Proposals to challenge hunger have become a common feature of international conferences since the 2008 food crisis. The 83% increase in food prices between 2005 and 2008 led to a massive surge in global hunger, as the number of hungry in 2008 increased from 854 million to 963 million in the space of a year. As warnings of political instability and social unrest grew, heads of state suddenly began to discuss food security. The political intent to combat world hunger, however, was short-lived. Perhaps the decline in crop prices that started in the middle of 2008 made the problem appear less severe for policymakers, while bank bailouts and automaker bankruptcies captured all the attention and resources.

The hunger crisis, however, is far from over. The number of hungry reached a historic high in 2009, with 1.02 billion people — one-sixth of humanity — going hungry every day. Despite an improved global cereal supply situation and a decline in international prices of most cereals from their highs in the first half of 2008, food prices remain high in developing countries (FAO, 2009b). Thirty-two countries face acute food crises. The economic crisis has worsened the situation by further shrinking the purchasing power of the urban poor and subsistence farmers in poor countries.

In the midst of this deeply entrenched epidemic of poverty and hunger, the G8 will announce a new initiative that seeks a more coordinated approach to food aid and development. The G8′s performance on its past commitments, however, casts a shadow on the sincerity of their intentions.

G8′s Record

At the height of the 2008 food crisis, G8 leaders highlighted food security at their summit in Hokkaido, Japan. The summit alone cost over $600 million — the annual budget of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is $400 million. The G8 spent half of this sum on a massive security operation involving some 21,000 police officers, coast guards, and soldiers. With much fanfare, the G8 communiqué on global food security committed $10 billion for food and other resources to increase agricultural production in developing countries. Despite the media glitz around the announcement, this was not new money, but a mere adding up of aid already pledged by the G8 countries. The G8 communiqué also included a commitment to “reverse the overall decline of aid and investment in the agricultural sector.” The commitment, however, failed to list any specific dollar amounts with a timeline.

Despite commitments, pledges, and grandiose communiqués by rich donor nations to challenge hunger at numerous international summits, world hunger persists. The problem lies in the fallacious explanations for the food crisis, and in the promotion of market and technology-based solutions to the problem.

With hunger framed as a crisis of demand and supply, the proposed solutions have primarily focused on boosting agricultural production through technological solutions like genetic engineering (GE) and chemical inputs. The G8 has also focused on removing supply-side constraints to ensure access to food through the liberalization of agricultural trade. Yet these very proposals contributed over the last several decades to undermining food security in the developing countries in the first place.

Free Trade = Freedom from Hunger?

While pledging commitment to fight hunger, the 2008 G8 communiqué reiterated its continued support for “the development of open and efficient agricultural and food markets.” Ministers at the G8 Farm Conference in 2009 also recommended open markets, urging an “ambitious conclusion of the Doha Round” of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the solution to the food crisis.

A recent speech by Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), also reflected this G8 logic that international trade will help solve the global food crisis. Lamy claimed that increased competition reduces prices and thus enhances the purchasing power of the consumers. Secondly, he argued, trade helps transport food from places where it can be produced efficiently to where there is demand.

This assertion that free trade will help solve hunger, however, is based on amnesia. Liberalization of agricultural markets has yet to deliver on the promised or expected gains in growth and stability in the developing world. In a submission to the Commission of Sustainable Development (CSD) in May 2009, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, pointed out that the multilateral trading system is “heavily skewed in favor of a small group of countries, and in urgent need of reform.” He was referring to how rich countries have used their heavily subsidized agriculture to help secure markets by flooding developing countries with cheap farm imports, making subsistence farming uncompetitive and financially unstable.

The dumping of cheap, subsidized food has converted developing countries that had once been self-sufficient, and even net exporters of agricultural products, into net importers. In the 1960s, developing countries had an overall agricultural surplus of $7 billion. By the 1970s, with the increase in imports, this surplus had shrunk to $1 billion. Most of the 1990s and 2000s saw developing countries turn into net food importers. In 2001, the deficit grew to $11 billion.

