Showing posts from category food security.
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Growing Food Insecurity Threatens Ethiopians With HIV/AIDS
›June 27, 2008 // By Kai CarterPlusNews recently reported on the harmful impact of rising food prices on HIV-positive Ethiopians. According to the nation’s Central Statistical Agency, the price of food has increased 40 percent since last year. The situation has been particularly devastating for those with HIV, as poor nutrition weakens the immune system and “hastens the development of HIV into AIDS.” For those on antiretrovirals, malnutrition reduces the treatment’s effectiveness and increases its toxicity to the body. As Gideon Cohen of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) explained, antiretroviral treatment “can’t work if people aren’t eating enough.”
The consequences extend far beyond HIV-positive individuals themselves, however. For infected mothers who have been advised against breastfeeding, purchasing milk or formula drastically increases household expenses and is often unaffordable. In addition, HIV augments adults’ energy requirements by 10-30 percent. Without sufficient nutrition, it becomes difficult for these individuals—who constitute almost eight percent of Ethiopia’s urban population—to work and provide for their families, undermining food security even further. So as the current food crisis threatens the lives and livelihoods of the HIV-positive in Ethiopia, it also increases the rest of the population’s susceptibility to the virus and other illnesses.
Unfortunately, this problem is not a new one. At a 2006 Wilson Center event, Jordan Dey, director of the U.S. Relations Office at WFP, said, “Hunger weakens immune systems, increases vulnerability to disease, and creates a platform for disability.” A Wilson Center On the Hill event today from 12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building will examine what the United States can do to relieve the global food crisis.
According to PlusNews, WFP’s HIV/AIDS feeding programme in Ethiopia has exceeded its budget by 44 percent, and has had to borrow funds from other UN programmes. This alarming situation illustrates the severity of the situation in Ethiopia and calls not only for increased humanitarian aid, but also for mechanisms to ensure long-term food security. Nations will not be healthy, prosperous, and peaceful until their people are properly nourished and given the chance to develop to their full capacity. -
In Ethiopia, Food Security, Population, Climate Change Align
›June 24, 2008 // By Daniel Gleick“The only future is resettlement,” a local Ethiopian official recently told the Economist, commenting on dire conditions in the Goru Gutu district, which is facing starvation following unpredictable rains and insect infestations. “Ethiopia has been synonymous with disastrous famine since the 1980s,” notes Sahlu Haile in “Population, Development, and Environment in Ethiopia“, his award-winning article for Environmental Change and Security Program Report 10. In fact, writes Haile, “the agricultural sector—the mainstay of the national economy—is less productive per capita today than it was 20 years ago.”
If resettlement were to take place in Goru Gutu, roughly 4,000 people would have to be resettled every year, and the government has a budget equal to only a fraction of the task. In addition, previous resettlement attempts have been disastrous. According to Haile, “previous resettlement programs were not voluntary…neither were they based on serious economic, social, and environmental studies.” As a result, they led to hardship for the migrants and to conflict with local populations, who felt threatened by the newcomers.
In “The Missing Links: Poverty, Population, and the Environment in Ethiopia,” Mogues Worku points out that in coming years, a rapidly growing population—the result of a lack of access to family planning and education among women—will put additional stress on the country’s ability to feed itself. In addition, Worku explains that climate change “has intensified these environmental problems by altering the region’s rainfall patterns.” Ethiopia’s population and climate challenges will likely lead to additional pressure for resettlement, paving the way for possible conflict. There are many national and international NGOs doing impressive work in Ethiopia on food security, family planning, sustainable livelihoods, and other issues, but much work remains to be done. -
In Egypt, Record Food Prices Lead to Family Planning
›June 12, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoAt Egypt’s National Population Conference on Monday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—whose government has struggled to respond to recent civil unrest over skyrocketing food prices and bread shortages—told attendees that high population growth is a “major challenge and fundamental obstacle” to development. The following day, Egyptian Minister of Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali announced an $80 million national family planning program with the slogan “Two children per family—a chance for a better life.” Egypt’s current fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman.
With a population of 81 million, Egypt is the 16th most populous country in the world, and, according to Philippe Fargues of the American University in Cairo (AUC), excluding the desert, Egypt has the highest population density in the world—twice that of Bangladesh.
