- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Oil extends gains, jobs report lifts Wall Street
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- As EU targets Chinese cars, European rivals sputter
- Top EU court finds against FIFA in key transfer market ruling
- Oil extends gains, Hong Kong stocks resume rally
- 'A man provides': Ukrainian miners send families away as Russia advances
- EU states greenlight extra tariffs on EVs from China
- Hong Kong stocks resume rally, oil dips after Middle East-fuelled surge
- Crude stable after Israel-Iran surge, Hong Kong stocks resume gains
- Hera spacecraft to probe asteroid deflected by defence test
- US dockworkers to head back to work after tentative deal
- After Helene's destruction, North Carolina starts to rebuild
- Dockers end three-day strike at Montreal port
- What next for OpenAI after $157 billion bonanza?
- Israel-Hamas war causes 86-percent dive in Gaza GDP: IMF
- Milan's Morata moves house after Inter-fan town mayor 'violates' privacy
- 'Devastating' storm hits Augusta National but Masters will go on
- Relief in Brazil, Asia over delay to EU deforestation rules
- Oil prices jump, stocks fall on Middle East tensions
- Biden says 'discussing' possible Israeli strikes on Iran oil facilities
- Oil prices rise, stocks fall on Middle East tensions
- Oil rallies, stocks mostly retreat on Middle East tensions
- Phasing out teen smoking could save 1.2 mn lives: study
- 'Welcome relief': Asia producers hail EU deforestation law delay
- Japan PM slated to announce plans for 'happiness index'
- Turkish inflation falls less than expected in September at 49.4%
- Easing inflation lifts profit at UK supermarket Tesco
- Skiing calls on UN climate science to combat melting future
- China wine industry looks to breed climate resilience
- Tokyo rallies on weak yen, Hong Kong drops after surge
- Dutch airline KLM unveils 'firm' cost-cutting measures
- Carpe diem: the Costa Rican women turning fish into fashion
- Senegal looks to aquaculture as fish stocks dwindle
- Will AI one day win a Nobel Prize?
- Climate change, economics muddy West's drive to curb Chinese EVs
- Argentina's Milei vetoes university budget after huge protests
- TotalEnergies plans to grow oil and gas production until 2030
- 2024 Nobels offer glimmer of hope as global crises mount
- Tokyo rallies on weak yen, Hong Kong reverses after surge
- Tunisia readies for vote as incumbent Saied eyes victory
- High childcare costs in US weigh on women's employment
- US voters seek help with crushing childcare costs
- Taiwan shuts down for second day as Typhoon Krathon to land
Countries growing 70% of world's food face 'extreme' heat risk by 2045
Blistering crop-withering temperatures that also risk the health of agricultural workers could threaten swathes of global food production by 2045 as the world warms, an industry analysis warned Thursday.
Climate change is already stoking heatwaves and other extreme weather events across the world, with hot spells from India to Europe this year expected to hit crop yields.
Temperature spikes are causing mounting concern for health, particularly for those working outside in sweltering conditions, which is especially dangerous when humidity levels are high.
The latest assessment by risk company Verisk Maplecroft brings those two threats together to calculate that heat stress already poses an "extreme risk" to agriculture in 20 countries, including agricultural giant India.
But the coming decades are expected to expand the threat to 64 nations by 2045 -- representing 71 percent of current global food production -- including major economies China, India, Brazil and the United States.
"With the rise in global temperatures and rise in global heat stress, we're going to see crops in more temperate countries as well start being affected by this," said Will Nichols, head of climate and resilience at Verisk Maplecroft.
Rice is particularly at risk, the assessment said, with other crops like cocoa and even tomatoes also singled out as of concern.
- Growing risk -
Maplecroft's new heat stress dataset, using global temperature data from the UK Met Office, feeds into its wider risk assessments of countries around the world.
It is based on a worst-case emissions scenario leading to around 2 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels as soon as 2045.
However, the authors stress that in projections to mid-century, even scenarios that assume higher levels of carbon-cutting action could still result in temperatures nearing 2C.
India -- responsible for 12 percent of global food production in 2020 and heavily reliant on outdoor labour productivity -- is already rated as at extreme risk, the only major agricultural nation in that category at current temperatures.
"There's a very real worry that people in rural areas, which are obviously highly dependent on agriculture, are going to be much more vulnerable to these kinds of heat events going forward," Nichols told AFP.
That could impact productivity and in turn exports -- and have potentially "cascading" knock-on effects on issues such as the country's credit rating and even political stability, he said.
By 2045, the list grows much longer.
Nine of the top ten countries affected in 2045 are in Africa, with the world's second largest cocoa producer Ghana, as well as Togo and Central African Republic receiving the worst possible risk score.
The top 20 at-risk countries in the coming decades include key Southeast Asian rice exporters Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, the authors said, noting that rice farmers in central Vietnam have already taken to working at night to avoid the high temperatures.
The assessment highlights that major economies like the US and China could also see extreme risk to agriculture in 2045, although in these large countries the impacts vary by region.
Meanwhile, Europe accounts for seven of the 10 countries set to see the largest increase in risk by 2045.
"I think what it reinforces is that, even though a lot of us are sort of sitting in sort of Western countries, where we might think we're a bit more insulated from some of these threats, actually we are not necessarily," Nichols said.
"Both in terms of the sort of physical risks that we're facing, but also in terms of the kind of knock on effects down the supply chain."
D.Philippon--CPN