‘Extreme heat raises child malnutrition — kids must be protected from such lifelong damage’

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea is associate professor of applied economics at Cornell University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he outlines climate impacts on child nutrition — and growth:

What is the core of your research?

My work essentially looks at how humans cope with environmental change. A lot of my research focuses on how climate change affects the economy — I study agriculture which is perhaps the most climate-sensitive sector. I’ve been researching how extreme weather impacts crop yields, how trends in climate over the last many decades have affected agricultural productivity growth at a global scale while examining similar patterns in US farming. Over time, I’ve broadened my work, looking at how climate change is affecting health, from child malnutrition to allergies, etc. I research a variety of outcomes from global warming as well as ways to help people cope.

What are your findings on child malnutrition growing as temperatures rise, driven by climate change? In sub-Saharan Africa, farming plays a huge role in the economy. In many places, agrarian activity is the main way people earn livelihoods. Hence, I, with my co-authors, Sylvia Blom and John Hoddinott, decided to focus on five countries in West Africa — our work (see box) studying over 32,000 children aged 3-36 months found that extreme heat exposure increases both prevalent and chronic malnutrition. We focused on agriculture as the mechanism between rainfall and child nutrition. As featured in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, we found extreme heat can stunt child growth through reduced agricultural and protein production which impacts food outcomes for children as well as causing higher risks of infectious disease and direct physiological effects. We also found that these nutritional shocks in early childhood have permanent effects — if a child suffers from malnourishment or stunting and their brain is not well-developed, they are less productive as adults. Even beyond the important moral considerations here, viewed purely from an economic angle, these losses to people and systems are huge.

EACH DROP IS LIFE: Global warming demands sustainable water usage. Picture source: iStock

This makes climate change even more dangerous. Often, we see a shock in weather which affects agricultural production. We might think, ‘It’s ok, we’ll make it up next year’. But these effects on children are permanent, scarring them for their whole life. This is a tragic consequence. For some of us, extreme temperature is a transitory inconvenience which can be fixed with more cooling. But for these children, even a transitory weather shock means they are impaired for decades. Once someone has a childhood of deprivation and hunger, even if conditions improve later, the damage is done. In West Africa, we found such damage happening now. Hence, the time for strategies that can bolster child nutrition in heat-impacted areas is also now.

Is farming holistically more sensitive to climate change than other sectors? Totally. A range of comparative studies looking at how different sectors respond to global warming shows that agriculture is by far the most climate-sensitive sector. Importantly, with global warming, things alter beyond a short-term annual window. In a warmer year, you might see some changes in pest pressure, for instance — however, a warmer climate makes ecosystems adjust and we don’t even know how this reshapes pest populations in the longer term. Consider irrigation as well — often, during a drought in, say, the US, where agriculturalists pump water from the Great Plains Aquifer, farmers could think, ‘We’ll manage by just pumping more water’. This might not change output or profits much that year (although pumping costs may increase) but the real change taking place is that water gets depleted — so, the adjustment farmers make now might not even be mechanisms which exist for them to use ten years later. We can’t afford to look only at the short term in climateimpacted agriculture.

Given its enormous importance for overall well-being, what sustainable adaptations should agriculture make? Farmers are usually well-positioned to understand what is in their best interest, given the information they have. I think in the context of Indian agriculture, water management is a very big challenge — how people use water doesn’t adequately reflect this resource’s true value. Managing irrigation more sustainably is a good focus area. Encouraging hardier crops is positive. This needs building a market because when farmers see they can sell a certain crop, they will grow it — but there must be good economic reasons to do so. If the market signal is that water is abundant because it is very cheap, this encourages farmers to grow lucrative but thirsty crops which do well with a lot of water. To help people adopt hardier crops or practices, you need a holistic set of incentives. New varieties and technologies must respond to climate challenges spread over time — they should establish incentives that don’t let us squander key resources like water but use these more sustainably.