Bill Gates warns of food crisis: Climate change worsens the situation

The world is facing a serious food crisis, further exacerbated by climate change, warned Bill Gates. The Microsoft founder and philanthropist emphasized that hard-won progress in children's health is at risk unless wealthy countries increase their aid where it is most urgently needed. Without immediate global action, between 2024 and 2050, approximately 40 million additional children could experience stunted growth, and 28 million could suffer from wasting, becoming weak and emaciated, according to Gates. These conditions are "the most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition." The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stated that climate change is already threatening food security because declining global crop productivity and higher food prices force people to resort to cheaper, less nutritious products. The foundation's annual Goalkeepers Report, released on Tuesday, showed that between 2000 and 2020, a "global health boom" reduced the child mortality rate by 50 percent. However, this progress has "brutally come to a halt" since the coronavirus pandemic. Increased defense spending for Ukraine as well as the Middle East were among the factors causing Western countries to hesitate in donating. The loss of funding is particularly severe in Africa, whose share of total foreign aid has fallen from nearly 40 percent in 2010 to just 25 percent – the lowest percentage in 20 years. This puts millions of children at high risk. Rising debt burdens mean that some African nations are "spending more on interest payments than on health and education combined," said Gates, adding, "Cuts in aid budgets are harmful." According to the World Bank, malnutrition in the form of impaired physical and cognitive abilities results in productivity losses amounting to approximately 3 trillion USD per year. In low-income countries, this loss can account for about 16 percent of GDP, according to the Goalkeepers Report. Increased investment in poorer countries would also help detect health crises early before they become global pandemics. "The last one cost us over a trillion dollars," Gates told the Financial Times. "Supporting these primary health systems [...] is a fantastic insurance policy." Gates emphasized that aid should be allocated where it can have the greatest impact, including the Child Nutrition Fund, a new platform for coordinating donor financing. Governments must also "fully fund the established institutions that have proven effective at saving millions of lives annually," such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, which improves vaccination access for children in the poorest countries. Both organizations plan funding rounds next year. Gates said the Gavi board had originally planned to raise 20 percent more funds but scaled back its ambitions and now aims to collect the same amount as five years ago: about 2 billion dollars annually. However, even this target is uncertain. Rising CO₂ emissions will reduce the nutritional value of key crops by lowering the iron and zinc content in daily diets, the foundation explained. But if malnutrition can be addressed, "it will be easier to eliminate extreme poverty; vaccines will be more effective; and deadly diseases like malaria and pneumonia will be far less lethal," Gates said in the report. Approaches that could help reduce malnutrition include agricultural technologies that yield two to three times more milk from cows, new techniques for fortifying salt and bouillon cubes, and the expanded distribution of prenatal vitamins and micronutrient supplements, which cost only $2.60 for an entire pregnancy. The Goalkeepers Report focuses on assessing progress towards the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. An analysis by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, commissioned by the foundation, contributed to the forecasts.