Lester R. Brown
For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security.
We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recent projections show that it could rise by up to 6 feet during this century.
By Govind Singh •
October 6, 2009
Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
By Kay Sexton •
September 21, 2009
El Nino is blamed for changing rainfall patterns, and that, combined with inadequate harvests and increasing conflict has led to a drop in cereal production already affecting Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. This could increase the number of people relying on food aid.
By Kay Sexton •
September 9, 2009
China has lost nearly 90% of the wheat varieties that were grown across the country sixty years ago and India grows only 10% of the rice varieties that appeared in its fields a hundred years ago.
By Kay Sexton •
September 3, 2009
The tendency of African nations to invest in non-food crop is worrying the FAO which says that private and foreign ownership of large tracts of African land could destabilise local communities who will be deprived of access to water, food and other natural resources
By Kay Sexton •
August 28, 2009
Many thousands of Kenyans are enduring a severe drought, caused in part, it is believed, by cutting down ancient forests.
By Kay Sexton •
August 19, 2009
Subsistence farmers in Bolivia have been given help to change their technology – moving away from pipe and sprinkle irrigation systems to an aeons-old technique of hand-built raised clay platforms that are surrounded by canals.
By Kay Sexton •
August 13, 2009
Drought is something we think of as being substantial and dramatic – months in which rain doesn’t fall, monsoons that never happen. But the truth about drought is that it is much more insidious – when average rainfall drops, crops fail even though rain happens and can appear plentiful.
By Kay Sexton •
August 11, 2009
The first food security assessment ever carried out by a UK government has been published, and it says that the country needs to change the way food is produced and the way it is processed, to maintain a healthy and affordable food ‘base’ in the future.
By Kay Sexton •
July 30, 2009
There are more than a billion hungry people in the world today.
By Kay Sexton •
July 29, 2009
Leeds University has resumed field trials of genetically modified potatoes just a year after protesters tore up the previous crop.
