In ranking climate change last month as the highest risk facing the World in 2011, the WEF glitterati meeting at Davos also connected the proverbial dots between climate change and economic disparity (ranked 3), extreme weather events (ranked 5), extreme energy price volatility (ranked 6), geopolitical conflict (ranked 7), flooding and water security.
The consensus emerged that the entire world is in deep and desperate trouble.
Yet even as analysts cite food shortages and rapidly accelerating wheat prices as an underlying cause of the unrest sweeping throughout the Middle East, no one has succeeded in putting a human face behind this grim, devastating reality.
While discussions are replete with talk of the swelling power of social networking and its role in the people's revolt against archaic, often externally-imposed dictatorial rule, no one is really concerned with what's going to happen when the streets clear. What happens when and if the world's most poor and repressed, most vulnerable achieve freedom? Nobody seems to be answering the question -- How and what will they eat?
(Photo by Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 2011)
Lets be clear: Food insecurity Is NOT a past or future threat. It is here. Now. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last month reported that world food prices hit a "historic peak,' the highest in the 20 odd years since they first began the index. The reasons? The FAO cites greedy speculators, rising demand, increased population, extreme weather, and faulty futures markets.
In fact, as much as 115 million acres of farmland around the world -- the bulk of it in Africa -- are leased to foreign investors. It's commonplace for African farmers to have little more left after harvest than a bag of corn, some nuts and melons.
But none of this is news here. We all know about the Third Pole, about how the survival of three billion people (half the world’s population) is in serious jeopardy due to dwindling freshwater runoff from the Himalayas. We know about the dire situation in the Middle East, where drought is expected to be so extreme that current crops will not be able to withstand the heat. We are aware that China's self-sufficiency in terms of homegrown grain supply (a key factor in stabilizing food insecurity over the past few years) is a key catalyst in food insecurity as its northern regions are ravaged by ongoing unprecedented drought. Chinese leaders, well aware of the role droughts have played historically in rebellion and the overthrow of past governments, are treating the current water shortage as a critical issue. China: Self-sufficiency Threatened by Drought
"China's grain situation is critical to the rest of the world – if they are forced to go out on the market to procure adequate supplies for their population, it could send huge shockwaves through the world's grain markets ... "
And then, of course, there is Africa, as expertly documented in the recent article Hunger and food security: Is Africa selling the farm?, a sobering account of just how desperate the poorest of the poor are to feed their families.
The Right to Food
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the right to food as a human right, incorporating it into Article 11 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This was adopted globally as law by fifty six nations. General Comment No 12 of the UN interpretation of the right to food is also included in the 1999 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights .
"The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement".
Flashbacks
Madagascar, 2009: Hunger feeds a Coup
In March 2009, civilian protesters led by a baby-faced former disc jockey swarmed through the streets of this hilly capital city. They were calling for the ouster of then-President Marc Ravalomanana for what they saw as literally giving away the farm, selling out his impoverished nation
The anger was about food. Mr. Ravalomanana reportedly had leased 3.2 million acres – nearly half the island nation's arable land – to a South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, for 99 years. In theory, it should have been a win-win deal: Daewoo would pay Madagascar $6 billion to grow corn and oil palm, helping South Korea meet both its food-security and bio-fuels needs, while providing Madagascar with revenues and desperately needed jobs.
Mozambique bread riots may be warning sign on African food security
Last September, Aly-Khan Satchu wrote from Nairobi, Kenya, of his "supreme conviction that global food markets are but the perturbation of a butterflys' wing away from a serious tipping point. In fact, I would venture that the best way to play the narrative fallacy that is the "Global Climate Change Denial Camp" is via buying a basket of breakfast commodities and grains," he wrote. "There are more of us, our average calorific intake is a multiple of what it was, and we have toasted the planet -- capping global agricultural output. Narrowing that perception gap and converting it into real action is going to be like herding cats."
As world population heads toward a peak, Malthusian worries reemerge
And earlier this month, CSM Editor John Yemma discussed Thomas Malthus' analysis of the perpetual imbalance between food and people as being one systemic method of population control: More food = increased population: More people = food shortages. Either, results in a collapse in population.
Students who learn of Malthus’s grim prediction usually take away two lessons. The first is the sharp contrast between arithmetic and geometric progression. Food supplies grow slowly, Malthus said. But consumers multiply like rabbits. A geometric progression outstrips an arithmetic one every time.
The second lesson is about why Malthus’s catastrophe hasn’t occurred. Most scholars think it is because the 19th-century Anglican parson didn’t have sufficient regard for technology and innovation. From the “green revolution” to global trade, from drip irrigation to entrepreneurial ingenuity, Homo sapiens learn and improve. We farm better, manage resources more carefully, and as education increases, birthrates fall.
Bangladesh and food security by J.Bergsma, IFPRI
Solutions
Hunger and food security: One way to create an African breadbasket. The government of Zambia is involved in a 14-year project with the Zambian firm Chobe Agrivision to lease 25,000 acres of land for agricultural use. Three hundred locals have been hired to harvest maize, soy and wheat for Zambia and neighboring countries. The program moves Zambia's economy from the boom and bust 'addiction' to mining for subsistence into a sustainable model for development.
Unlike Madagascar and Mozambique, Zambia has enough arable land for exporting crops while growing enough to feed its population. "The land is here," Machile says. "You can't pick it up and move away with it."
The Food First Information and Action Network ( FIAN) last week participated in a series of programs at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Dakar in a panel “Stop land grabbing; defend the right to food and the rights of peasants.” In conjunction with Amnesty International and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), FIAN demanded a "new international instrument to demand social justice: The new United Nations complaints mechanism for violations of the rights to food, housing, health, education and water."
IFPR Meeting in India. Photo by IFPR
And this past weekend, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPR) conducted a workshop in India which addressed the problem of food security through a three-pronged approach which ties together health, nutrition and agriculture.“Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health”
“We are standing face to face with some serious challenges: hunger, malnutrition, and poor health are denying billions of people the opportunity for a healthy, well-nourished, and productive life. Agriculture, which played a key role in feeding billions of poor in the world in the past, faces more volatile growing conditions due to changing climate and scarcer resources because of urbanization and population growth.”
(Watch videos, see pictures and read reports here . )
Last year, an IFPR's project detailed a framework to address solutions for coping with food insecurity as a result of population growth and climate change using modeling techniques to evaluate 15 different scenarios through 2050. The publication concludes:
The negative effects of climate change on food security can be counteracted by broad-based economic growth—particularly improved agricultural productivity—and robust international trade in agricultural products to offset regional shortages. In pursuit of these goals, policymakers should increase public investment in land, water, and nutrient use and maintain relatively free international trade. This inquiry into the future of food security should be of use to policymakers and others concerned with the impact of climate change on international development.
Food security, farming, and climate change to 2050
Can the world's farmers meet the growing demand for food as an uncertain climate future adds to food security challenges from a growing population with higher incomes? IFPRI partnered with StatPlanet to offer Food Security CASE Maps: interactive Climate, Agriculture, and Socio-Economic maps underlie the analysis in IFPRIs latest report: Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050. (Nelson, Gerald C., Mark W. Rosegrant, et al. Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050: Scenarios, Results Policy Options. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute. Start the tour here.
The EcoJustice series discusses environmental justice: the disproportionate impacts on human health and all living things as a result of climate change, extreme weather, and pollution. A key focus of our writing is the environmental impacts on minority communities in countries around the world. A key tenet of Environmental Justice is that all living things have a right to clean, healthy and sustainable communities.
Today, the concept of Environmental Justice extends to include such related issues as climate, food and ecosystem justice.
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