all possibilities to safeguard food security by keeping our production base intact. What else could be a more prudent approach than turning to our backyard for answers?