World Food Day: risk of nuclear famine

MAPW President Dr Jenny Grounds writes: Today is World Food Day which highlights the continuing disparities in food supply around the planet. On this day let us acknowledge that nuclear weapons present a huge threat to production of food.

The Nuclear Famine Report released earlier this year by International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War shows that even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons, between say India and Pakistan, a not unimaginable scenario,would cause such climate change as to reduce crop production across Asia and North America by up to 10% for a decade or so. This would mean mass starvation to the death of the nearly one billion people already chronically malnourished.

The poor would suffer most but no communities would escape the consequences of a such a disruption in agricultural production. A total elimination of nuclear weapons is needed to prevent such a cateclysm arising through the eruption of violent conflict between nuclear armed states.