Is the government’s plan a productive long-term response to the food crisis? How can it be part of a larger package? Or is population a distraction from the real issue of corruption, as identified by interviewees in the Washington Post article where I first read about the programs.
I posed these questions to a demography and security listserv and got some interesting responses. According to Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University, a political scientist known best for her book Bare Branches on the security implications of imbalanced male-female population ratios: “Mubarak would do more to achieve his goal of 2.0 children per woman by a focused plan to raise the status of women, for example, by:- Outlawing polygamy, or erecting such high legal barriers to it that it becomes impractical
- Fully implementing CEDAW [the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women]
- Enforcing the ban on FGM [female genital mutilation]; 97% of Egyptian women are circumcised
- Educating women on a parity with men; the median number of years of schooling for men is 6.3; that for women is 4.4
- Raising average age at first marriage for rural women (current average is 19)
- Creating more parity in family law for women in matters such as divorce, inheritance, etc.—all of which can be found in CEDAW.”
“I don’t think population pressure is a distraction from the real issue of corruption; though the government of Egypt is indeed corrupt by developed-world standards (or maybe by any standard). Corruption, which is symptomatic of state weakness, limits the ability of the Egyptian government to address this problem credibly and effectively. But it doesn’t mean they are wrong about the problem.
I was actually struck by the modesty of official ambition to reduce the fertility rate from 2.7 (which is slightly above the world median, apparently) to 2.0 (which I’m guessing is pretty close to the middle). This assumes that, basically, a steady state population of, say, 100M Egyptians would be sustainable indefinitely. I’m not so sure of that. The impact of anticipated climate change on Egypt may prove quite formidable by the end of this century. I’m not sure a leveling off after some additional increase will do the trick….Too pessimistic? I hope so.” -
IPCC Head Says Climate Change Could Be “Problem for the Maintenance of Peace”
›April 24, 2008 // By Sonia Schmanski“The impact of climate change is going to be most likely so harmful that it would threaten governments,” said 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner and chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra K. Pachauri in an interview with Reuters earlier this week. Pachauri focused his remarks on Africa, whose one billion people are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and whose governments frequently lack the capacity to adapt to the impending changes.
“If the situation in Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world, then if the world has a conscience it has to remove that scar,” Pachauri said. While a number of high-profile conflicts in Africa’s recent history have revolved around natural resources, Pachauri warned that environmental change could soon eclipse the so-called “resource curse” as a driver of conflict, citing research predicting that by 2020, climate change could leave between 75 million and 250 million additional Africans without access to water and could reduce the yields of farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture by half. “Climate change has the potential to be a problem for the maintenance of peace,” he said.
The rapidly worsening global food crisis has hit certain parts of Africa particularly hard—instigating riots in Egypt and Burkina Faso, for example—and with food and water becoming increasingly precious commodities, dire outcomes seem increasingly likely. “The answer,” Pachauri said, “is for developed nations to realize that we are living on one planet. We are all inhabitants of spaceship earth.” But, he conceded, “we are nowhere close yet.”
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In the Philippines, High Birth Rates, Pervasive Poverty Are Linked
›April 21, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarAn article in today’s Washington Post explores the interconnected problems of poverty and rapid population growth in the Philippines. Many factors contribute to the country’s high poverty rate, including corruption and traditional land ownership laws, but a birth rate that is among the highest in Asia is also significant. Eighty percent of the Filipino population is Catholic, and both the influential Catholic Church and the current government—in power for the last five years—oppose modern family planning methods. Filipinos are permitted to buy contraception, but no national government funds may be used to purchase contraception for the millions who want it but cannot afford it.
The situation may be poised to worsen, notes the Post: “Distribution of donated contraceptives in the government’s nationwide network of clinics ends this year, as does a contraception-commodities program paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development. For years it has supplied most of the condoms, pills and intrauterine devices used by poor Filipinos.”
Yet the story is not entirely gloomy. A recent brief by Joan Castro and Leona D’Agnes of PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. describes IPOPCORM, a development program that has successfully delivered family planning services to impoverished Filipino communities while simultaneously promoting environmental conservation and overall human health. Based on this success, some municipal governments in IPOPCORM’s service areas have set aside money in their budgets to purchase family planning commodities directly. A major conference in 2008 (building on an earlier conference in 2006) addressed population, health, and environment connections in the Philippines; featured speakers included former Congressman Nereus Acosta and Joan Castro. -
Can Fragile Nations Survive the Food Crisis?
