1. Climate Change and Human
Insecurity in South Asia
15th Sustainable Development
Conference organized by SDPI,
Islamabad
Naeem Akram
2. “Human security means, first, safety from
such chronic threats as hunger, disease and
repression. And second, it means protection
from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the
patterns of daily life”
(UNDP 1994; Page 23)
In the context of South Asian countries, there
are at least two components of human security
that are likely to be affected severely by climate
change ---- food security and health security
3. Climate Change and South Asia
• Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2010,
computed by Maple-croft, out of 170
Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan were
ranked as 1st, 2nd, 4th and 16th most
vulnerable countries in the planet
• In Asia, temperatures are expected to increase
by 0.5-2.0oC by 2030 and by 1-7oC by 2070
• Global Sea level is expected to rise by 3-16 cm
by 2030 and 7-50 cm by 2070 (IPCC, 2007)
4. ----
• South Asian economies have a low
capacity for disaster management.
• During flood 2010 in Pakistan, around
2,000 people were reported to have died
and an equal number of people injured; a
figure that is extremely high compared to
only 20 that died in the worst flooding of
Australia (Asian Development Bank,
2010).
5. Food Security and Climate Change
“food security exists when all people, at all
times, have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious
food that meets their dietary needs and
food preferences for an active and healthy
life”
World Food Summit, FAO (1996)
6. Continued….
• Almost all the South Asian countries,
except India, are net food importers and
food insecurity exists in many South Asian
countries.
• It is estimated that around 40 percent of
the world’s hungry population lives in
South Asia (IFPRI, 2010)
7. Continued….
• Over the years many developing countries have
made significant progress regarding hunger
reduction
• South Asian countries still lag far behind in food
security.
• Armenia and Chile are able to achieve MDG 1;
i.e. halving extreme poverty and hunger by
2015. Peru, Ethiopia, and many other
developing countries are on track. But, South
Asian countries like Bangladesh, India and
Pakistan lag far behind in comparison to the rest
of the world (FAO, 2010).
8. Continued….
• Changes in temperature, precipitation and
frequency and severity of extreme events
like droughts, floods, and wind storms
negatively affect the crop and livestock
yields.
• However, carbon dioxide is essential for
plant production; it’s rising concentrations
due to climate change (greenhouse gas
emission) may be helpful in enhancing the
agricultural productivity (Adams et al,
1998).
9. Continued….
• Climate change affect the food security
through the dimension of food availability,
the reduction in production and supply of
food items has an inflationary impact, it
results in affecting their accessibility to
food markets
• Heat waves across the Indian Sub-
Continent during 2005 resulted in reducing
the agricultural yields by 10 to 40 percent
of the harvests for that year (Mahmood,
2008).
10. Health Security and Climate Change
• Climate Change is expected to affect at
least two basic requirements for
maintaining good health: clean air and
water
11. Continued….
• Heat waves are likely to increase the risk of
heat related morbidity and mortality
• WHO estimated that approximately 140,000
annual excess deaths will be caused due to
increase in temperature during 1970-2044.
• In India, during 1980-98, eighteen heat
waves were reported, out of which heat
wave of 1998 has affected ten states and
caused 1,300 deaths (Confalonieri 2007).
12. Continued….
• Rising temperatures and humidity levels
will increase the transmission of vector-
borne diseases such as Malaria, Dengue
Fever, Yellow Fever etc.
• Studies predict that an increase of 3-4 oC in
average temperatures may double the
reproduction rate of Dengue virus (World
Bank, 2010)
13. Continued….
• Flooding increases the risk of drowning and
physical injury in addition to water-borne
infectious diseases such as diarrhea, Hepatitis
and cholera
• Climate change may also result in droughts in
some regions it result in food insecurity and
increase in malnutrition rates particularly in low
income countries.
• As health is directly associated with income
and livelihood of people, so any shock to the
income through extreme weather events is
14. Empirical Analysis
• Panel data spanning over 1972-2009 for
the selected South Asian Countries i.e.
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka has been used
• To estimate the model Seemingly
Unrelated Regression (SUR) has been
used
• Three different specifications are applied
15. Empirical Model
Name of Variable Data Source Comment
Per Capita GDP (y) WDI Per Capita GDP in US$
Inflation (inf) WDI Consumer Price index as percentage
Openness (op) WDI (Exports +Imports) as percentage of GDP
Foods Security Indicator (FI) FAO Cereal production
Health Indicator (Hi) UNDP Life Expectancy
Precipitation (Pr) Terrestrial Air Temperature Annual precipitation has been calculated by
and Precipitation data base, averaging the monthly precipitation
Temperature (Tmp) Gridded Monthly Time Series Annual temperature was calculated by taking
average of the monthly temperature
16.
17. • Inflation by reducing the people capacity
to purchasing health services and food
items negatively affects the health and
food security
• Per capita GDP has a positive impact on
food and health indicators
• Openness by creating awareness and
increased availability of food across the
borders has significant and positive impact
on food and health security.
18. • Food security is most badly affected by a
reduction in precipitation in comparison to a
rise in temperature
• However, for the health indicators both raise
in temperature as well as a rise in
precipitation negatively affect the health
security. It is also noteworthy here that
climate change has more severe effects on
the food security as compared to health
security.
19. Conclusions
• Study asserts that if climate change is not
controlled then food and health security of
the South Asia will be reduced.
• However, South Asian countries alone can
do very little in controlling the climate change
as their share is limited in GHGs emission in
comparison to developed countries.
• Hence there is a need for a joint and
comprehensive policy regarding the adoption
of mitigation strategies to control the climate
