Showing posts from category food security.
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Water and Poverty in a World of 9 Billion, Vulnerable Agriculture in the Niger Basin
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In a two–part Water International special report on water, food, and poverty, examining 10 of the world’s major river basins, a team of researchers say that instead of worrying about having enough water to sustain the world’s growing demand, policymakers should be concerned with understanding how to manage what they already have.Introducing the special report, Simon Cook, Myles Fisher, Tassilo Tiemann, and Alain Vidal note in “Water, Food and Poverty: Global- and Basin-Scale Analysis” that the vast majority of population growth over the next few decades is expected to happen in developing countries, “where the disjunct between poverty, water and food is particularly acute.” Gaining a better understanding of water – how much we have, who uses it, and how best to use it – is essential to improving development results in the face of this demographic explosion. Water is linked with poverty and development through issues like scarcity, access, and water-related hazards (like drought, flood, and disease). But the authors conclude that water productivity – the ease or difficulty in getting water from its source to agriculture – “is by far the most important water-related constraint to improved food, income and environmental security.”In “Water, Agriculture and Poverty in the Niger River Basin,” Andrew Ogilvie et al., paint a bleak picture of life in one of West Africa’s most important basins, writing that “[m]uch of the population in the basin suffers from extreme, chronic poverty and remains vulnerable to droughts and malnutrition.” Many of the Niger basin’s 94 million residents rely on subsistence agriculture, and most of that agriculture relies on rainwater rather than groundwater irrigation systems. Over time, the authors write, “there is little doubt that climate change will increase the strain on already-vulnerable agriculture.” Population growth will exacerbate this strain; the basin’s population is expected to increase as much as fourfold by 2050. In spite of this bleak picture, the authors conclude that “[i]mprovements in rainfed agriculture can have an important impact on poverty reduction and food security due to the large population dependent on it.” -
Jon Foley: How to Feed Nine Billion and Keep the Planet Too
›October 12, 2011 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoJon Foley of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment is a food security rock star, plain and simple. And he deserves that lofty status in part because he explains our complex 21st century agriculture challenges in such a clear and accessible fashion. See him present (like in the TEDx video above), and you are left wishing all scientists would drop in on the “how to make your work understandable” class that Foley must have aced.
Foley brought that clarity of presentation, mixed with self-deprecating humor, to this past week’s inaugural South by Southwest (SXSW) Eco conference in Austin, Texas. Foley said we must meet three big challenges in the realm of agriculture:- Feeding the population today: One in seven of the world’s seven billion people do not know where their next meal is coming from.
- Feeding the future population: The planet is expected to reach more than nine billion people in just 39 years (and may still continue to grow beyond nine billion, rather than leveling off as expected until recently).
- Farming the planet sustainably: We are a long way from achieving sustainable agriculture, given overuse of fertilizers, soil erosion and degradation, deforestation (leading to loss of biodiversity), and energy-intensive practices (producing excessive carbon emissions).
But Foley and his colleagues retain their scientific union cards while suggesting specific ways the world might meet the three food security goals listed above. In what must be considered the academic equivalent of a walk-off grand slam, they will be featured as next week’s cover story in Nature and a more accessible derivative in the November issue of Scientific American.
“Today, humans are farming more of the planet than ever, with higher resource intensity and staggering environmental impacts, while diverting an increasing fraction of crops to animals, biofuels and other nonfood uses,” Foley et al. write in Nature. “Meanwhile, almost a billion people are chronically hungry. This must not continue: the requirements of current and future generations demand that we transform agriculture to meet the twin challenges of food security and environmental sustainability.”
Their four-step plan in brief:- Slow agricultural expansion to stop deforestation and the huge ecological cost that stems from expanding into new lands, often to grow animal feed rather than food for direct human consumption.
- Grow more food on the acres currently under cultivation. The attention, resources, and innovation applied to the best-producing farms need to also be turned on the least productive farms, where rates as low as 20 percent of potential yields are the norm.
- Improve the resource efficiency of agriculture, through better water use, for example. Places like India, where the energy to pump groundwater is effectively free, are very inefficient in the use of water per calorie grown.
- Close “diet gaps,” where only 60 percent of what is grown is actually for human consumption (the rest for animals and fuel), and reduce food waste, whether it is spoilage on the way to market or the excesses of a food industry that leaves so much uneaten.
Sources: Nature.
Video Credit: “TEDxTC – Jonathan Foley – The Other Inconvenient Truth,” courtesy of Youtube user TEDxTalks. -
Watch: First Impressions From the Inaugural SXSW Eco Conference
›October 6, 2011 // By Schuyler NullOur director, Geoff Dabelko, provides a brief update from South by Southwest’s (SXSW) first Eco conference, being held in Austin, Texas this week:
Bill Ritter, former governor of Colorado, was impressive in an interview with Bryan Walsh of Time magazine, seamlessly alternating between technical and policy questions about energy security.