›April 17, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiMeeting with world economic ministers in Washington, DC, this past weekend, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that IMF and World Bank officials “now need to devote 100 percent of our time” to ensuring political and democratic stability in the countries hit hardest by the global spike in food prices. He added that development gains made in the last five or ten years are in danger of being “totally destroyed.” Recent unrest in a number of developing countries—including Haiti, where the president was ousted last week, partially due to anger over food prices—underlines the urgency of this crisis.
Asian countries like the Philippines and Vietnam, which have spent the last decade working to strengthen their economies, may see their significant gains erased under this new economic strain. And they may be among the relatively lucky countries, with government ministries in place to provide subsidies and shield their populations from the worst effects of sky-high prices. In contrast, many sub-Saharan African countries have no safety net beyond reliance on international organizations like the World Food Program.
In many developing countries, where families typically spend between half and three-quarters of their total budget on food, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says that there “is no margin for survival.” Citizens in developing nations may abide corrupt governments while they are at least marginally able to feed their families, but when even that becomes impossible, “normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose,” reports Time magazine. “What Haiti’s riots show,” argued an op-ed in the Jamaica Gleaner, “is that there cannot be a secure democracy without food security.”
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Rising Food Prices Destabilizing Dozens of Countries
›March 12, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiRising prices for staple crops like rice, wheat, and corn—driven by growing demand, poor harvests in some regions, the high price of oil, and the conversion of many crops to biofuel—have spurred recent protests in Mexico, Morocco, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal, where people are becoming unable to afford to feed themselves and their families. Last week, the European Union announced its largest food aid package ever, dedicating $243 million to Africa, Asia, and the
Last month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that skyrocketing food prices have caused 36 countries to need external food assistance, and noted that many of these countries have seen their food shortage difficulties exacerbated by extreme weather or violent conflict. Earlier this month, the FAO released a report showing that climate change will likely diminish agricultural output in the Middle East and North Africa. (Visit the FAO’s World Food Situation Portal for more valuable data and reports on food scarcity.)
Some developing countries have found it more economical to import food than produce their own, which has simultaneously decreased global food supply and increased demand. In addition, when developing countries like China and India do achieve greater prosperity, this generally leads to higher consumption of meat and dairy products, which require more grain—and eight times more land—to produce than vegetables and staples.
Experts and leaders agree that boosting agricultural production should be a top international priority. “It is clear,” said John Beddington, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, “that science and research to increase the efficiency of agricultural production per unit of land is critical.” In addition, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently suggested that a “Green Revolution” in Africa could help increase efficiency and food security. (Read more on prospects for a Green Revolution in Africa here.)
Speaking last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, World Bank President Robert Zoellick called hunger and malnutrition “the forgotten Millennium Development Goal” and argued that “increased food prices and their threat—not only to people but also to political stability—have made it a matter of urgency to draw the attention it needs.”
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Refugees’ Bushmeat Consumption Threatening Tanzanian Wildlife
›January 31, 2008 // By Liat RacinLacking adequate protein in their diet, refugees in Tanzania are eating chimpanzees and other endangered species, says a report by the international wildlife conservation group TRAFFIC, a joint project of the World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). “Relief agencies are turning a blind eye to the real cause of the poaching and illegal trade: a lack of meat protein in refugees’ rations,” said George Jambiya, the lead author of the report, which urges humanitarian agencies to supply refugees with legal, sustainable wild meat.
In response to the report’s assertions, Christiane Berthiaume of the UN World Food Programme, which feeds 215,000 refugees in Tanzania, said that meat spoils quickly, and substituting canned meat for the cheaper beans that currently supply the refugees with protein would cost an additional $46 million over the estimated $60 million currently dedicated to feeding refugees in Tanzania during 2007 and 2008. An IUCN press release argues that not providing East African refugees with meat is inequitable, given the provision of corned beef to Croatians, Slovenians, and Serbians displaced during the early 1990s.
The decimation of the wildlife surrounding refugee camps is threatening local non-refugee communities that depend on wildlife for food and income. Smaller wildlife populations also make these areas less attractive to tourists, another source of income.
