Climate change is ‘killing' the world's favourite fruit, growers warn

Euronews

12-05-2025

The world's best banana growing areas are at risk from the climate crisis, a new report warns.
Latin America and the Caribbean currently export around 80 per cent of bananas globally, filling supermarket shelves with the world's favourite fruit.
But 60 per cent of the region's most suitable banana growing areas could be lost by 2080 due to rising temperatures and extreme weather, according to research from international development charity Christian Aid.
'Climate change is impacting banana farmers around the world, who are battling daily with unpredictable weather patterns, scorching sun, floods, hurricanes, and increased pests and diseases,' says Anna Pierides, Fairtrade Foundation's senior sustainable sourcing manager for bananas.
The banana is beloved globally, but is of special importance to some of the world's poorest people. More than 400 million people rely on bananas for 15 to 27 per cent of their daily calories, making it the fourth most important food crop after wheat, rice and maize.
'Climate change has been killing our crops. This means there is no income because we cannot sell anything,' says Aurelia Pop Xo, a 53-year-old banana grower in Guatemala.
'What is happening is that my plantation has been dying. So, what has been happening, is death.'
The climate crisis is hitting banana plantations in myriad ways. Bananas need a temperature range of between 15-35°C to thrive, but are also very sensitive to water shortages, the report states.
Storms are a big problem as they shred leaves, making it harder for the crop to photosynthesise. Fungal infections are also an increasing threat due to rising temperatures, with one such disease, Fusarium Tropical Race 4, causing the loss of entire plantations.
'Without systemic change, we risk witnessing the devastation of the Cavendish banana [the dominant variety] to Fusarium Tropical Race 4, a fungal infection that attacks the roots of plants and can lead to the complete loss of farms and plantations,' explains Holly Woodward-Davey, project coordinator at Banana Link, which works across the banana supply chain.
'The disease is now found in key supplier countries of European supermarkets, such as Colombia and Peru.'
For Aurelia in Guatemala, the greatest threat her community faces is the high heat, which has struck for two years in a row, leaving her banana trees 'folding down and dying'.
'In the past, there was a prediction that this would happen in the future, but it has come earlier, and this is because we are not taking care of our motherland, our ecosystems, and this is very worrying for our kids and especially for our grandkids,' she adds.
Christian Aid, food campaigners and experts are calling for action at different levels to protect the popular fruit and those who cultivate it.
To tackle the issue at its root, richer, polluting nations must urgently reduce their carbon emissions, the development agency says.
As part of the Paris Agreement, countries will this year submit new national climate action plans, which will update their emissions reduction targets, notes Osai Ojigho, director of policy and campaigns at Christian Aid.
'This is a huge opportunity for countries to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy whilst also ensuring climate finance reaches people in desperate need of it,' she says. 'World leaders must not slip up.'
Christian Aid is also calling for banana growers and agricultural communities to receive targeted support from international climate finance to adapt to the changing climate.
Meanwhile, consumers are being urged to help by choosing Fairtrade produce, which ensures a greater amount is paid to farmers.
'The UK has among the highest per capita consumption of bananas in Europe, yet our legacy of low supermarket prices only serves to devalue bananas,' argues Pierides. 'With the increasing effects of climate change and rising costs, we must make sure banana farmers aren't left paying the price for our low-cost fruit.'
Seeking out organic bananas also helps counter the high use of chemical fertilisers in the production of the fruit, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and can damage local ecosystems.
'The climate crisis and the associated biodiversity crisis demand a rethink of industrial food production systems, which depend on the use of increasing amounts of harmful chemicals,' says Woodward-Davey.
The ubiquitous curvy yellow fruit that springs to mind when we think of bananas is actually only one variety of the species: the Cavendish.
It is named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire in England, who received a shipment of them from Mauritius in 1834 and proceeded to have his gardener cultivate them in the greenhouses of his stately home, Chatsworth House.
The cultivars were shipped around the world, and became the top banana in the 1950s when Panama disease devastated the Gros Michel ('Big Mike') variety which formerly held that position.
It was initially assumed that Cavendish cultivars were more resistant to the disease, but recent outbreaks of Panama disease TR4 in the Caribbean and elsewhere have upended that hope.
Since Cavendish bananas are unable to reproduce sexually and are propagated via identical clones, their genetic diversity is very low, rendering them vulnerable to disease.
With climate change exacerbating the spread of TR4, experts like Sally Musungu - an environmental researcher with the Schlumberger Foundation - think we 'urgently need to move beyond the Cavendish and explore the rich genetic diversity within banana species'.
'Fortunately, a rich pool of genetic diversity exists within banana species, including hundreds of under-researched varieties with potentially valuable climate-resilient traits,' she says.
'By exploring this genetic diversity and leveraging emerging tools such as gene editing, we can accelerate the development of new banana varieties that can better serve farmers and adapt to future climate conditions.'
The bishop sat quietly near the front row, hands folded, listening as Indigenous leaders and church workers spoke about the threats to Peru's northern forests, a part of the Amazon rain forest. It was 2016, a year after Laudato Si, Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment.
