The Rice Story

There is this unending list of global warming impacts. Like a good scrap book it keeps getting more interesting every time you re-look at it. Now it is the rice story. The story goes that global warming/climatic change causes too little rain, thus bringing havoc to the flowering and harvesting periods of rice, the staple food for more than three quarters of the world population. What are the risks?

• Political - hunger and increased poverty instigating collapse and overthrow of government
• Social - in-migration of displaced rural subsistence farmers to towns and cities compound the scope of diseases outbreak, malnutrition, unemployment and therefore much loss of human capital
• Financial- misapplication of financial resources and funds in mitigating urban poverty, slums and general degradation in quality of urban dwellers instead of using these limited funds to tackle the roots of poverty and rural-urban migration. This may lead some governments living on borrowed funds, and temporary erasure of reputational capital