The worst impact of the indiscriminate opening of markets has been felt in the rural areas, where agriculture is the main occupation for most of the poor as well as a source of purchasing power. Increased imports have not increased food security in these areas. Also, the notion that further liberalization of agricultural markets increases access to food belies the fact that most people in countries classified as having “widespread lack of access” are unable to procure food because they don’t have enough money.

At the national level, the increased dependence on food imports has made developing countries more vulnerable to high prices. In 2008, for instance, many developing countries experienced shortages because the markets on which they have come to depend underwent changes in national food supply policies. The U.S. and European bio-fuel policy is a case in point. Corn production dedicated to bio-fuels, instead of food, increased scarcity in terms of both its market availability and food aid availability.

Also, measures previously available to governments to soften the effects of price volatility — such as controlling import and export volumes, managing domestic stocks, using price control and price support tools, consumer subsidies, and rationing systems — have been criticized or discouraged for distorting free trade. Free-trade advocates have deemed export bans of food, imposed by some 40 countries, including India, Egypt, and Vietnam in 2008, responsible for increasing prices. But these measures sought to protect national populations, especially the poor and vulnerable, against the global agricultural price shocks by ensuring national food availability below world prices before allowing exports to other countries

Freedom From Hunger through Technology?

After nearly two decades of declining aid for agricultural development, commitments to reverse the trend have become common at international summits. Olivier De Schutter, in his submission to the CSD, cautioned that increased investments in agriculture, while necessary, must be thought through carefully. The issue isn’t one of merely increasing budget allocations to agriculture, but rather “that of choosing from different models of agricultural development which may have different impacts and benefit various groups differently,” he said.

The first element of the food security initiative to be announced at the G8 meetings reportedly will focus on improving agricultural productivity and development. The G8 Farm Summit in April 2009 also promoted a technological agricultural revolution, for instance in genetically modified (GM) crops, to increase agricultural productivity in response to hunger.

A big player promoting genetic engineering as the panacea for global hunger has been the United States. During the Summit, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack warned that failure to boost agricultural productivity would cause fresh social unrest and urged the G8 to back the use of science in agriculture, including genetically modified organisms. On his return from Italy, much to the delight of biotech companies such as Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto, Vilsack pledged to bring a “more comprehensive and integrated” approach to promoting agricultural biotech overseas.

Similarly, former executive director of the UN World Food Program Catherine Bertini and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, have written of the “great promise” of a new Green Revolution that includes use of biotechnology. They advocate prioritizing food and agriculture in U.S. foreign aid. Recognizing that their plans might generate resistance, the authors write, “Although there is the potential for conflict over a hunger initiative on the issue of introducing more GM crops, this conflict is more likely to be with Europeans than with Africans or Asians, both of whom are increasingly inclined to accept the technology.”

Their thinking that developing countries can be arm-twisted into accepting GM crops is reflected in a new multi-billion dollar U.S. aid bill. Global Food Security Act (SB 384), also known as the Lugar-Casey Act, revises the 1961 Federal Assistance Act to direct more money toward GM research as part of U.S. foreign aid programs. The bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 2009 on the basis of hastily conducted, industry-friendly research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the biggest forces behind plans for a new Green Revolution in Africa.

But the promises of feeding the world with GM crops have so far proven to be empty. A 2009 report from the Union of Concern Scientists, which analyzed nearly two decades worth of peer-reviewed research on the yield of GM food/feed crops in the United States, demonstrates that genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase crop yields. Only one major GM crop, Bt corn, has achieved a 3-4% yield increase over the 13 years that it has been grown commercially. Even this growth is much less than what has been achieved over that time by other methods, including conventional breeding. The report contends that it makes little sense to support genetic engineering at the expense of technologies with better track records of increasing yields.

