Dear WCF,
The new website is beautiful. I find great ease in navigating and finding the sought-after information. Thinking of you all here in the DR, and glad to hear of a successful Partnership Meeting. Keep up the great work.
Best regards, Lillian

CLIMATE CHANGE: Impact on Food Security and Nutritional Status at Tanzania State
Climate change due to human activity causes global warming which has both direct and indirect impact on the food security situation and by extension nutritional status, of a nation’s population. Food insecurity easily translates to malnutrition due to inadequate or inconsistent food supplies thus inadequate nutrients needed for energy provsion, growth and development as well as protective roles. Climate change often leads to environmental pollution and degradation; this predisposes the population to influx and progression of illnesses. The increasing disease burden usually hampers food intake, absorption and reduces utilization of the little food while increasing the demand for recovery.

Effects on food security:-
Both drought and floods resulting from climate change leads to famine and lowered food production and thus food insecurity.
Severe drought results in repeated crop failure or minimal produce.
Reduced and unpredictable rainfall interferes with food production seasons.
Flooding destroys crop in the farms and also affects livestock rearing.
Too much rainfall and extremely high temperatures also lead to crop and livestock diseases and thus heavy losses for both subsistence and large scale farmers.
Crops also get destroyed during storage where there is a lot of humidity and inflated temperatures arising from changes in climate.(aflatoxins)
Prolonged drought leads to massive deaths of livestock especially in pastoral communities. This therefore, drains off their purchasing power which is a prerequisite to food security.
Extreme drought or flooding makes roads impassible notably arid and Semi-Arid Land(ASAL areas with inferior road facilities thus poor food transportation which affects food availability and accessibility.

Effect on nutritional status
The impact of climate change on the nutritional status is associated with food insecurity and poor health due to vector borne diseases, food and water-borne diseases such as diarrhea. All these contribute to poor nutritional status (malnutrition) thus directly aggravating the effect of climate change on public health in general.
Food insecurity (lack of or inadequate food) means that the vulnerable population does not take adequate food to provide for their energy and micronutrient needs.
Vector borne diseases increases demand for nutrients that are already in short supply worsening the nutritional status while worsening the illnesses.
Food-borne diseases may result due to limited water supply leading to poor food hygiene practices. Water-borne diseases may occur in the event of flooding where the water supply is contaminated. These two situations may result in diarrhea diseases which in turn with utilization of title food available.
Those displaced by floods or exposed to drought relies handouts that are also likely to be nutritionally inadequate especially to the vulnerable groups.

Climate Change Development Goals
The effect of climate change on nutritional status and thus health is likely to curtail the achievement of the Development Goals that are directly related to nutrition, namely
Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger
Reduction of child mortality
Improvement of maternal health
Combating HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases

What can be done at national or community and individual level?
It is, however encouraging that to ensuring environmental stability and developing a global partnership for development will immensely contribute in reversing the trend and life threatening effects of climatic change. In order to achieve the aforementioned the strategies captioned below must be adopted to avert both long and short term dangers of climatic change:
Government to strengthen Early Warning Systems to warn and educate farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture of impending dry spells or excess rainfall.
Disease surveillance and response be strengthened.
Carry out nutritional assessments
Provide clean and safe water supply and proper sanitation
Farmers must have access to and use hardy and drought resistant crop varieties to adoption to climate change
Adoption of early maturing crop breeds to counter projected temperature increases and shifts in rainfall patterns which are likely to decrease growing periods
There is need to work in partnership with all stakeholders to promote both adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Scale up agricultural production in high rainfall areas to ensure safe and optimal food production hence compensate for low rainfall regions
Improve storage facilities, especially for grains to avoid pos-harvest contamination associated with. Heightened pilferage rates as well as decline in quality of produce

I hope that other big players in the world economy would do the same thing of creating sustainable strategic designs that will help the environment from degrading. Some call it guilt-free marketing, but it does help us create a greener environment.