Somalia. Fatun (12 months) has her Mid-upper arm circumference measured at the WFP funded malnutrition clinic in Kabasa, Dolow. Credit: WFP/Samantha Reinders

By Paul Virgo
ROME, May 14 2023 (IPS)

While King Charles III’s coronation in Britain was hogging much of the international media’s attention at the start of this month, it was easy not to notice another story that deserved at least as many headlines.

According to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), the number of people experiencing acute hunger, meaning their food insecurity is so bad it is an immediate threat to their lives or livelihoods, rose to around 258 million people in 58 countries and territories in 2022.

That was an increase from 193 million people in 53 countries and territories in 2021 and it means that the number of people requiring urgent food, nutrition and livelihood assistance has increased for the fourth consecutive year.

More than a quarter of a billion people faced acute food insecurity in 2022 – a year that saw the number of people facing food crises rise by a third in just 12 months - James Belgrave, United Nations World Food Programme

It is important to stress here that we are not talking about the number of people around the world who are hungry – a figure that is far higher. Every July the United Nations gives an estimate of the number of people experiencing chronic hunger, meaning they do not have access to sufficient food to meet their energy needs for a normal, active lifestyle, in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report and last year’s, referring to 2021, put the figure at 821 million.

The GRFC report, on the other hand, regards only the most serious forms of hunger.

It said that people in seven countries experienced the worst level of acute hunger, Phase 5, at some point during 2022, meaning they faced starvation or destitution. More than half of those people were in Somalia (57%), while such extreme circumstances also occurred in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

The report said that around 35 million people experienced the next-most-severe level of acute hunger (emergency level, Phase 4) in 39 countries, with more than half of those located in just four – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen.

The rest of the acute-hunger sufferers were Phase 3, crisis level.

The 258 million figure is the highest in the history of the report and the situation is getting even worse this year

“More than a quarter of a billion people faced acute food insecurity in 2022 – a year that saw the number of people facing food crises rise by a third in just 12 months,” James Belgrave, a spokesperson for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is part of the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) that publishes the GRFC report, told IPS.

“And if we look at how 2023 has gone so far, we see that a staggering 345 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity in 79 of the countries where WFP works.

“This represents an increase of almost 200 million since pre-pandemic levels of early 2020, highlighting just how rapidly the situation has worsened.

“As the World Food Programme marks its 60th anniversary in 2023, we find ourselves in the midst of the greatest and most complex food security crisis in modern times”.

Indeed, the GRFC report has only been published for seven years but it has already documented a big increase in the number of people suffering the worst forms of hunger in that time. The number of people experiencing Phase 3 hunger or above was less than half its current level, at 105 million, in 2016.

In 30 of the 42 main food-crisis situations analysed in the report, over 35 million children under five years of age were suffering from wasting or acute malnutrition, with 9.2 million of them had severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of undernutrition and a major contributor to increased child mortality

Although some of the growth in the severe-hunger figure in the latest GRFC report reflects an increase in the populations of the countries analysed, the fact that the proportion of people in those countries experiencing acute food insecurity increased to 22.7% in 2022, from 21.3% in 2021, demonstrates that the situation is getting significantly worse regardless of demographic factors.

The report said that the main drivers of acute food insecurity and malnutrition were economic shocks, conflict and extreme weather events, which are increasing because of the climate crisis.

It said economic shocks were the biggest drivers last year, although the lines between these factors are blurred as all three affect each other, with climate change feeding conflict, for example, and conflict leading to economic shocks.

In 2022, the economic fallout of the СOVID-19 pandemic and the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine were major drivers of hunger, particularly in the world’s poorest countries, mainly due to their high dependency on imports of food and agricultural inputs.

The central problem is that much of the world’s population is vulnerable to such extremal shocks, in part because efforts to bolster the resilience of poor small-holder farmers in rural areas and fight food insecurity have proven insufficient.

The report says nations and the international community should focus on more effective humanitarian assistance, including anticipatory actions and shock-responsive safety nets, and scale up investments to tackle the root causes of food crises and child malnutrition, making agrifood systems more sustainable, resilient and inclusive.

“The global fight against hunger is going backwards, and today the world is facing a food crisis of unprecedented proportions, the largest in modern history,” Belgrave said.

