Showing posts from category food security.
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Food Production Goes Global, Sparking Land Grabs in Developing World
›December 8, 2008 // By Will Rogers
As global food prices soar and population growth and urbanization shrink the supply of arable land, many countries have been forced to adopt new forms of production to secure their food supply. But instead of embracing sustainable land-use practices and improving rural development, some nations have shifted food production overseas, igniting a massive land grab in the developing world.
From the Persian Gulf to East Asia, governments and international companies alike have been lobbying developing countries in Africa and Asia to produce grain for food and alternative energy. The Guardian reported on November 22nd that Qatar recently leased 40,000 hectares of Kenyan farmland in return for funding a £2.4 billion port on the island of Lamu, a popular tourist site just off the Kenyan coast. The Saudi Binladen Group is said to be finalizing a deal with Indonesia to lease land for basmati rice production, while other Arab investors, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, have bought land rights for agricultural production in Sudan and Pakistan. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been “courting would-be Saudi investors,” despite his country’s own deplorable food insecurity and chronic malnutrition.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reported that South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics has been working to secure a 99-year lease for 3.2 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar that it will use to “grow 5 million metric tons of maize a year and 500,000 tons of palm oil” to use as biofuel in South Korea. The company says it expects to pay almost nothing besides infrastructure costs and employment training in return for its use of the land. Despite Madagascar’s rapid population growth and pervasive food insecurity, the deal, if signed, will allow the South Korean company to lease approximately half of the current arable farmland on the island state.
In an effort to combat a freshwater shortage, China has secured an agreement with Laos for a 50-year lease of 1,600 hectares of land in return for funding a new sports complex in Vientiane for the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. And with only 8 percent of the world’s arable land and more than one-fifth of the world’s population to feed, China continues to encourage its businesses to go outside China to produce food, looking to developing countries in Africa and Latin America.
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, recently warned that these deals are a “political hot potato” that could prove devastating to the developing world’s own food supply, as several of these states already face severe food insecurity. Diouf has expressed concern that these deals could breed a “neo-colonial” agricultural system that would have the world’s poorest and most malnourished feeding the rich at their own expense.
And with land rights a contentious issue throughout the developing world—including in Haiti, Kenya, and Sudan, for instance—these agreements could spark civil conflict if governments and foreign investors fail to strike equitable deals that also benefit local populations. “Land is an extremely sensitive thing,” warns Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute. “This could go horribly wrong if you don’t learn the lessons of history” and attempt to minimize inequality.
As food prices continue to climb, more and more countries are likely to scramble to gain access to the developing world’s arable land. Without land-use agreements that ensure a host country’s domestic food supply is secure before its foreign investor’s, long-term sustainable development could be set back decades, something impoverished developing countries simply cannot afford.
Photo: A man threshing in Ethiopia. Long plagued by acute food insecurity, Ethiopia’s arable land is sought by more-developed countries to ensure the stability of their own food stocks. Courtesy of Flickr user Eileen Delhi. -
Can Haiti Change Course Before the Next Storm?
›November 14, 2008 // By Will Rogers
Though the floodwaters have finally receded, Gonaives—Haiti’s third-largest city—remains buried in 2.5 million cubic meters of mud, one in a long list of miseries plaguing those desperate for relief. Four major storms have ravaged Haiti since August, and recovery and reconstruction are projected to span several years and cost upwards of $400 million. While the international community has committed $145 million in disaster relief—nearly $32 million from the United States alone—the price tag for long-term development assistance could well exceed these early estimates as the extent of the damage becomes clearer. But reconstruction efforts could be moot if Haiti fails to adopt environmentally sustainable development practices. -
PODCAST – Lester Brown on Climate Change and Energy Security
›November 13, 2008 // By Wilson Center Staff“When looking at what we need to do, I think stabilizing climate, stabilizing population are the two big ones. If we fail at either of those…civilization is in serious trouble,” warns Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC, in the latest podcast from the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). Following a recent event, “Thinking Outside the Grid: An Aggressive Approach to Climate and Energy,” co-sponsored by Wilson Center on the Hill and ECSP, Brown elaborated on the themes of his latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, and addressed climate change’s impact on natural resources, food security, and energy independence. He argues that the United States must critically re-examine its energy infrastructure and invest heavily in alternative energy technologies. -
Weekly Reading
›“[T]he careful management that helped make Alaskan pollock a billion-dollar industry could unravel as the planet warms,” warns Kenneth Weiss of the Los Angeles Times. “Pollock and other fish in the Bering Sea are moving to higher latitudes as winter ice retreats and water temperatures rise. Alaskan pollock are becoming Russian pollock, swimming across an international boundary in search of food and setting off what could become a geopolitical dispute.”