Other studies also demonstrate that organic and similar farming methods can more than double crop yields. Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, a study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP), found that organic or near-organic agriculture practices in Africa outperformed conventional production systems based on chemical-intensive farming, provided environmental benefits, and are more conducive to food security in the region. This analysis of 114 farming projects in 24 African countries found that organic practices resulted in a yield increase of more than 100%.

The study confirmed the findings and recommendations of the UN’s first ever evidence-based assessment of global agriculture for reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods, and working toward environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development. Known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, it called for a fundamental paradigm shift in agricultural development and concluded that genetic engineering is no solution for soaring food prices and hunger. It instead recommended low-input, low-cost agro-ecological farming methods that reintegrate natural systems into agriculture in order to maximize sustainability, ecosystem services, and biodiversity.

In the face of growing evidence, the G8′s continued focus on improving agricultural productivity through technologies like genetic engineering only serves the interests of biotech corporations. Monsanto, for instance, is running an advertising campaign in national newspapers like The New York Times as well as on National Public Radio claiming “its improved seeds help farmers double yields,” which is needed to feed the world’s growing population.

Building a Resilient Agricultural System

At the World Food Summit in 1996, heads of governments made a commitment to reduce the number of hungry people — 815 million then — in half by 2015. The latest hunger figures reveal a crisis spiraling out of control. The need to feed the world in ways that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable is even more urgent.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) recently pointed out that past reliance on technology jeopardized long-term sustainability with the overuse of chemical inputs. ESCAP’s report highlights evidence from hundreds of grassroots development projects that increased agricultural productivity through agro-ecological practices, while increasing food supplies, incomes, food access, and improving the livelihoods of the poor. ESCAP thus recommends investment in sustainable agriculture that prioritizes small-scale food production based on ecologically viable systems.

In 2008, 60 governments approved the IAASTD report’s call for a radical shift in agricultural policy and practice in order to address hunger and poverty, social inequities, and environmental sustainability. Recognizing that the past emphasis on increasing yields and productivity had negative consequences on environmental sustainability, the IAASTD report also promoted agriculture that is biodiversity-based, including agro-ecology and organic farming, for being resilient, productive, beneficial to poor farmers, adaptive to climate change.

These recommendations have yet to make it to the G8 agenda. If the G8 is indeed serious about its commitment to confront hunger, the member countries must stop the steady drumbeat of proselytizing for free markets and technological solutions to hunger. The Obama administration, which provided leadership to the food security initiative and injected purpose into the G8 meeting, could lead the way by recognizing the need for developing countries to have policy space to determine agricultural policies that meet the needs of their populations. It should encourage a genuine agrarian reform that will ensure farmers’ rights to land, water, seeds and other resources. By making local products competitive, such reform would sustain farmers’ livelihoods and incomes and assure national food security. This would require United States to cease making GMO crops and free trade a corner stone of its development and foreign policy.

In short, instead of promoting their old failed “development” formulas in new clothing, the G8 needs to take responsibility and support efforts of governments in developing countries to put in place or restore sustainable, equitable, and resilient agricultural systems.

U.S. officials at the G-8 summit in the earthquake-ravaged city of L’Aquila say the leaders have agreed to set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent for industrial countries by the year 2050. That would be part of an effort to cut total global emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels.

They also agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures by two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

On economic issues, the G-8 leaders affirmed their commitment to support financial growth, reject projectionist measures and keep markets open.

Some of the leaders toured L’Aquila for a look at the devastation from the April earthquake that killed nearly 300 in the area.

The leaders are also expected to discuss nuclear proliferation, world hunger, aid to developing countries, the political crises in Iran and Honduras, and ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang region.

U.S. President Barack Obama met with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in Rome before traveling to L’Aquila.

A series of aftershocks has plagued the area around L’Aquila and Italian officials say they are prepared to airlift G-8 leaders away from the summit site should another major quake hit.

The G-8 plan to meet with their counterparts from developing countries.

Well, it’s not likely to be an engine of growth of the past, namely, the U.S. consumer. Several regional growth engines are needed.