“Millions of people are at risk of worsening hunger unless action is taken now to respond together – and at scale – to the drivers of this crisis.

“Life is getting harder each day for the world’s most vulnerable and hard-won development gains are being eroded.

“WFP is facing a triple challenge – the number of acutely hungry people continues to increase at a pace that funding is unlikely to match and the cost of delivering food assistance is at an unprecedented high because food and fuel prices have increased.

“In countries like Somalia, which have been on the brink of famine, the international community, working with government and partners, has shown what it takes to pull people back.

“But it is not sufficient to just keep people alive, we need to go further, and this can only be achieved by addressing the underlying causes of hunger and focusing on banishing famine forever.

“We must work on two fronts: saving those whose lives are at risk while providing a foundation for communities to grow their resilience and meet their own food needs”.

Seoin Yang (left) and Rosanna Claudia Luzarraga. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, May 3 2023 (IPS)

When pupils from the Chadwick International School went on an exchange trip to their math teacher’s homeland the Philippines they were faced with a mystery. The kids from their twin school were warm, friendly and fun hosts.

But when lunch time came around, instead of sitting down with their South Korean guests and joining them to eat, they would stay away and watch from a distance.

It seemed uncharacteristic – almost rude.

The programme is a model for solidarity that can easily be replicated by other institutions. The first step is always the hardest. In the beginning it all seems so intimidating, People say solutions have to be innovative. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t - Even the simplest solutions can work the best

Coming from prosperous families, it did not immediately dawn on the visitors that their hosts were foregoing lunch not out of impoliteness, but because of poverty.

“That was an utter shock to us. They couldn’t afford food,” Seoin Yang, a high-school student at the Chadwick International School in the Korean city of Songdo, near Seoul, told IPS.

“As sixth graders and as people who had never witnessed such situations in real life, we couldn’t really say anything or do anything.

“Our temporary solution was to not eat and give our food to them. But that wasn’t really a solution”.

It would have been easy for the group to put this ‘shock’ behind them once they returned home and concentrate on their busy lives of study, hobbies, sports and social activities, like most teens.

Instead, they decided to try to do something that would make a difference, launching a programme to provide their new Filipino friends with breakfast and lunch at their school in Labo, in the province of Camarines Norte.

It is not easy to set up a programme in the Philippines from South Korea and they ran into a host of difficulties.

But they managed to get the project off the ground, raising money and working with the school in the Philippines, with volunteer teachers and parents doing the cooking.

“We started off by serving 50 students and the response was really positive because a lot of the students had had to drop out of school because they couldn’t afford food,” said Yang.

“But then they could continue with school. We also used a local market for the food so that we helped the local economy and the local farmers there”.

They raised the money by doing things like selling snacks during school events, applying for grants and getting private-sector partners on board.

In the second year they helped build a school kitchen and subsequently expanded the programme to more schools.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic made adjustments necessary.

“When COVID hit and the students stopped going to school, we decided to modify our programme and provide a food packet for them, still incorporating the local economy, still putting in all the nutritious food, but in a packet,” said Yang.

“The parents could come to school every week on a Monday to pick up these packets,

“They shared the food with their families and so we not only fed the students but the families too”.

The cost-of-living crisis had an impact too. Indeed, after five years the programme had to be suspended for a period due to soaring prices.

Image provided by Chadwick School

But the group recently managed to get it going again, raising money to provide meals for 155 students in three different schools. A Chadwick party is going back to the Philippines this month.

The programme might be relatively small-scale but it has made a big difference to the young people who have benefitted from it.

Last year 32 students who had been having school meals thanks to the programme since grade seven graduated from high school.

Five of them got scholarships and are now studying engineering at university.

“We believe that we are not just solving hunger (for the pupils we help), we are also trying to solve education, health and wellbeing issues,” said Yang.

“Often children have to work with their family to earn money if they are poor, rather than staying at school. As children don’t have a lot of skills, the only job they can do is labouring, which doesn’t pay them a lot.

“It’s just like a cycle. They can’t go to school if they don’t have food, so they have to give up on their education, which means the poverty continues”.