Ned Breslin, CEO of Water for People, provided some real talk, challenging the notion that it’s “easy” to provide needy populations with freshwater. It’s not as simple as “$25 saves a life,” he said. Providing long-term, sustainable water and sanitation solutions to people around the world requires a great deal of hard work, particularly on financing and ownership questions.
Finally, Jon Foley of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment presented a five-step response to what he called today’s three main food challenges: providing enough to feed today’s population, tomorrow’s (an estimated nine billion people by 2050), and doing it all in a sustainable fashion. The Institute on the Environment publishes an almost-quarterly magazine, Momentum, whose work we’ve featured before on New Security Beat (here, here, and here), and, incredibly, is available, delivered to your house, for FREE. Highly recommended.
Stay tuned for more updates from SXSW, including the ECSP-supported panel, “Three Great Ideas That Won’t Be On the Rio+20 Agenda.” -
Weathering Change: New Film Links Climate Adaptation and Family Planning
›“Our planet is changing. Our population is growing. Each one of us is impacting the environment…but not equally. Each one of us will be affected…but not equally,” asserts the new documentary, Weathering Change, launched at the Wilson Center on September 22. The film, produced by Population Action International (PAI), explores the devastating impacts of climate change on the lives of women in developing countries through personal stories from Ethiopia, Nepal, and Peru. Family planning, argue the filmmakers, is part of the solution.
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Edward Carr, Open the Echo Chamber
Food Security and Conflict Done Badly…
›The original version of this article, by Edward Carr, appeared on Open the Echo Chamber.
Over at the Guardian, Damian Carrington has a blog post arguing that “Food is the ultimate security need.” He bases this argument on a map produced by risk analysts Maplecroft, which sounds quite rigorous:The Maplecroft index [represented on the map], reviewed last year by the World Food Programme, uses 12 types of data to derive a measure of food risk that is based on the UN FAO’s concept. That covers the availability, access and stability of food supplies, as well as the nutritional and health status of populations.
I’m going to leave aside the question of whether we can or should be linking food security to conflict – Marc Bellemare is covering this issue in his research and has a nice short post up that you should be reading. He also has a link to a longer technical paper where he interrogates this relationship…I am still wading through it, as it involves a somewhat frightening amount of math, but if you are statistically inclined, check it out.
Instead, I would like to quickly raise some questions about this index and the map that results. First, the construction of the index itself is opaque (I assume because it is seen as a proprietary product), so I have no idea what is actually in there. Given the character of the map, though, it looks like it was constructed from national-level data. If it was, it is not particularly useful – food insecurity is not only about the amount of food, but access to that food and entitlement to get access to the food, and these are things that tend to be determined locally. You cannot aggregate entitlement at the national level and get a meaningful understanding of food insecurity – and certainly not actionable information.
Continue reading on Open the Echo Chamber.
Image Credit: “Estimated food security conditions, 3rd Quarter 2011 (August-September 2011),” courtesy of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and USAID. -
Michael Kugelman, Huffington Post
Pakistan’s Biggest Threats May Not Be What You Think They Are
›August 30, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Michael Kugelman, appeared on the Huffington Post.
The most troubling news to emerge from Pakistan in recent days has little to do with militancy or other headline-grabbing scourges that afflict the country. Rather, it relates to a new Oxfam report’s finding that more than a third of the country’s population – about 60 million people – is undernourished.
Pakistan may well be convulsed by extremist violence; according to Pakistani estimates, it has killed or injured 30,000 in recent years. Yet contrary to what U.S. media coverage may suggest, this is not the greatest threat to the Pakistani people.
Numerous candidates contend for this dubious honor. One, underscored by Oxfam, is hunger. Even before last year’s devastating floods, which destroyed more than 2 million hectares of arable land, the World Food Program estimated that 77 million Pakistanis were going hungry. Another is water insecurity, one of Pakistan’s biggest killers. With a third of Pakistanis lacking access to clean water, no wonder waterborne illness claims the lives of 1.2 million Pakistanis per year – and 630 children every day. Lack of education also tops the list. More than 40 million of Pakistan’s 70 million school-age children (those between the ages of 5 to 19) are not in school. And then there is Pakistan’s energy crisis. Due to power shortfalls, some Pakistanis suffer outages for as long as 20 hours per day – crippling industry and bringing misery to millions of households. All of this is compounded by state corruption, which constrains access to these precious resources and services.
Continue reading on Huffington Post.
Sources: Business Recorder, Oxfam International, PBS, World Food Program.
Michael Kugelman is a program associate with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program.