Poor rains, lack of infrastructure, and a shortage of skilled technicians have contributed to water-related disease and local-level water conflicts in Zimbabwe, reports IPS News.
If the Tripa peat forests in Sumatra continue to be cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, not only will the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan shrink further, but millions of tons of CO2 will be released into the atmosphere, accelerating global climate change, reports the Telegraph.
A report on Somalia by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that one in six Somali children under the age of five is acutely malnourished and estimates that 43 percent of the country’s population will need humanitarian assistance through the end of the year. According to the report, poor rains, in addition to the worst levels of violence since 1990, have contributed to the humanitarian crisis.
“The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India’s Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food,” says an article from Reuters.
The current issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (some abstracts available) focuses on the links between climate change and public health.
“Can Conservation Succeed with 9 Billion People?,” a panel at the recent Conservation Learning Exchange, was described as a “bang-up session” by Margaret Francis, who blogged about it. -
Netting the Most From Improved Fisheries Governance
›October 7, 2008 // By Will Rogers
“Frequently, we forget that environmental management is all about institutions and governance, and the decisions and trade-offs that we make,” said the University of Washington’s Patrick Christie at “Governance of Marine Ecosystem-Based Management: A Comparative Analysis,” a September 29, 2008, event sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). “And of course they need to be informed by ecological principles as well. But when it comes down to it, you’re managing individuals, institutions, [and] budgets.” Christie believes that as more and more marine species move dangerously close to extinction—whether from overfishing, pollution, or habitat destruction—ecosystem-based management (EBM), which governs ecosystems according to ecological rather than political boundaries, offers the best approach to marine conservation. This meeting was the final event in ECSP’s “Fishing for a Secure Future” series.
Decentralizing EBM
For Alan White of The Nature Conservancy, the Coastal Resource Management Project (CRMP), initiated by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1996, exemplifies EBM’s success. Working in 111 coastal municipalities in the Philippines and covering approximately one-sixth of the country’s coastline, CRMP helped managers of municipal fisheries and marine protected areas (MPAs) collaborate with coastal law enforcement agencies to restore fish populations. EBM can be achieved, argued White, by allowing local municipalities to control simple regulatory schemes—so long as they are simultaneously sharing information with larger-scale networks. However, “the local governments have to be the ones to pay for this; they can’t be dependent on foreign donor projects or even large NGOs. It’s got to be sustained through the mechanism of governance and governments in those areas,” he said.
The Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) regional action plan, drafted by the CTI’s six members—Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands—is designed to make ecosystem-based fisheries management “more mainstream in the region,” said White. Among the many factors decreasing fish populations in the region are illegal and commercial fishing, chemical poisoning, industrial pollution, coral bleaching, typhoons, and aquarium fishing, he noted, and to effectively address these problems, local municipalities and larger-scale actors must coordinate their strategies.
Curbing Illegal Fishing in the Philippines
Tetra Tech’s Nygiel Armada explained that the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvests (FISH) Project in the Philippines’ Danajon Bank ecosystem demonstrates how improving control mechanisms can combat illegal and commercial fishers’ activities. The FISH Project focuses on improving control mechanisms, including the network of MPAs; species-specific management; gear restrictions; size limits on fish; registration and licensing; and zoning of fishing and water activities. Strengthening these mechanisms and combining them with cross-cutting initiatives such as information, education, and communication campaigns; better policies; and collaboration with law enforcement agencies led to more fish.