Rosanna Claudia Luzarraga, the math teacher who first took the students to the Philippines, said she is “honoured” to have the kids who launched the programme.

But she also stresses that the South Korean kids have been enriched by it too, building skills, making friendships and learning to appreciate what they have.

“We go to the Philippines every year and, during that time, there is a consultation, we call it a student congress, so the student leaders there meet the South Korean students and they discuss what is good about the programme and what we can improve,” Luzarraga told IPS.

“Part of it is shadowing. So they follow one of the recipients at home, they see their house, and walk with them.

“In one case we walked 14 km because the kids went home and it was seven kilometres going home and seven kilometres going back.

“You develop empathy for someone. They are learning from the other students. It’s not just a case of us doling out aid.

“It’s not simply giving. It’s always two way.

“From what I have seen from my students and from the students in the Philippines, there’s a connection.

“You take care of each other. They are building relationships and this is the most important thing”.

Both Yang and Luzarraga think the programme is a model for solidarity that can easily be replicated by other institutions.

“The first step is always the hardest. In the beginning it all seems so intimidating,” Yang said.

“People say solutions have to be innovative. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t.

“Even the simplest solutions can work the best.

“For us it was that the students couldn’t afford food and we provided them with food.

“That was our solution. It wasn’t innovative at all but it had a huge impact on the students.

“So just think simple and go for it”.

The 1.23 billion people working in agrifood systems belong to households made up of an estimated 3.83 billion people. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

New research by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has revealed that almost half the world’s population of around eight billion people belong to households whose livelihoods depend to some degree on agrifood systems (AFS).

The findings are important as farming and the food system as a whole is central to the multiple challenges humankind faces to feed a global population forecast to rise to 10 billion by 2050, while meeting the Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, hunger and malnutrition, combat the climate crisis and preserve natural resources for future generations.

So the research offers precious information for decision makers, and FAO is aiming for it to be the start of an ongoing statistical data series.

Agrifood-system transformation offers the promise of new jobs in both agriculture and the off-farm segments of agrifood systems, particularly in low income countries with large, young populations. Deliberate policies, however, are needed to ensure the quantity and quality of these jobs

The report said that around 1.23 billion people worked in agrifood systems in 2019, including 857 million in primary agricultural production (agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, aquaculture, hunting) and 375 million in the off-farm segments of agrifood systems.

The 1.23 billion people working in agrifood systems belong to households made up of an estimated 3.83 billion people.

FAO says there is evidence of a high degree of exploitation of labour in agrifood systems, including harmful conditions, precarious job security, low wages, disproportionate burdens on women, and coercive use of child labour.

So statistics on the number of people employed in AFS can be useful to monitor for violations of human rights and to develop and target policies to regulate working conditions in the sector.

Agrifood systems also present opportunities though, as they can offer many new jobs, a factor that is especially important in lower-income countries with lots of young who need employment.

So the data can help to shape policies to develop these opportunities.

For example, better understanding of the existing workforce could reveal entry points for programmes to increase skills and entrepreneurship.

“Identifying and quantifying the number of agrifood-system workers is essential for several reasons, particularly for low- and middle-income countries of the Global South,” Ben Davis, the Director of FAO’s Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division, told IPS.

“In low-income countries, the largest number of workers are employed in agrifood systems, and agrifood systems are a key economic motor of growth and poverty reduction,” added Davis, the lead author of the study, which is entitled Estimating Global and Country Level Employment in Agrifood Systems.

“Agrifood-system transformation offers the promise of new jobs in both agriculture and the off-farm segments of agrifood systems, particularly in low income countries with large, young populations.

“Deliberate policies, however, are needed to ensure the quantity and quality of these jobs.

“Statistics on the number of people employed in agrifood systems would also help regulate working conditions and develop and target appropriate policies and programmes to support livelihoods”.

The three challenges facing agrifood systems – feeding a growing population, providing a livelihood for farmers, and protecting the environment – must be tackled together because, given the many interconnections, taking a single-issue perspective on any objective can lead to unintended impacts on others. Market in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS

The new report said that the continent with the largest number of people employed in agrifood systems is Asia with 793 million, followed by Africa with almost 290 million

It said the majority of the economically active population in low-income countries, particularly in Africa, had at least one job or activity in agrifood systems.

