NUTRItion and CLIMate (NUTRICLIM): investigating the relationship between climate variables and childhood malnutrition through agriculture, an exploratory study in Burkina Faso

Sorgho, Raissa; Franke, Jonas; Simboro, Seraphin; Phalkey, Revati; Saeurborn, Rainer

Abstract

Malnutrition remains a leading cause of death in children in low- and middle-income countries; this will be aggravated by climate change. Annually, 6.9 million deaths of children under 5 were attributable directly or indirectly to malnutrition. Although these figures have recently decreased, evidence shows that a world with a medium climate (local warming up to 3–4 °C) will create an additional 25.2 million malnourished children. This proof of concept study explores the relationships between childhood malnutrition (more specifically stunting), regional agricultural yields, and climate variable through the use of remote sensing (RS) satellite imaging along with algorithms to predict the effect of climate variability on agricultural yields and on malnutrition of children under 5. The success of this proof of purpose study, NUTRItion and CLIMate (NUTRICLIM), should encourage researchers to apply both concept and tools to study of the link between weather variability, crop yield, and malnutrition on a larger scale. It would also allow for linking such micro-level data to climate models and address the challenge of projecting the additional impact of childhood malnutrition from climate change to various policy relevant time horizons.

Citation

Sorgho, R., Franke, J., Simboro, S., Phalkey, R., & Saeurborn, R. (in press). NUTRItion and CLIMate (NUTRICLIM): investigating the relationship between climate variables and childhood malnutrition through agriculture, an exploratory study in Burkina Faso. Public Health Reviews, 37(16), https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-016-0031-6

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 22, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Oct 6, 2016
• Deposit Date: Nov 2, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 2, 2016
• Journal: Public Health Reviews
• Electronic ISSN: 2107-6952
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 37
• Issue: 16
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-016-0031-6
• Keywords: Malnutrition, Low- and middle-income countries, Climate change, Stunting, Remote sensing, Weather
• Public URL: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/38414
• Publisher URL: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40985-016-0031-6
• Copyright Statement: Copyright information regarding this work can be found at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
• Additional Information: The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/; publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.