“Governance is only as strong as your weakest link,” emphasized Armada. The weakest municipalities—those that allowed illegal fishing practices to continue and failed to enforce control mechanisms—weakened overall gains. To sustain fish stocks and improve governance, all localities must work together to enforce control mechanisms.
Marine Governance, Large and Small
“As scale increases, and complexity increases, and control and potential for coordination become less feasible, there’s really [a] need to pay increasing attention to the context within which governance is taking place,” maintained Robin Mahon of the University of the West Indies, who studies the Caribbean large marine ecosystem. As Mahon argued, “policy cycles at all levels are important because different types of decisions take place at each level.”
Video of the event and PowerPoint presentations are posted on the Woodrow Wilson Center website.
Photo: Patrick Christie. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Energizing Investors and Innovators to Think Outside the Grid
›October 2, 2008 // By Will Rogers“The issue of our time is the combination of energy security and climate change,” said former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert at “Thinking Outside the Grid: An Aggressive Approach to Climate and Energy,” a September 23, 2008, forum co-sponsored by Wilson Center On the Hill and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Boehlert noted that the energy security-climate change nexus has received more attention lately, due to record gas prices; successful advertisement campaigns like that of Texas oil magnate-turned-wind farm entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens; and bestselling books like Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America.The Ice Thins and the Plot Thickens: Climate Change Impacts
Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, pointed to the faster-than-expected melting of Arctic ice as an indicator of the severity of the climate crisis. Last year, an ice sheet the size of the
Investing in Technology to Create a Sustainable Future
We may be able cut carbon emissions enough to prevent the Tibetan glaciers and
Brown believes we can create a sustainable energy future by increasing our investments in existing alternative technologies, including wind, solar, and geothermal projects. One of the leading generators of wind energy, Texas currently has more than 4,000 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity, enough to meet the energy needs of` more than 1 million households.
While skeptics claim it would take decades to restructure
Industry and Government: Each Must Play a Role
Melanie Kenderdine, associate director of MIT’s Energy Initiative, noted that energy companies such as BP and Shell are gradually investing more money in cleaner technologies, and that venture capitalists have also put funds into renewable alternatives. Still, Kenderdine emphasized that “the enemies of urgency are many,” so governments must exercise leadership on energy innovation. Ninety percent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s budget “is not for energy, has nothing to do with energy,” decried Kenderdine. “And if we don’t fix that, we’re not going to be able to rapidly develop the technologies and do it in the right way with the right incentives, right sequencing of investments that we need in order to deal with the climate issue—we won’t be able to accomplish it.”
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Drought, War, Refugees, Rising Prices Threaten Food Security in Afghanistan
›September 23, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarDrought, continuing violence, returning refugees, and the spike in global food prices are combining to produce a serious threat to Afghan food security, reports the New York Times. The World Food Program has expanded its operations in Afghanistan to cover a total of nearly 9 million people through the end of next year’s harvest, sending out an emergency appeal to donors to cover the costs.
According to a report published earlier this year by Oxfam UK,[W]ar, displacement, persistent droughts, flooding, the laying of mines, and the sustained absence of natural resource management has led to massive environment degradation and the depletion of resources. In recent years Afghanistan’s overall agricultural produce has fallen by half. Over the last decade in some regions Afghanistan’s livestock population has fallen by up to 60% and over the last two decades, the country has lost 70% of its forests.
A post-conflict environment assessment conducted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2003 confirms these dire trends in further detail. “In some areas, we found that up to 95 percent of the landscape had been deforested during the conflict—cut for fuel, bombed to remove cover, or removed to grow crops and graze livestock. Many people were fundamentally dependant on these forests for livelihoods. Without them, and without alternatives, Afghans were migrating to the cities or engaging in other forms of income generation—such as poppy production for the drug trade—in order to survive,” writes UNEP’s David Jensen in a forthcoming article in ECSP Report 13.
Despite the fact that agriculture has traditionally employed or supported approximately 80 percent of Afghans, says Oxfam, donors have vastly underinvested in the sector, spending only $300-400 million over the past six years directly on agricultural projects—a sliver of overall aid to Afghanistan.