It said that 62% employment in Africa is in AFS, when relevant trade and transportation activities are included, compared to 40% in Asia and 23% in the Americas.

The study said that, of the 3.83 billion people belonging to households reliant on agrifood systems for their livelihoods, 2.36 billion live in Asia and 940 million are in Africa.

The study is the first to give a systematic, documented global estimate of the number of people involved in AFS.

It said the number of people engaged in the sector has been undercounted in the past due to three factors.

The first is that many people, especially those living in poverty, work several jobs and lots are involved in AFS, even if this is not their primary activity.

The second is that many AFS jobs are seasonal or intermittent and so easily missed by surveys.

Finally, many people are engaged in household farming for their own consumption on top of their primary occupation.

The report gives the example of a full-time schoolteacher who grows produce for sale on their land.

Agrifood systems produce some 11 billion tonnes of food worldwide each year, the FAO says.

But they also have a big environmental footprint.

The IPCC’s recent Synthesis Report, which completed its Sixth Assessment cycle, said that 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions currently stem from agriculture, forestry, and land use.

Without radical change, the world is set for a future of persistent food insecurity and the destruction and degradation of natural resources.

Building sustainable, resilient agrifood systems, on the other hand, can help tackle the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

FAO has presented a Strategy on Climate Change, which argues that a holistic approach is needed.

It says the three challenges facing agrifood systems – feeding a growing population, providing a livelihood for farmers, and protecting the environment – must be tackled together because, given the many interconnections, taking a single-issue perspective on any objective can lead to unintended impacts on others.

The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency, says Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Apr 11 2023 (IPS)

If an alien landed on Planet Earth today and started watching television and reading the newspapers, it would probably not realize that humanity and the natural world face an existential threat – one that has taken us into the Sixth Mass Extinction, is already devastating the lives of many, especially in the Global South, and is set to hit the rest of us soon.

“I don’t know what is scarier, the fact that atmospheric CO2 just hit the highest level in human history, or that it has gone close to completely unnoticed,” tweeted Greta Thunberg on April 9 regarding data from the Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Aside from some notable exceptions, the climate crisis has not brought out the best in the mainstream media.

The main Italian dailies only publish around 2.5 articles a day explicitly dealing with the climate crisis. The newspapers give plenty of space, on the other hand, to businesses whose activities generate big greenhouse-gas emissions, running an average of six adverts a week to firms involved in fossil fuels and in the automobile, cruise tourism and air-transport sectors.
The scientists and activists who sound the alarm are often portrayed as dangerous extremists or loonies.

The treatment dished out last year by a popular television show, Good Morning Britain, to Miranda Whelehan, a young member of the UK’s Just Stop Oil civil-disobedience group, is a good example.

Instead of considering her valid points about the looming dangers outlined in the IPCC’s reports, she was ridiculed and bullied with bogus arguments, including criticism for ‘wearing clothes’ that may have been transported using oil. Was she supposed to turn up naked?

It was so bad that it seemed to have come straight from Adam McKay’s 2021 satirical film about the climate crisis, Don’t Look Up.

But butchering climate coverage is only a small part of the problem.

What is perhaps worse is the extent to which global heating and its effects are largely ignored, with celebrity gossip and sports among the subjects that seem to take precedence.

There are not enough stories about the climate emergency and those that do get published or screened are not given the prominence they deserve.

New research by the Italian section of Greenpeace gives an idea of the scale of the problem.

The ongoing monitoring study, conducted with the Osservatorio di Pavia research institute, showed that the main Italian dailies only publish around 2.5 articles a day explicitly dealing with the climate crisis.

The newspapers give plenty of space, on the other hand, to businesses whose activities generate big greenhouse-gas emissions, running an average of six adverts a week to firms involved in fossil fuels and in the automobile, cruise tourism and air-transport sectors.

The study revealed that less than 3% of the stories on Italy’s biggest TV newscasts deal with the climate crisis.

“The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency,” Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni told IPS.

“The news is scarce and sporadic; the climate crisis is hardly ever a front-page topic.

“Suffice it to say that in the main prime-time news, climate change is mentioned in less than 2% of the news and in some periods it falls below 1%.

