Can vegetable gardens fight climate change?

The cultivation of fruit and vegetables in the garden is already seen as environmentally friendly, but it could also be a weapon in the fight against climate change.

This was the experience of a community in Bangladesh, whose rice crop - the source of their food and income - was ruined when the seasonal rains came.

It was in April 2017 that the rain came to the northeastern flood plain of the Sylhet division, ruining the rice crop. It should have come two months later.

Farmers have lost most or all of their crops. It didn't mean income - and not enough food - for their families.

Scientists warn that climate change is affecting the crops people can grow and the nutrients they get in their food.

Sabine Gabrysch, professor of climate change and health at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin in Berlin and the Potsdam Climate Impact Research Institute, said: "It's so unfair because these people didn't contribute to climate change."

Speaking to the BBC at a conference of health and climate experts in Berlin, organized by the Nobel Foundation, prof. Gabrysch said: “They are directly affected by climate change, because then they lose sustenance and lose their nutrients. children suffer more, because they are growing rapidly and need a lot of nutrients. "

Even before the first rains, she said, one third of women were underweight and 40% of children chronically malnourished.

"People are already on the verge of existence where they suffer from many diseases and do not have much to reject", added prof. Gabrysch. "They don't have insurance."

He is conducting a study on the impact of floods in the Sylhet division and is working with over 2.000 women in villages across the area,

Half said their families were significantly affected by the flood. The most common way they tried to cope was to borrow money, mainly from lenders who charged high interest rates, and families went into debt.

The team had already started educating the community to grow their own food in their gardens, on higher ground, where they could grow a more nutritionally varied crop of fruit and vegetables and keep the hens.

The professor. Gabrysch said: "I don't think it can honestly compensate for the loss of the rice crop, because it's their livelihood, but at least it can help them to some extent."

But even when rice - and other starchy foods that people in developing countries rely on - grow well, climate change can mean that it is not as nutritious as it was.

Prof. Kristie Ebi, from the University of Washington's Global Health department, studied nutrient levels.

He found crops like rice, wheat, potatoes and barley now have higher concentrations of carbon dioxide. This means that they need less water to grow, which is not as positive as it might seem, because it means that they absorb less micronutrients from the soil.

Moving diseases
Research by Prof Ebi's team found that the rice crops they studied had, on average, a 30% reduction in B vitamins - including folic acid, crucial for pregnant women - compared to normal levels ,

He said: “Even today in Bangladesh, as the country gets richer, three out of four calories come from rice.

“In many countries, people eat a lot of starch as a main component of their diet. So having fewer micronutrients could have very significant consequences. "

And she warns that a warming world also means that diseases are on the move.

“There are great risks from diseases that are carried by mosquitoes. And there is a greater risk from diarrheal and infectious diseases.

“As our planet warms up, these diseases are changing their geographical area, their seasons are getting longer. There is more transmission of these diseases.

“And many of these mainly concern children. That's why we are so concerned about what this means for maternal and child health, because they are at the forefront. They are the ones who are seeing the consequences. "

Traditionally seen as tropical diseases are moving north.

Germany saw the first cases of West Nile virus transported by mosquitoes this year.

Sabine Gabrysch said: "The spread of infectious diseases is something that makes people understand that climate change is also coming to us."

Nobel laureate Peter Agre warns that climate change means that diseases are moving - with some unseen in the places where they were established, and others appearing in new places - in particular moving to higher altitudes as temperatures rise , something that has been seen in South America and Africa.

This is important because people who live in the tropics have traditionally lived at higher altitudes to avoid disease.

The professor. Agre, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2003, warned that there should be no complacency and that as the heated temperatures move.

“The famous phrase is 'it can't happen here'. Well, it can. "