Climate Change: Impact on Food & Nutrition Security and Gender

Climate Change is a major challenge, faced by all the countries around the globe. Commencing the session,  Dr. Faisal mentioned that almost 40% of population in Pakistan is directly or indirectly linked to agriculture, yet the hunger level in the country is very high. He further highlighted the fact that the impact of climate change varies not just across the households, rather within the household as well i.e. the gender of the household member decides the prevalence of different food patterns or the insecurity (nourishment).

Presenting the impacts and risks of Climate Change, Dr. Fahad Saeed mentioned that since 1850s, the impact of climate change has increased tremendously, with a high share of the human influence. Supplementing to this, he presented that Pakistan has two 2 precipitation systems i.e. summer and monsoon, and these systems do not penetrate to Afghanistan, rather terminates in Pakistan which leads to disturbance of the winter system. Considering the vulnerability to climate change, he presented that Pakistan is a country with highest slope (longitude), and because of the diversity in the regions (climatic i.e. glaciers etc.), the vulnerability to climate change increases i.e. Pakistan is featured among the top 10 countries in vulnerability from 2000 to 2019. Accumulating the discussion, along with population, climate change, and the termination of the two disturbances within the country, the region also plays an important role in affecting the climate of the Country.

Explaining the Agro-ecological state of Pakistan, Dr. Verda presented that Pakistan is divided into 10 agro-ecological zones and the main source of water for agriculture is either rainfall or melting of glaciers and therefore mentioned a linkage between variation in rainfall and the variation in food crop yield. She further highlighted that 44% of the rural households in 2018-19 were under-nourished in Pakistan with nearly 40% of them are having medium to high level of diversified food (dietary diversity). Furthermore, she presented that in rural households, 45% of male headed households were undernourished as compared to 31% female households with a betterment in the nutrition intake in female headed households while moving from lowest to highest income quartiles.

In the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, after explaining the concept of food security, Dr. Fawad mentioned that according to the UNICEF, in the two provinces, urban areas are comparatively doing better than rural as rural kids are more stunted, more underweight with highest prevalence in the new emerged parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa i.e. FATA. He presented that the population in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa needs 5 million tons of wheat, but the province produces only 1.4 million tons and thus the province is dependent on other areas. He further mentioned that a small fraction of women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, as compared to overall country, are empowered and therefore working with 37% female literacy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as compared to 58% in Punjab.

After shedding light on the concept of stunting, Dr. Ali Shuja presented the reasons or measures to decline stunting. He mentioned that the prevalence of stunting declines from poor to rich quantile, but in highest quantile, 22% children are stunted, therefore, income is not the sole measure to decline stunting. He further added that the dietary diversity is one of the main reasons behind stunting, but dietary diversity is very limited in the rural areas as compared to the urban, and the mother’s education and awareness improves the diversity, and thus mother’s education is another measure to decline stunting. Apart from the good and affordable diet, Dr. Ali mentioned that children born to stunted women have higher risk of being stunted and thus highlighted the intergenerational factors as one of the reasons behind the prevalence of stunting among children.