“Moreover, in the Italian media there is little mention of the causes, starting with fossil fuels, and even less of the main culprits, the oil and gas companies”.

Naturally, this problem is not limited to Italy.

In 2019 the Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The Guardian and WNYC set up Covering Climate Now (CCNow), a consortium that seeks to work with journalists and news outlets to help the media give the climate crisis the treatment it deserves.

Since then over 500 partners with a combined reach of two billion people in 57 countries have signed up.

But co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope say that, although progress has been made, much of the media is still failing to convey that climate change is “an imminent, deadly threat” lamenting that less than a quarter of the United States public hear about the issue in the media at least once a month

There are several reasons why the climate crisis is under-reported.

The climate crisis is complicated and often depressing, so editors may be reluctant to run stories that require lots of explaining and risk turning the public off.

Furthermore, Hertsgaard, the environment correspondent of The Nation, and Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, report that many major outlets have privately said they will not sign CCNow’s Climate Emergency Statement because it sounds like activism and they do not want to look biased.

Sturloni believes that money is a factor too.

“Our analysis shows that the voice of companies is almost always the one that gets the most space in the media narrative of the climate crisis, even more than the voice of scientists and experts,” he said.

“The companies most responsible for the climate crisis also find ample space in the main Italian media, and often take advantage of this to greenwash or promote false solutions, such as gas, carbon offsetting, carbon capture and storage, nuclear fusion etc…

“This is due to the Italian media’s dependence on the funding of fossil fuel companies, which are able to influence the schedule of newspapers and TV and the very narrative of the climate crisis.

“This prevents people from being properly informed about the seriousness of the threat, and thus also about the solutions that should be urgently implemented to avoid the worst scenarios of global warming”.

One of the key virtues of criminalizing ecocide is that it would give a means of redress for the peoples of the Global South who are the biggest victims of it, says Sue Miller, Head of Global Networks for the Stop Ecocide campaign. Photo courtesy of StopEcocide.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Feb 28 2023 (IPS)

Genocide, war crimes, aggression, ecocide, crimes against humanity – which is the odd one out? The right answer is ecocide – destroying, polluting or damaging the natural living world on a large scale is not among the crimes that can be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

So ecocide, which literally means to “kill one’s home”, can take place constantly in much of the world at the moment and no one is held responsible.

Deforestation, oil spills, air contamination – the corporations behind episodes of severe environmental harm like this may sometimes be sued, and occasionally fined, but they can simply budget for this. No one gets arrested, so there is no real disincentive.

A growing global network of lawyers, diplomats and activists are campaigning to rectify this and have ecocide join this exclusive club of ‘crimes against peace’ that the International Criminal Court can punish in order to make the perpetrators liable to prosecution.

“We call ecocide the missing crime,” Sue Miller, the Head of Global Networks for the Stop Ecocide campaign, told IPS.

At the moment, it is predominantly corporations based in the Global North that are causing environmental damage in the Global South, where the rule of law is often not as strong. An International law of ecocide will not only strengthen national laws, but will also provide a court of last resort for those affected by ecocide who cannot obtain justice in their own countries

“Right now, corporations are causing serious environmental damage in pursuit of profits. Mostly they get away with it.

“If they are called to account, they may end up paying a fine, some civil damages or even possibly a bribe to make the problem go away.

“Whatever the penalty, it is monetary and can sit on the company’s balance sheet as a business expense”.

One of the key virtues of criminalizing ecocide is that it would give a means of redress for the peoples of the Global South who are the biggest victims of it.

“At the moment, it is predominantly corporations based in the Global North that are causing environmental damage in the Global South, where the rule of law is often not as strong,” said Miller.

“An International law of ecocide will not only strengthen national laws, but will also provide a court of last resort for those affected by ecocide who cannot obtain justice in their own countries”.

But, above all, it would also create a deterrent to trashing the environment that currently does not exist.

Miller believes that this would be a game-changer when it comes to business practices.

“A new crime of ecocide would place personal criminal liability on the key decision makers – the controlling minds – in most cases the company directors,” she said.

“As such, an ecocide law will reach into the boardrooms where the decisions are made and act as a brake on the projects which cause the worst environmental harms.

