Environmental risks from human activities are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected, with far-reaching consequences for food production and livelihoods, said researchers from the US, Sweden and Australia in a research journal ‘Nature Sustainability’.
Environmental risks, becoming increasingly interconnected, could create far-reaching consequences, and researchers have called for new global approaches to calculate and understand such risks – and new thinking on how to deal with them.
For example, evaporation and subsequent moisture flows from large-scale irrigated farming in India contribute up to 40% of rainfall in East Africa, according to the research paper.
“If communities in India improve sustainable agriculture practices (reducing irrigation and groundwater depletion), then pastoralists and farmers in Africa could suffer,” it warned, calling the situation “a delicate dilemma”.
These risks would have knock-on effects on livelihoods
“If rainfall reduces in the main months in East Africa, that could have knock-on effects on migration and livelihoods,” said Stockholm-based Global Resilience Partnership programme director and one of the authors Nathanial Matthews.
According to a report by Thomson Reuters Foundation, “This could happen within the next five years. We’re already seeing huge droughts in India,” he added. Such unexpected connections are little known and even less well-understood, but it is essential to take them into account if the world is to be adequately prepared for future shocks, said Mr Patrick Keys, the lead author of the research paper.
“All these rapid environmental changes are going to touch all of our lives and, given how quickly these changes are happening, there is an urgent need to understand them so we can respond correctly and thoughtfully,” he added.
Anthropocene risks need an integrated approach
Mr Keys said, “We develop an integrated concept of what we denote Anthropocene risk – that is, risks that emerge from human-driven processes; interact with global social-ecological connectivity; and exhibit complex, cross-scale relationships.
Another looming risk the authors identified concerns the rise of aquaculture, touted by governments and researchers as a solution to overfishing in the world’s oceans and as an important source of animal protein.
A threat to its own future viability
But aquaculture’s explosive growth threatens its own future viability because it can denude coastal mangrove forests, trigger pollution, spread diseases and reduce the hardiness of wild fish species, the paper warned.
Many places in Southeast Asia – such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and parts of the Philippines – have vast aquaculture operations and threats to the industry could upend jobs and incomes of people as early as the next few years, Mr Matthews said.
Meanwhile, the arid Sahel region in West Africa – a belt below the Sahara desert – faces a longer-term risk that rising temperatures will make it uninhabitable for plants and animal species that currently live there, the researchers said.
Desert areas are likely to spread south and hotter days and nights could slash the productivity of local sorghum and millet varieties, it said.
Planning for future would have to be judicious
“Future societies face the options of importing heat-tolerant varieties, developing new varieties, switching crop types altogether or abandoning farming,” the paper noted.
Already, the Sahel is one of the world’s poorest regions and is increasingly prone to attacks from militant groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, as well as inter-communal violence over rapidly diminishing natural resources.
Mr Keys said the risks would not automatically lead to worsening conditions but it is important “to emphasise and highlight the possibility for surprising, unexpected connections to blossom into something more than we thought they could be”. M