The Environmental Food Crisis

With current scenarios from the CBD, all regions of the world will continue to experience loss in biodiversity, with Africa, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, experiencing the highest losses as a result of major land use changes (es- pecially in increases in pastures and biofuel production) com- bined with increasing land degradation. Large areas of Africa are projected to lose more than 25% of mean species abun- dance by 2050 (UNEP, 2007). According to FAO’s Global Per-

spective Unit (2008), at present 228 million ha of arable land are in use in Sub-Saharan Africa. Potentially, this area can be increased to over 1 billion ha of suitable land for rainfed crops in Africa by 2030. Likewise, in South America similar sce- narios project the present 208 million ha in agricultural use to be increased to over 1 billion ha by 2030 at the expense of natural ecosystems. These expansions will have huge costs to biodiversity.

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