Are you eating the consequences of climate change?

Are you aware of how climate change puts your alimentary security at risk? Do you know what alimentary security is?

Author: Masha (Mexico, Young Reporter)

Human beings, just as any other form of life, need to eat. It's something indispensable, and we often don't pay necessary attention to it. We need to eat so our systems can function in the right way, so we have good health, and so we can have energy and live properly. But it is not as simple as that. There are many factors involved in this and some characteristics about it that we often don’t think of, For example, the origin and the context of it, which can lead us to think about its safety. “Alimentary security” is a concept used to integrate four important aspects that need to be taken into consideration when we talk about the rights of the people to food and aliments.

In these aspects we find the availability of aliments, which means that people can find food in their near neighborhood. Then we have access to this food, because even though it is available and near to people, it doesn’t mean that everyone has access to it. By this I mean that there are persons who don't have the capacity to buy the aliments, a situation that shouldn’t be present. Then there’s the aspect of utility, which means that people should be able to get food and to actually eat it. The last aspect that is involved in alimentary security, is the stability of all this. This means that there should always be enough aliments and food to satisfy this first basic need of everyone, because this is a right without which people can not survive. So, alimentary security means that people should always be able to eat good food, to which they can easily get access to and it’s available.

But besides economic, political and sociocultural factors, climate change puts alimentary security in danger. This is because the consequences of climate change, such as higher temperatures, changes in the weather, rising sea levels, and some others, affect the production of aliments. It affects agriculture by changing the natural cycles, causing droughts, increasing the occurrence of plagues, and more. This means that there is less production of food, which impacts on some of the aspects of alimentary security. But also the problem with climate change and agriculture, is that the massive production which some companies implement, is one of the principal causes of climate change. This type of production uses a lot of chemicals on the aliments, which are very noxious for health, so are neither friendly tonature or humans. It’s important that something is done about this and that everyone thinks about how to help, even if it's a little contribution. For example, alternatives like the implementation of urban agriculture, which means that people use places like their gardens to grow their own aliments. There are many ways we could (and need) to try to treat this problematic issue!

So, what can you do to help?