Not only does hunger have negative impacts on health and economic growth, it could also make the security situation worse. “Development officials warn that neglecting [agriculture and development in] the poorest provinces can add to instability by pushing people to commit crimes or even to join the insurgency, which often pays its recruits,” reports the Times. In addition, an Oxfam International survey of six Afghan provinces found that land and water were the top two causes of local disputes.
To head off greater food insecurity and potential threats to overall stability, Oxfam UK recommends the development of a comprehensive national agricultural program; improved land and water management capacities; and greater support for non-agricultural income-generating activities, such as carpet-making.
Photo: An irrigated area near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan. Courtesy of UN Environment Programme (source: Afghanistan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment). -
Somalia Battered by Drought, Food Shortages, Worsening Violence
›September 5, 2008 // By Will Rogers
“The humanitarian nightmare in Somalia is the result of a lethal cocktail of factors,” writes Ken Menkhaus in a recent ENOUGH strategy paper, Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” launched this week at the Wilson Center (video). Menkhaus was joined by Chris Albin-Lackey, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, and Harun M. Hassan, a Somali journalist and writer based in Washington, DC, for a discussion of the political and humanitarian situation in Somalia, which is ranked first on the 2008 Failed States Index.
The country has been plagued by “18 years of state collapse, failed peace talks, violent lawlessness and warlordism, internal displacement and refugee flows, chronic underdevelopment, intermittent famine, piracy, regional proxy wars, and Islamic extremism,” writes Menkhaus. Over the past 18 months, severe drought and increased attacks against relief agencies have left 3.2 million Somalis in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Two-thirds of Mogadishu’s population—700,000 people—has fled the city for Somalia’s harsh countryside, where they lack access to food, clean water, basic health care, livelihoods, and support networks.
Fighting between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopian troops, and regional militias has exacerbated food shortages, as TFG and Ethiopian troops target local markets, including the Bakaara market in Mogadishu, in retaliation for militia attacks. With drought “killing off livestock and reducing harvests in farming areas” and the economy crippled by violence and an outbreak of counterfeiting, food prices have skyrocketed.
Although Menkhaus rightly mentions a few of the situation’s environmental aspects, such as the drought’s role in the food crisis, he neglects the role population growth has played. The 2008 Failed States Index ranked Somalia as the state with the most demographic pressure – a significant indicator of state instability – (tied with Bangladesh). According to the Population Reference Bureau, Somalia has a total fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman and an annual rate of natural increase of 2.7 percent. With 45 percent of the population under 15, Somalia’s youth bulge increases the likelihood of continued violence; in addition, if Somalia ever does find peace and stability, its government will be hard-pressed to meet the needs of all its citizens for jobs, health care, and education.
Humanitarian agencies in Somalia have attempted to provide relief, but they face rampant extortion, corruption, and intimidation. According to Menkhaus, “uncontrolled and predatory TFG security forces, along with opportunistic criminal gangs, have erected over 400 militia roadblocks (each of which demands as much as $500 per truck to pass).” In addition, since May 2008, jihadist cells in Mogadishu operating under al-Shabaab, “a hardline military faction of the Islamist movement,” have stepped up attacks against relief workers and are assassinating “any and all Somalis working for western aid agencies or collaborating with U.N. and Western NGOs.”
Somali piracy has made humanitarian shipments to sea ports a treacherous task. According to Albin-Lackey, Somalia’s second-largest port, Kismaayo, fell to al-Shabaab militants last week after weeks of fighting between the Islamic group and TFG security forces, cutting off a crucial delivery point for humanitarian shipments. According to Menkhaus, with human insecurity worsening, Somalis who would not otherwise support fundamentalism will become more vulnerable to recruitment from criminal gangs and terrorist cells, including al-Qaeda. And although the Djibouti Accord was signed last month between the TFG and a faction of the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, experts are pessimistic that it will do anything to end the violence.
Photo: Internally displaced people (IDPs) flee the escalating violence in Mogadishu for IDP camps on the outskirts of the city, where newcomers build their own makeshift shelters. Courtesy of Abdurrahman Warsameh and ISN Security Watch.