Photo Credit: “People returning home as soon as the water recedes enough,” courtesy of flickr user DFID – UK Department for International Development. -
Russell Sticklor, World Politics Review
The Hungry Planet: Global Food Scarcity in the 21st Century
›August 16, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Russell Sticklor, appeared on World Politics Review.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the world population was inching toward a modest two billion. In the 111 years since, notwithstanding the impact of war, genocide, disease, and famine, the global population has soared, reaching three billion around 1960 and now quickly approaching the neighborhood of seven billion. By 2050, the planet will likely be home to two billion more.
We may not be witnessing the detonation of the “population bomb” that Paul Ehrlich warned of in his seminal 1968 book, but such rapid demographic change is clearly pushing the international community into uncharted territory. With a limited amount of arable land and a finite supply of fresh water for irrigation, figuring out how to feed a planet adding upward of 70 million people each year looms as one of the 21st century’s most pressing challenges.
The push to ensure global food security transcends the desire to avoid repeating the famines that devastated the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Ethiopia, and so many other corners of the world during the past century. Instead, aid and development organizations today rightly view food insecurity problems as deeply intertwined with issues of economic development, public health, and political stability, particularly in the developing world. To maintain order in the international community and prevent the emergence of new failed states in the decades ahead, it will be critical to find innovative means of feeding the rapidly growing populations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia.
Continue reading on World Politics Review.
Note: World Politics Review has graciously white-listed all entrances from NSB for this article, so as long as you use the above link, you should be able to read the full article for free.
Russell Sticklor is a consultant for the Environmental Change and Security Program.
Photo Credit: “Crowded market street,” courtesy of flickr user – yt –. -
Population, Health, and Environment Approaches in Tanzania
›“Quality of life, human health, food security, and biodiversity are all connected,” said Elin Torell, research associate for the BALANCED Project and the University of Rhode Island Coastal Resource Center. Torell was joined at the Wilson Center on July 19 by Patrick Kajubili from the Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership, and Alice Macharia, director of the East Africa Program at the Jane Goodall Institute to discuss the importance of integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) initiatives that work to simultaneously improve health and livelihoods, manage natural resources, and conserve ecosystems in Tanzania.
Building Resilient Coastal Communities
The Coastal Resources Center’s work in Tanzania’s Saadani National Park provides an example of an integrated PHE approach that sustains the flows of environmental goods and services, maintains biological diversity, and empowers and improves the wellbeing of local residents, said Torell. Since 1996, the CRC has focused on protecting sea turtles, promoting energy-saving stoves, and tracking elephants, while at the same time improving livelihoods through savings and credit associations, eco-tourism, and beekeeping.
“Adding family planning makes a whole lot of sense,” said Torell. There is a high unmet need for family planning in Tanzania and the population is growing rapidly with an average number of 5.6 children per woman. Family planning not only helps families limit and space births but indirectly works to improve food security and human health, reduce demand for scarce natural resources, and empower women, she said.
“Integration is key,” concluded Torell: A coordinated and synergistic approach that meets the varied needs of local communities will be more effective and sustainable than if interventions were delivered independently.
Effective Integration in the Field
“Conceptual linking is not enough,” said Kajubili. “Integration also needs to happen at the organizational and field levels.”
On the ground, the Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership integrates family planning education and services into conservation work, said Kajubili. Peer educators deliver information about family planning, health, and coastal resources management; and community-based distributors deliver family planning services and supplies.
“Now people easily access reproductive health services,” said Kajubili. To date, the program has increased referrals to health centers, promoted contraceptive use, and reduced the distance that women need to travel to receive family planning services.
“Integration makes sense and cents,” said Kajubili. By combining resources, health and natural resource management organizations can potentially reach a broader population while sharing costs.
But “reinforcing the linkages between PHE of course takes time and education,” said Kajubili, highlighting a major challenge to implementing integrated approaches. “Advocacy is needed to overcome cultural and institutional barriers.”
“What About Our Needs?”
“Socio-economic development; family planning and AIDS education; sustainable forestry and agriculture practices; and water and sanitation all underpin and support sustainable natural resource management,” said Macharia.
The Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education Project (TACARE) led by the Jane Goodall Institute was initiated in 1994 to arrest the rapid degradation of land through tree planting and forest degradation, said Macharia. “But at some point, the communities raised the question: What about our own needs?” she said.
Community members prioritized the need for health services, education, clean water, and financial capital. But environmental degradation was not seen as a major issue, suggesting a need for a more integrated approach to TACARE’s conservation efforts.
“Integrated programs including population, health, and environment activities are cost-efficient and add value to conservation goals,” said Macharia. By responding to the needs of the community, the integrated approach adopted by TACARE has gained more credibility among local people, while a strong focus on building local capacity has helped to ensure sustainability of the program.
While there are many challenges to implementing and maintaining integrated PHE programs, “partnerships at the local, district, and national level are key to making this a success,” concluded Macharia.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: “Environment near Vumari Village,” courtesy of flickr user treesftf.
