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The average citizen may think that climate change only means that temperatures rise every summer by one and a half or two degrees, which is not a large number for him, but this understanding is simply wrong, because climate change changes everything.
We are not just talking about heat waves, the increase in frequency and strength of hurricanes, and dust and sand storms, but it also comes down to what we eat on a daily basis. In this context, a new study issued by the Canadian University of British Columbia indicates that nutrients available in seafood, such as proteins in general and nutritional supplements such as Omega-3, may decrease by 30% in low-income countries by the end of the century.
This was stated in a study published by the team in the journal Nature Climate Change, in which they explained that seafood is usually an essential component in the diets of low-income countries, and therefore it represents a barrier to malnutrition for those countries.
Even fish
The study targeted 4 essential nutrients for human health that are available in seafood: calcium, iron, protein, and omega-3 acids. On this basis, they studied historical fish availability rates and databases related to the adaptation of marine life forms, and combined this with predictive models for the future climate system.
According to the study, the concentration of these nutrients peaked in the 1990s, then remained stagnant until the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Predictive climate models have found that there is expected to be a significant decline in the numbers of fish available for fishing due to climate change. By calculating the proportions of nutrients, it turns out that calcium, for example, will be the most affected, as it is expected that there will be a decrease of between 15 and 40% by the year 2100 in the diets of the population of those countries, and Omega 3 will witness a decrease of approximately between 5 and 15%.
The study also indicates that even as countries attempt to compensate for this deficiency through fish farms, climate change will limit the effectiveness of this method, because it makes the environment in general unsuitable for fish farms, so the rates of diseases in them will become higher, and their fertility rates will decrease.
In this context, the same will happen to all countries of the world, as researchers expect the availability of nutrients from seafood sources to decrease by between 4 and 7% as average temperatures rise by one degree Celsius. But the reason the levels are lower in rich countries is that there are other sources of these nutrients.
Let us take calcium, for example. In low-income countries that depend on marine food resources, milk and cheese are rare commodities, and citizens obtain their calcium needs from fish only, but in the case of rich countries, milk and its derivatives are available in abundance.
A swinging world
According to an official press release issued by the University of British Columbia, it is possible to reduce these percentages announced in the study to approximately 10% in low-income countries if the world is able to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to no more than one and a half degrees to Two degrees.
Unfortunately, recent research reports have shown that humanity is not on the right track to achieve those proportions. In light of the lack of international agreement on the matter and the deep political unrest that has arisen in various regions around the world, such as China and the United States, for example, and the war in Ukraine, or the Israeli war on Gaza that is fully supported by the United States, this suggests that we are not… Even close to achieving those goals.
Human activity is a major cause of global warming, according to more than 90% of research work in this area, as humans use fossil fuels in factories, power stations, cars, airplanes, etc., causing the percentage of carbon dioxide to exceed the 400 parts per million barrier, i.e. more. One-third of what existed before the Industrial Revolution.
Unfortunately, the harshest effects of climate change, from heat waves, droughts, severe impact on agricultural activities, and even what citizens eat daily, fall on countries that are usually low-income, and contribute only a small amount to global warming.
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