When he was up to speak, the bishop didn't preach though he was in his city of Chiclayo as host of a regional gathering. Instead, he reflected on things he had seen.
'It's a very important encyclical,' he said. 'It also represents something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church's concern for all of creation.'
That bishop, Robert Prevost, is now Pope Leo XIV.
'He was always very welcoming, very close to the people,' Laura Vargas, secretary of the Interreligious Council of Peru, who helped organise the event, recalled in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
'He had no problem saying yes when we proposed it — he was genuinely interested in social pastoral work.'
Since then, Prevost deepened his ties with interfaith environmental networks like the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative and Indigenous organisations such as AIDESEP, which place forest protection and rights at the centre of Church concern.
Such credentials have brought hope to clergymen and faithful in the Amazon region, a vast area with 48 million residents and 6.7 million square kilometres in South America. They see Chicago-born Prevost, who spent about two decades in Peru's countryside, as a pontiff who protects the region and fights against climate change.
Many Catholics have said they believe Prevost's experience as bishop of Chiclayo, a city of 630,000 residents in Northern Peru and not too far from the Amazon, was one of the key reasons he was chosen.
They also said the pontiff's hands-on experience in an impoverished area far from major cities could also serve him well in dealing with the Amazon and navigating its challenges.
The Amazon is a key regulator of the climate, as its dense forests absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that, when released into the atmosphere, heats the planet. But many parts of the Amazon are under threat from a wide range of illegal activities: farmers clearing trees to raise cows, gold miners dredging rivers and destroying local ecosystems and land-grabbers seizing territories.
Wildfires and droughts, exacerbated by climate change, have also hit Amazon communities hard in recent years.
Prevost is well acquainted with these issues, having presided over the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which helped him bond with colleagues of the nine countries touched by the Amazon. Many of them are among the 105 bishops of an organisation he openly supports, the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network, a Catholic Church network focused on the Amazon region.
'I spoke to him a number of times about the Amazon and the environment. He doesn't need to be convinced of its importance,' said Cardinal Pedro Barreto, the president of the network, who has known Prevost since he became the bishop of Chiclayo in 2015.
Brazilian Friar Paulo Xavier agrees.
'Leo will follow Francis; we are going forward with environment protection," Xavier said. 'The Holy Spirit has acted on our behalf.'
Xavier is based in Manaus, a city of 2 million residents in the Amazon, which received its first-ever cardinal appointed by Francis in 2022: the now 74-year-old archbishop Leonardo Steiner, an enthusiast of Laudato Si.
Steiner, Xavier and the Manaus archdiocese have invested to get the encyclical into the hands of locals, even when that means jumping on small, motorized canoes through the brown waters of the Negro River to reach isolated villages in journeys that can last days on a boat.
In November 2024, the Vatican News reported that Prevost called for more action to tackle climate change and protect the environment during a seminar in Rome. He cited efforts the Vatican has taken, such as installing solar panels and electric vehicles.
On the social media platform X, Prevost has reposted messages about protecting the environment. One message he reposted on April 1, 2017, expressed concern about emissions of carbon dioxide, a planet-warming gas, during President Donald Trump's first term.
Laura Vicuña, an Indigenous woman of the Kariri people and the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon Region, said in a letter published on social media that she hopes the pope will be an ally in the fight against climate change. The conference was created by Francis in 2020 to promote discussion between clergymen and laypeople.
'From our dear Amazon, we plead with you to be our ally in the defence of what is the most sacred for us; life, land and rights,' Vicuña wrote.
Indigenous peoples like Vicuña's Kariri are often regarded as key protectors of the Amazon, but for many years they have been forced out of their lands by criminals, deforestation and famine, as seen in the Yanomami lands in Northern Brazil in 2023.
Spaniard Luis Ventura, the executive-secretary of Brazil's Indigenous Missionary Council, said he prays for the new pope to keep his eyes close to the Amazon, with special attention to the Indigenous communities. Founded in 1972, the council had rare occasions to meet with pontiffs until Francis rose in 2013. Its members hope Leo doesn't change that.
'Leo XIV will have a big impact on the Amazon," said Ventura. 'His life was always with the people in Peru, and that allows us to think the church will be deep into the territory.'
Francis showed great interest in the Amazon during his pontificate. Four years after Laudato Si, he hosted the Amazon Synod, which sought 'new Paths for the Church and for an integral ecology.'
Rose Bertoldo, one of the secretaries of the Manaus archdiocese, said she is hopeful for the region's future under Leo, given that it would build on Francis' interest. She added the new pontiff will have a chance to visit Brazil, the nation with the most Catholics in the world, during this year's UN climate summit, known as COP30, in the Amazonian city of Belem in November.
'We know that the urgencies and the challenges in the Amazon will be bigger because of the global political context of division. We need him at COP,' Bertoldo said.
Irish priest Peter Hughes, who spent most of his life in Peru, met Prevost shortly after he arrived in the Andean nation in 1985. They quickly became friends and would see each other when the bishop of Chiclayo was in the capital, Lima.
'Back then, (Prevost) was worried about extractivism in the Amazon and the effect it had on the poor," said Hughes, referring to the new pontiff. 'Now it is a much more complex world, the urgency is evident.'