Climate change continues to put more livelihoods at risk as more than half of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean might be rendered unusable, a new report shows.
Bananas have had a history of representing the wealth gap in the globalized world. During the early to mid-20th century, the banana industry seized land, influenced politics, committed a massacre, and even overthrew a democratically elected government. All this activity had something in common with the climate crisis: the ones most affected by it were the ones least involved in causing it.
Today, bananas are the world’s most popular fruit. They yield all year round, they’re fulfilling, and they’re cheap. But according to a report by Christian Aid, “Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens The World’s Favourite Fruit,” the crop’s global supply is at risk as climate change threatens to render some key growing regions unsuitable.
Latin America and the Caribbean alone account for an estimated 80% of global banana exports. The direct and indirect effects of climate change could result in a 60% reduction in suitable land in this region by 2080, the Christian Aid report found.
Bananas require temperatures between 15 and 35 degrees Celsius for growth, and temperatures above 34 degrees can start to cause physiological heat stress. Growth of the crop stops at 38 degrees, and leaves die off by 47 degrees. They also require high humidity between 75% and 85%, cannot take high winds above 80 kph, and are sensitive to water shortages. As a result, erratic weather becomes an existential threat to the growth of the fruit.
“The greatest problem we are facing here in the community is the high heat, and how the climate here is affecting our plantations, our crops,” Sophia, a 48-year-old resident of Guatemala, told Christian Aid. “We have been experiencing this high heat for two years in a row now. The greatest issue is food production.”
Economic exploitation of countries like Guatemala was the reason the term “banana republic” was coined in the first place. Guatemala, being the fourth-largest exporter of the fruit with a value of US$1.15 billion, relies heavily on its production of bananas. This reliance on bananas could become disastrous for Guatemala as the country is significantly vulnerable to climate hazards and even ranks among the top five countries most affected by extreme weather events.
Most exported bananas are of the Cavendish variety, cloned specifically by fruit conglomerates for their decent flavor and high yield. This lack of genetic diversity exposes the crop to further vulnerability, such as diseases, due to its inability to evolve through natural selection by the spread of resistant genomes.
An example of this is the Black Leaf fungus, which reduces the ability of banana plants to photosynthesize by 80% and thrives in wet conditions, making erratic rainfall and flooding a major risk. The Cavendish banana also took its place as the standard export banana from a previous variety that was wiped out in the 1950s as a result of a different fungal disease.
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The crisis will affect societies outside of the Western world in more drastic ways. An average individual in Europe and North America eats about 12 kilograms of bananas per year, but those in Africa and Asia consume the same amount in a month.
This is evident when we consider that only 20% of bananas produced in 2020 were for export. India comes up as the world’s largest producer of the fruit but ranks only 12th in exports by dollar value. This is because for India, as well as other countries in South Asia, bananas are a more regular part of the diet.
In Africa, Tanzania is the second-biggest producer of bananas, and the fruit is responsible for generating income for more than 30% of the population. The effects of climate change will cause disastrous disruptions in food supplies and livelihoods in these regions.
“Bananas are not just the world’s favourite fruit, but they are also an essential food for millions of people,” said Osai Ojiho, the director of policy and campaigns at Christian Aid. “We need to wake up to the danger posed by climate change to this vital crop. The lives and livelihoods of people who have done nothing to cause the climate crisis are already under threat.”
Similar to the historic consequences of banana export, climate change is also a bigger threat to those who were least involved in causing it. Christian Aid calls for wealthy countries to set climate mitigation targets in line with the Paris Agreement and urges governments to demonstrate how they will do this when they present their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) at COP30 in Brazil later in 2025.
Furthermore, the organization also calls for a new “polluter pays” form of tax that would require countries that were responsible for the vast majority of historic emissions to contribute fairly to climate finance for developing countries.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Cover Photo Credit: Ries Bosch.