To be sure, the U.S. consumer will play a role: a $14 trillion economy — still, the world’s largest — remains an influential contestant in the GDP arena, but if the global economy hopes to achieve a balanced, sustainable growth track, consumption by consumers in the world’s other major economies have to play a larger role, so says economist Peter Dawson.

Dawson’s analysis assumes that the U.S. consumer will return — not to home equity loan-driven, frenzied, unsustainable consumption of this decade, but to a moderate growth track, after real median incomes start to rise after the U.S. economy starts to recover. The above is mentioned as a backdrop because some economic models assume severely-challenged U.S. consumption for several years; Dawson’s model is not one.

Still, even a moderate-growth U.S. consumer spending model does not invalidate the need for structural changes in the global economy.

“Citizens in China, India, Brazil / Latin America, Russia, and Japan have to consumer more,” Dawson said. “If they continue to depress demand through currency intervention or other mercantilist policies, it clouds the whole global recovery picture and timetable,” Dawson said. Dawson is optimistic about consumption growth in Russia, India, Brazil and the broader Latin American region. However, China and Japan remain problematic, for different reasons, he said.

“China has to allow foreign goods to circulate more freely in China, and it has to move away from any effort to devalue its currency [the yuan], as it will simply contract demand more by making foreign goods more expensive,” Dawson said.

“Japan’s problem is part demographic and part habit. Its aging population means its younger citizens will have to pick up the slack, in order for Japan to contribute to global consumption, on a net basis, but saving tendencies work against this,” Dawson said.

In sum, in the post global recession world, rising consumption in emerging markets must take place for sustainable growth to occur, Dawson said. “The economies and middle classes of Russia, India, Brazil are large enough to create more demand, and combined with developed world demand, this should be enough to get the global economy on a sustainable growth track,” Dawson said. “With those growth engines in place, consumer demand from China and Japan would be a bonus.”

Economic Analysis: The era of emerging markets pumping out goods, then counting on U.S. consumers to drive global growth is over. As economist Dawson noted, emerging market demand will be needed to both get the economy out of recession and on a sustainable growth track characterized by multiple engines of growth, not just one growth engine in United States.

It is profoundly obvious to me, as it is to Obama, that establishing an effective utilities structure is vital for survival. I played “Sim City” and “Oregon Trail;” I understand that you’ll die of dysentery if you don’t have enough clean water and bear meat. But I’ve also seen “WALL-E,” which I understand is a terribly prophetic indictment of carbon emissions and morbid obesity, and the post-apocalyptic Earth resulted from neither zombie plagues nor pale horsemen nor rap music. It came from (spoiler warning) us.

The fact of the matter is that America consumes too much and throws away too much. It also drives too much. Obama’s $150 billion could drop back into highway renewal; the smoke of our flaming cash could inflate the lungs of the ailing automotive industry. (Smoking kills, of course, so the metaphor at this stage breaks down somewhat.) But it would be far better invested in railways

Every component of every economy in the history of the world is based on moving things, and America has a lot of things to move and a lot of space in which to move them. According to the Association of American Railroads, trains are four times more efficient than trucks.

“But I like my car,” you say. Did you know that you don’t have to actually drive a train? You can sit and work. Or talk. Or read a book! I daresay you could sleep. Since locomotives are attached to rails, it is very difficult for them to get lost. Trains last for a long time, and you do not need to buy a newer one when you experience a midlife crisis.

And trains kill only a thousand U.S. citizens every year; roads ruthlessly slaughter 40 times that number. (In the UK, where passenger transportation per capita is more common, there are 2000 automotive deaths and only 150 related to rails.)

Many trains have lavatories. Some even tow dining cars, in which you can, say, enjoy an orange Fanta while you read this newspaper!

I do hope that Obama makes our roads safer and more green. But as long as he’s writing checks, I feel rather strongly that he should put a bit of his green into locomotives.