“Faced with prosecution and possible imprisonment, company directors are likely to be far more circumspect about the projects they approve.

“Funding and insurance for potentially ecocidal projects will dry up and funds, effort and talent will be diverted into healthier, more sustainable practices.

“Whilst it will enable justice to be pursued if damage is done, more importantly, an ecocide law has the power to stop the damage happening in the first place”.

Rather than being hostile to the law, Miller argues that many CEOs actually want legislation that would forbid them from making profit at the expense of the natural world.

“There is no business on a dead planet and many businesses are coming to that realisation now,” she said.

“They are also realising that there are advantages to working with, rather than against, nature.

“These include: unlocking innovation; stimulating investment in new, regenerative business models; levelling the playing field for sustainable enterprise; stabilising operational and reputational risk; and providing a steer towards more sustainable business practices”.

These are among the reasons that make Miller confident the drive to have ecocide criminalized will ultimately be successful, despite the power of lobbies who opposite it.

The campaign has won the backing of figures including United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Pope Francis, Greta Thunberg and Paul McCartney.

In June 2021 an independent expert panel presented its formal definition of the proposed crime of ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

When discussions were taking place for the creation of the International Criminal Court at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, ecocide was one of the crimes which was going to be included alongside genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – aggression, the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, integrity or independence of another State, did not come under its jurisdiction until 2018.

In the end, ecocide was dropped during a closed doors meeting for reasons that remain unclear.

The world today would likely be a better place if it had been in there from the start.

“If it had been in place, so many events since might not only have been punished but might not have happened at all,” Miller said.

“Had ecocide law been in place it is unlikely, for example, that (former Brazilian president) Jair Bolsonaro would have been so keen to encourage destruction of the Amazon in Brazil.

“It is unlikely that corporations would now be prospecting for deep sea mining sites.

“So much of the damage we are now seeing could have been avoided”.

The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jan 26 2023 (IPS)

In a wiser world, the term ‘treating someone like dirt’ would be a good thing. After all, 15 of the 18 nutrients essential to plants are supplied by soils and around 95% of the food we eat comes directly or indirectly from them, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

So dirt is actually a precious resource that deserves to be treated with respect, care and perhaps even a little love.

Unfortunately, humanity has been treating soil ‘like dirt’ in the traditional sense of the term, abusing it with pollution, unsustainable industrial agricultural practices and the overexploitation of natural resources.

The result is that about one third of the world’s soils are degraded, the FAO says. At this rate, 90% of all soils are set to be degraded by 2050.

“When we talk about soil health, we then get to human health,” Carolina Olivera, an agronomist with the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership (GSP),” told IPS.

The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism

“We are here now with high levels of soil degradation because of many factors, some natural. You can have soil erosion because there is a steep slope and water is circulating and taking all the sediments. But, above all, you can also have bad soil management, intensive practices, bad livestock practices with too many animals per hectare, and monocropping, so no rotation.”

“If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. It’s the same as with human diets. If we always eat sugar, we will have too much sugar and not enough vitamins. Biodiversity is very important for everything, starting with soils and right the way up to our diets”.

The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago.

“This nutrient imbalance in soil will affect crops, it will affect plants and it will affect humans and all nutrition,” Olivera explained. It will affect it with decreasing yields. Yields are decreasing every day. Farmers are increasing the quantity of fertilizers they use and they don’t understand why yields are still decreasing.

“The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism.

“So you have hidden hunger, where you have enough calories but you don’t have enough minerals or the adequate specific minerals that you need to have good nutrition and good health. The result is that we have some immunity diseases and other kinds of diseases developing.

“So it’s a long chain, from the soil to the nutrients, and to the quality of nutrition humans can have in the end”.

The climate crisis is making things worse, with higher temperatures sucking moisture out of the soil to make it less fertile and harder to handle. In a chemical analysis, you can have all the elements in the soil, so you don’t understand why there is a problem,” Olivera said.

“But then, when you start looking at the soil in detail, you can see, for example, that the soil is compacted, like concrete. So the chemical elements are there. But it’s like concrete, so the roots cannot penetrate and the roots cannot grow. So this is soil health.

