City dwellers and children living in the city take a look at the city of Nagada within the Nagada Mountains of Jajpur … [+]
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A study of 107,000 children aged five and under has found that a rise in global temperature equals or more contributes to child malnutrition compared to poverty, inadequate sanitation, and poor education. . The results of the study by researchers at the University of Vermont were published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters.
The 19-country study is one of the largest such studies looking at the link between climate change and malnutrition. Researchers studied the effects of temperature and precipitation on the diversity of children’s diets with the databases dating back nearly three decades.
“Certainly malnutrition is expected to be affected by future climate change, but we were surprised that higher temperatures are already showing an impact,” said lead author Meredith Niles, former professor of nutrition and food sciences at the University of Vermont and another at the university’s Gund Environmental Institute.
The children surveyed lived in countries scattered throughout Asia, Africa and South America.
Significant effect at high temperatures
Researchers focused on dietary diversity, a metric developed by the United Nations to measure diet quality and micronutrient intake. Micronutrients, such as iron, folic acid, zinc, and vitamins A and D, are essential for children’s development. Lack of micronutrients is a cause of malnutrition, which affects one in three children under the age of five. Dietary variability is measured by counting the number of food groups consumed over a given period of time.
On average, children in the study ate food from 3.2 food groups (out of 10) – including meat and fish, legumes, dark leafy greens and corn greens – in the previous 24 hours. In contrast, dietary diversity in emerging economies or richer countries such as China has more than doubled this average (6.8 for children 6 and younger).
“As the evidence for action grows, the scaling of any change interventions should be accompanied by additional resources and support to ensure that expanding programs can achieve the same,” he said. Rupal Dalal, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Bombay, was not affiliated with the study. “This is because food support or food interventions that consider the complexity of food systems as well as the severe effects of climate-wide throughout that system will hardly be the answer.”
According to the United Nations, stunting in 2019 affected 144 million children under the age of 5, the effects of malnutrition. In 2019, 47 million children under the age of 5 suffered from consumption, or severe malnutrition, a condition that led to malnutrition and limited infection.
In terms of climate, the year 2020 was one of the warmest on record and the world is poised to spend its carbon budget over the next ten years if carbon emissions continue at the right pace. currently.
“A warming climate has the potential to weaken all that international development programs provide,” said study co-author Taylor Ricketts, director of the Gund Institute for the Environment. that is something we find again and again in this global research: persistent environmental pollution has the potential to undermine the impressive health benefits of the world over the past 50 years. “