The study underscores the economic benefits of meeting federal air quality standards at a time when lawmakers and regulators are struggling with California’s commitment to protecting public health in a weak economy.

The $90,000 study does not propose any particular action. But in an interview, Hall said, “We are going to pay for it one way or the other. Either we pay to fix the problem or we pay in loss of life and poor health. . . . This study adds another piece to the puzzle as the public and policy-makers try to understand where do we go from here.”

The California Air Resources Board is scheduled to vote Dec. 11 on whether to adopt broader rules that would force more than 1 million heavy-duty diesel truckers to install filters or upgrade their engines. Truckers and agribusiness have argued against stricter regulation, saying it is too expensive for them to invest in clean vehicles at a time of economic uncertainty.

Mary Nichols, chairman of the air resources board, said the findings will “be useful to all of us. Our board members hear on a regular basis from constituents who are concerned about the costs of regulations, and seldom hear from people concerned about their health because they are collectively and individually not as well organized.”

In the meantime, the two regions continue to pay a steep price for generating air pollution ranked among the worst in the country. In the South Coast basin, that cost is about $1,250 per person per year, which translates into a total of about $22 billion in savings if emissions came into compliance with federal standards, Hall said. In the San Joaquin air basin, the cost is about $1,600 per person per year, or about $6 billion in savings if the standards were met.

The savings would come from about 3,800 fewer premature deaths among those age 30 and older; 1.2 million fewer days of school absences; 2 million fewer days of respiratory problems in children; 467,000 fewer lost days of work and 2,700 fewer hospital admissions, according to the study.

The study noted that attaining the federal standard for exposure to particulates would save more lives than lowering the number of motor vehicle fatalities to zero in most of the regions examined.

The hardest hit were fast-growing communities in Kern and Fresno counties, where 100% of the population was exposed to particulate concentrations above the average federal standard from 2005 to 2007. High rates of exposure were also found in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where diesel soot is blown by prevailing winds and then trapped by four mountain ranges.

Considered the most lethal form of air pollution, microscopic particulates expelled from tailpipes, factory smoke stacks, diesel trucks and equipment can penetrate through the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Exposure to these fine particles has been linked to severe asthma, cancer and premature deaths from heart and lung disease.

“In the South Coast basin, an average 64% of the population is exposed to health-endangering annual averages of particulates,” Hall said, “and in the most populated county — Los Angeles — it is 75%.

“In most years, the South Coast and San Joaquin basins vie with the Houston, Texas, area for the worst air pollution trophy, but this year we took it back,” she said. “That’s not a prize you want to be handed. Essentially, imported T-shirts and tennis shoes are being hauled to Omaha and the big-rig diesel pollution stays here.”

Nidia Bautista, community engagement director for the Coalition for Clean Air, described the findings as “staggering, and a reminder that health is too often the trade-off when it comes to cleaning the air.”

Angelo Logan, spokesman for the East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, put it another way: “At a time when government is handing out economic stimulus packages, we could use an economic relief package to help us deal with environmental impacts on our health, families and pocket books.”

Hall agreed. “This is a drain that could be spent in far better ways,” she said.

My Reality Solutions

To eradicate actions of global warming without developing any global damaging, a technology is invented and causing no harm to human dependent habitats for survival. This technology will supply electricity as if electricity is part of free gift of nature. The engine is real and working perfectly.

Aims of the technology

1. To eradicate the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oils- still yet every energy produced by fossil fuel can also be produced by using this technology.
2. To advance global electricity supplies (GES). Not depending on fossil fuel elements (Chemicals), Nuclear power generation, Solar, Hydroelectric dam etc before power can be generated.
3. To advance global transportation in such a way that there will be no more chance to burn fuel (gas, petrol …). Without using any fuel as source of energy, using this technology will advance global transportation- Land transportation, water-body, and air transportation.
4. To eradicate rising temperatures (global warming), floods, droughts, storms, volcanic dusts, spread of diseases and many more – using this my invented technology.
5. To advance global economy.