Another consequence of the climate crisis, more frequent extreme weather events, is bad for soil health too, with severe droughts often being followed by storms and floods that wash away sediments, The FAO is taking action at many levels to combat the problem.

If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

The GSP, for example, has developed digital mapping systems that illustrate soil conditions so countries and national institutions can boost their capacities and make informed decisions to manage soil degradation.

It has also produced guidelines to help national governments adopt policies for soil management and for the sustainable use of fertilizers. The UN agency is also rolling up its sleeves to help smallholder farmers in the Global South, who are among the blameless victims of the climate crisis, to cope with the impact global heating is having on their soils.

Its initiatives on this front include the ‘soil doctors’ farmer-to-farmer training programme. “This means we train a farmer and that farmer trains the whole community – with their own language,” Olivera said.

“We provide them with posters with drawings so the farmer is able to explain to other farmers. We also provide them with some very simple exercises, such as digging a hole in the soil to see the texture and see the smell of the soil and see why one smell is good and another is bad. And we show them to feel it, as they do every day, but also providing them with the scientific knowledge to support them in their everyday work.

“For example, when you have soil that is not breathing because of too much water, it smells like rotting food. In that case, we can do some drainage, we can establish some practices, dig some terraces. So we learn with them. We see from the environment what we can do, what materials we have access to, see if we can circulate the water better by digging canals. And together we also select the practices that they can teach to other farmers”.

The FAO does not need to pay the farmers to pass on the knowledge, as being a soil doctor brings its own rewards.

“We provide them with visibility within their communities. We call the soil doctors champion farmers because they are the farmers who are always trying new things. They are the ones who are worried about their community and are willing to learn a lot. They are happy when they learn. We provide them with knowledge and with kits to do some testing in the field.

Another important incentive for them is that they become part of a community of soil doctors around the world. “They can exchange experiences with each other. You can have a soil doctor in Bolivia exchanging with one in the Philippines because, for example, they both grow cocoa. So belonging to a network is important for them too as they sometimes feel very isolated in their field.

“I recently went to Bangladesh to give farmers soil-doctor certificates and they were so proud. They said the soil is ours and it is what we are going to leave to our children. We need to make decisions about our soils ourselves and we have the capacity to do so”.

Don’t Gas Africa protest during COP27. Credit: Don't Gas Africa

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Dec 14 2022 (IPS)

One of the knock-on effects of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is that European countries have embarked on a ‘dash for gas’ to find alternatives to Russian energy supplies.

A flurry of deals has ensued with several African States being enticed by the prospect of lucrative energy contracts.

A new report, however, has warned that helping Europe continue its addiction to imported fossil fuels risks having devastating long-term effects for African societies.

The Fossil Fuelled Fallacy: How the Dash for Gas in Africa will Fail to Deliver Development argues the pitfalls are plentiful.

The first is that feeding the West’s fossil-fuel habit will accelerate the climate crisis, which is already having disproportionately severe effects on African communities.

The idea that fossil gas will bring prosperity and opportunities to Africans is a tired and overused fallacy, promulgated by those that stand to benefit the most: multinational fossil fuel firms and the elite politicians that aid and abet them

Drought, wildfires, flooding, disease and pest invasions will increase in their severity and frequency with this ‘new scramble for Africa’, pushing developmental goals further out of reach.

The report, which was presented at COP27, also argues that, even if the planet were not overheating because of human-caused emissions, further facilitating the ‘dash for gas’ would not be wise.

Many African states looking to expand gas production will be building the infrastructure from scratch, so projects will take years, perhaps decades, to become operative, it says.

With renewable energy sources increasingly competitive, the projects are unlikely to benefit from the current favourable prices, so there is a risk they will not be able to operate for their entire intended lifespan, saddling African States with debts, forgone revenues and huge clean-up costs.

“African countries’ plight to help satisfy Europe’s dash for gas is a dangerous and short-sighted vision fuelled by a capitalist utopian dream that has no place in Africa’s energy future,” Dean Bhebhe, the Co-Facilitator of Don’t Gas Africa, a network of African-led civil society organisations that produced the report, told IPS .

“Investment in fossil gas production will lock Africa into another cycle of poverty, inequality and exploitation while creating a firewall for Africa to leapfrog towards renewable energy”.

