The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report has once again highlighted the grim reality of increasing food insecurity as a result of climate change.

In a new report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, IPCC says climate change is already affecting all continents and oceans across the world.

The report highlights the “risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes, particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.”

The climate disorder can result in flooding, heat-related mortality, droughts and food shortage, the report points out.

This report is not the first report to set off alarm-bells either. Last year, the World Bank, in its report ‘Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts and the Case for Resilience’, had also warned of the impact of climate change. It had noted that shifting rainfall patterns in India would leave some areas under water, while others, deprived of adequate rain, would suffer severe water crisis, hitting irrigation, power generation and even drinking water availability in some cases, besides impacting food production.

More disturbingly, it is estimated that almost 60 per cent of India’s agriculture continues to be rain-fed. Thus, any change in precipitation would hit food production, as was recently seen in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where erratic rain and hailstorms destroyed crops in over 12 lakh hectares.

The IPCC report points out that in tropical and temperate regions a temperature increase of 2°C or more from late 20{+t}{+h} century levels will hit production of major crops such as wheat, rice and maize.

“Climate change is projected to progressively increase inter-annual variability of crop yields in many regions. These projected impacts will occur in the context of rapidly rising crop demand,” the report said.

Other studies predict that a temperature increase of 2-2.5°C (compared to pre-industrialisation era) would diminish water availability for food production and would result in 63 million people in India may not being able to meet their daily calorific requirement, resulting in under-nourishment.

The report said, “By 2100 for the high-emission scenario, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is projected to compromise normal human activities, including growing food.” However, on a positive note it added that climate risks can be significantly reduced if temperature increase is arrested.

Commenting on the report, Greenpeace India campaigner Arpana Udupa said, “It clearly shows that continuing on the path of coal and high carbon emissions will hurt India’s development and economy eventually and all that had been gained in improving the standard of living in the country will be negated.”

“The new Government (post elections) should speedily act to bring about a clean energy transition and strengthen adaptation,” she added.