Note

The technology can not cause water vapour, machine’s heat radiations and industrial revolution…to be ineffective in environmental heating- Individuals can help in emission control of those elements.

We have only years, not centuries, to make the needed global change. The technology is available if can globally be accepted and put into general global use.

The first would force California trucks and big rigs crossing the state to install filters or upgrade their engines to reduce particulate pollution, while the second would require the use of existing technology to reduce greenhouse gases. The rules are scheduled to take effect 2010.

Diesel truck transport from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and the state’s agricultural industry in the San Joaquin Valley is the second largest source of nitrogen oxide emissions and toxic particulates.

While Southern California ports recently banned older trucks, San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles areas cannot meet federal air quality standards without stricter truck emission rules, air officials said.

Truckers and agribusiness interests have argued it is too expensive for truckers to invest the money in clean vehicles when gas prices are high and the economy is weakening.

But Air Resources Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said the state is offering industry more than $1 billion in loans and grants to help defray the costs. Nichols said the rules would “improve both public health and the economy, especially when you account for the reduced health care costs thanks to fewer hospital visits, mortalities and work days lost caused by exposure to big-rig diesel exhaust.”

They urged governments and citizens to take steps now to avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists presented a report detailing the disastrous consequences of climate change on the economy, tourism industry, coastline and agricultural production in nine states. The scientists said the goal of the assessment is to provide policymakers and business leaders with the best available science on which to base climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. “We’ve got a real problem when it comes to climate change — there is a clear and present danger,” New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine said before receiving the 145-page report, entitled “Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast.” It was compiled by 50 independent scientists from around the country.

The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline, are a leading cause of the heating of the planet, known as global warming. In New Jersey and other states, the multi-billion-dollar coastal tourism industry will suffer from even a slight rise in sea level that will result from a global rise in temperatures, the scientists said. Less snowfall and more ice storms will adversely impact New Hampshire, Vermont and other states that draw winter tourists for skiing, snowmobiling and the like.

In New Jersey, two of the state’s premier crops, blueberries and cranberries, would be threatened if temperatures rise by as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit by late century, as scientists predict if fossil fuels consumption continues to rise at current levels. Some impacts of global warming have already begun because of heat-trapping gases already in the environment. Some impacts are expected to happen whether or not anti-global warming strategies are adopted.

For example, Boston and Atlantic City, N.J., are projected to experience once-a-century flooding every year or two. Coastal flooding and erosion along the eastern seaboard is projected to occur regularly, costing billions. And, in Maine, Long Island Sound and other coastal regions, the lobster industry will be decimated by warmer sea waters, and cod are expected to disappear from those waters by the end of the century. The economic impacts of global warming extend to human health. With more days over 100 degrees, and more unhealthy air days, more people will suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments, and more will require emergency care due to extreme heat, the report says. The allergy season will last longer, and more people will suffer more serious effects. Because many pests thrive in warmer, dirtier air, farmers may be forced to use more pesticides and herbicides to protect their crops.

The scientists encourage several mitigation and adaptation strategies. They include reducing reliance on fossil fuels, building environmentaly friendly buildings, retrofitting older structures with green materials and technologies, and developing wise transportation and land-use policies. On a personal level, residents can buy energy-efficient products; drive hybrid cars, take mass transit or use a bicycle; and not waste energy, the scientists suggested.

“We have so much to lose in our state if we don’t act,” said Environmental Commissioner Lisa Jackson. The report comes five days after Corzine signed a law ensuring that New Jersey would be a leader in the fight against global warming. His Global Warming Response Act requires the state to reduce global warming gases to 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050.

New Jersey became the third state behind California and Hawaii to enact a comprehensive global warming law. But, New Jersey is the first state to set global warming targets so far into the future, and the first to require that energy imports adhere to New Jersey’s standards. Corzine said such action is vital on the state level since the federal government has failed to act on global warming.