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Food Security

Forum for the Future is running an event for some of our partners in the built environment almost exactly one year on from this time last year. I’ve just reviewed the stuff we shoved at them a year ago – on climate change, energy security, peak oil, spatial planning, inequality, prospects for economic growth, and so on – and it’s quite mind-boggling to see how much the world has changed in the last year! And because the focus is on the built environment, I didn’t even mention things like food security which has “suddenly” soared up the global agenda.

I put ‘suddenly’ in those ironic speech marks simply because one of the most shocking things to have emerged in all the panic calls uttered recently by the UN and others is the degree to which this current crisis has been predicted by experts time after time – as politicians disregarded global food agendas, and research budgets were cut and cut again in the times of plenty.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has now summoned world leaders to an emergency summit in June, and set up a new Taskforce to put forward ways of dealing with the crisis. The World Food Programme has said it needs to find an additional $750 million to cope with the combination of growing numbers of people in need and rapidly rising food prices.

So, food security is back on the political agenda. Climate change is omni-present. Peak Oil is rising. The credit crunch is the new player on the block. Resource wars are looming. Rainforest destruction just won’t go away. Species loss is as bad as ever, but no one cares – for now. Water shortages are chronic.

But much, much more worrying are the linkages between all these notionally “separate” phenomena. The synergies, feedback loops, interdependencies. At long last, people are starting to make the connections – and are even beginning to link all those separate symptoms back to their root cause: today’s literally insane notion of getting richer by trashing the planet and screwing the poor.

Don’t hold your breath, but pretty soon you might even hear one or two of them start talking about population. And then you’ll know revolution is on the way.

Posted by Mariam Saleemi on May 8, 2008 11:15 AM |

Comments (5)

Food security...food waste...

http://www.wrap.org.uk/Thefoodwewaste

Posted by Kate Potter | May 8, 2008 11:35 AM

Everytime I confront my parents with peak oil, resource shortage or global warming, they tell me that this was a doom-scenario even 20 years ago - which turned out to be wrong... so no need to worry too much!

Posted by simp | May 8, 2008 12:24 PM

There is no doubt that the population issue is the 800-pound gorilla in the room (sorry for the cliché). Population has been ignored by the environmental movement for so long now that I wonder if it will ever get the recognition that is needed to actually make sufficient difference to change what looks more and more likely to be the fate of our species with every passing day. It would indeed be a revolution if it became addressed on a serious and fundamental level. However, as a matter of my own personal short term survival, I am not holding my breath. Just as we've overshot on the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, it seems to me that we've overshot on the population level. Now, the good news is that, when the inevitable contraction of the population occurs, the capitalist system that relies on growth will finally collapse under its own weight because contraction is the one thing that capitalism cannot deal with.

In the long term, I am not worried at all. In 1,000,000 years I am confident that some sort of intelligent post human species, our descendants in some form, will roam the earth. There won't be fossil fuels for them to foul it up with again, and I suspect that nuclear will be completely taboo. There won't be many of them; there'll be room for them to roam. Our culture won't even be glimpsed in the rear view mirror — and that's what so many of us our really worried about, isn't it? Being remembered. And that's one of the reasons why people go on reproducing at such a ridiculous rate. Yes, it'll be a revolution alright when we get control of our gonads. But, first, we need to understand our subconscious better. It won't be a rational process. We need more mythology.

Posted by Jonathan Evelegh | May 8, 2008 7:09 PM

I tried to get some views on population from Friends of the Earth a little while back. They replied at great length and in some detail but ultimately avoided the 'controversial' issue by saying what should done to avoid climate change and therefore there will not be a problem. I groaned.

I can only applaud people like Jonathon Porritt who look at things in the round and are brave enough to say that population explosions by a predator species such as ourselves is not good for the planet or the predator.
It is interesting that population was considered a problem in decades such as the '70's but not now.

Posted by David Young | May 12, 2008 10:45 PM

Saw Jonathon on Newsnight last night, and am staggered that people are able to argue against his logic/truths. One of the great failings of a democracy is that leaders won't grasp issues such as overpopulation, as it will invatiably be unpopular, and therefore lead to them losing their jobs.

Global food shortages are finally having an impact now. Due to the high increases in fuel prices, fertiliser prices (Nitrates the most important fertiliser are manufactured from fossil fuels) are also increasing substantially (about 300% over the last ten years). Most of the farmers that i speak to in the UK are talking about easing back on the amount of fertiliser that they use, and sacrificing some of the yield. Along side this there is increasing desertification in China, and climate change is causing significant crop losses all over the world. Assumptions that new technology and inovation will increase food supply are extremely dangerous, and the problems that we face now will deteriorate significantly in the future if the population continues to grow, and we have to rely on agriculture without man made fertilisers.

Posted by Roddy Findlay | May 30, 2008 11:55 AM

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