The average citizen may think that climate change only means that temperatures rise every summer by an average of one and a half or two degrees, which is not a big number for him, but this understanding is simply wrong, because climate change changes everything.
We're not just talking about heat waves or increasing hurricane rates and strengths, dust and sand storms, but it's up to what we eat on a daily basis. A new study from the University of British Columbia suggests that nutrients available in seafood, such as proteins in general, and supplements such as omega-3s, could be reduced by 30% in low-income countries by the end of the century.
This came in a study published by the team in the journal "Nature Climate Change", in which they explained that seafood is usually a staple in the diets of low-income countries, and therefore represents a barrier to malnutrition for those countries.
There is expected to be a significant reduction in the number of fish available for fishing due to climate change (Shutterstock)
Even fish
The study targeted 4 nutrients essential to human health and available in seafood, namely calcium, iron, protein and omega-3 acids, and on this basis they studied historical fish availability ratios, 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 nineties, and then remained stagnant until the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Predictive climate models found that there is expected to be a significant reduction in fish populations available for fishing due to climate change. Calcium, for example, will be the most affected, with a 15-40% reduction expected by 2100 in the diets of the populations of those countries, and omega-3 declining by about 5-15%.
The study also suggests that even as countries try to compensate for this shortfall through fish farms, climate change will limit the effectiveness of this method, because it makes the environment in general unsuitable for fish farms, making disease rates higher and fertility rates decreasing.
The same will happen to all countries of the world, where researchers expect nutrient availability from seafood sources to decrease by 4 to 7 percent as average temperatures rise by one degree Celsius. But the reason for the low percentages in rich countries is that there are other sources of that nutrient.
In low-income countries that rely on marine food resources, milk and cheese are scarce commodities, and citizens get their calcium needs only from fish, but in the case of rich countries, milk and dairy products are abundant.
Seafood rich in omega-3s but will see a 5-15% drop due to climate change (Pixaby)
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 about 10% in low-income countries if the world can achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming by no more than one and a half to two degrees.
Unfortunately, recent research reports have shown that humanity is not on track to achieve these percentages. In the absence of international agreement on the matter, deep political turmoil in different parts of the world, such as China and the United States, the war in Ukraine, or the Israeli war on Gaza fully supported by the United States, 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 and power plants, cars, airplanes and others, causing carbon dioxide to exceed 400 parts per million, more than a third of what existed before the Industrial Revolution.
Unfortunately, the harshest effects of climate change, from heat waves, droughts, severe impact on agricultural activities to what citizens eat daily, fall on countries that are usually low-income and contribute very little to global warming.