Earth Day – Reflecting on Hunger Nutrition Climate Justice Conference

Reflecting on the Hunger – Nutrition – Climate Justice Conference held last week, Irish Aid is highlighting the effects of climate change on communities around the world.

“Extreme climate events, ever more frequent, undermine the ability of many of the world’s poorest people to earn a decent living sufficient to secure a sustainable diet of sufficient nutritional quality.” Speaking in his opening remarks to the Hunger – Nutrition – Climate Justice (HNCJ) Conference last week, President Michael D. Higgins spoke about the deep and complex impact of climate change on communities around the world.

At the HNCJ Conference, we heard from those most affected by the increased variability in their weather systems. From unprecedented, extreme, extended periods of cold killing live stock in Mongolia, to rains not coming when they are supposed to in Ethiopia, causing a dramatic shift in sowing and harvesting seasons, the lives of vulnerable people around the world are being adversely effected by climate change.

"The least fortunate on the planet are already bearing the brunt of past emissions." - President Higgins

As today is Earth Day, we are highlighting the impact of climate change on the world's most vulnurable people. And while everybody will witness the changing weather patterns, climate change will be most destructive in communities where people are ill-equipped to deal with it, impacting on their abilities to farm successfully.

In his closing remarks to the conference, An Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore highlighted the need for global communities to work together to combat the ravages of climate change:  “We have to stop classifying our worlds as developed or developing, rich or poor, North or South.  The challenge of hunger, poverty and climate change pays no heed to these boundaries of the imagination.”