The reports points out that fossil-fuel infrastructure projects do not have a good track record on combatting energy poverty and advancing development on the continent.

It gives the example of Nigeria, saying that, despite decades of fossil-fuel production, only 55% of the population had access to electricity there in 2019.

It says that jobs in fossil-fuel industries in Africa tend to be short-term, precarious, and concentrated in construction, while green jobs are longer term and have the potential to bring benefits to the entire continent, rather than just a handful of nations with fossil-fuel reserves.

Furthermore, the pollution and environmental degradation caused by expanding gas production would endanger the lives and livelihoods of many, the report says, arguing fossil-fuel infrastructure in Africa has been shown to force communities from their land and disrupt key fisheries, crops and biodiversity.

Among the examples it gives is that of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which will run from Uganda to Tanzania and is set to force around 14,000 households across the two countries to move.

The report also argues that allowing high rates of foreign ownership of Africa’s energy system would pull wealth out of the continent at the expense of African citizens.

It says that any investment in fossil fuels displaces investment from clean, affordable renewable energy systems that can bring immediate benefits to African communities.

It says, for example, that the potential for wind power in Africa is almost 180,000 terawatt hours per year, enough to satisfy the entire continent’s current electricity demands 250 times over.

“As the UN Secretary General António Guterres said this year, investing in new fossil fuel production and power plants is moral and economic madness” Bhebhe said.

“New gas production would not come on-line in time to address Europe’s fossil-fuel energy crisis and would saddle the African continent with stranded assets”.

The report says that the arguments used by some African leaders and elites to justify expansion in gas production on the basis of climate justice, on the grounds that now it’s ‘own turn’ to exploit fossil fuels to deliver prosperity, are bogus.

The conclusion is that, rather than replicating the fossil-fuelled development pathways of the past,

Africa should opt for a rapid deployment of renewables to stimulate economies, create inclusive jobs, boost energy access, free up government revenues for the provision of public goods, and improve the health and wellbeing of human and non-human communities.

“We need an end to fossil-fuel-induced energy Apartheid in Africa which has left 600 million Africans without access to modern clean renewable energy,”Bhebhe said.

“Scaling up cost-effective, clean, decentralized, renewable energy is the fastest and best way to end energy exclusion and meet the needs of Africa’s people. Policymakers in Africa need to reject the dumping of dirty, dangerous and obsolete fossil-fuel and nuclear energy systems into Africa.

“Africa must not become a dumping ground for obsolete technologies that continue to pollute and impoverish”.

Freddie Daley, the lead author of the report, echoed those sentiments.

“The idea that fossil gas will bring prosperity and opportunities to Africans is a tired and overused fallacy, promulgated by those that stand to benefit the most: multinational fossil fuel firms and the elite politicians that aid and abet them,” said Daley, a research associate at the University of Sussex in the UK.

“Africa has the opportunity to chart a different development path, paved with clean, distributed, and cheap energy systems, funded by African governments and those of wealthy nations that did the most to create this crisis. We cannot let Africa get locked-in to fossil fuel production because it will lock-out Africans from affordable energy, a thriving natural world, and clean air.”

Credit: Parents for Future UK

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Nov 15 2022 (IPS)

Lea is a three-year-old from Mexico who loves ladybirds. Siddhiksha, a six-year-old from India, has a passion for trees and wild animals. Rachelle is a 12-year-old Tanzanian who is wise beyond her years. They are smart and adorable and they are among the stars of a short film that is aiming to remind the leaders taking part in the COP27 UN Climate Conference that they have a duty of care towards young and future generations.

“My biggest anguish is literally not knowing what the world is going to be like,” says Cora, 13, from Brazil, in the film.

“I’m afraid the world could suck, with a lot of species not being able to survive 50 years from now”.

Meera, a 15-year-old from Chennai, India, says she sees the effects of the climate crisis every day.

“Lately, I’ve noticed that it’s very hot in Chennai and there are many unseasonal floods in Bangalore.

Parents for Future Global’s demands for COP27 are that nations must agree to no new coal, oil and gas projects and to stop subsidising existing fossil-fuel projects and that they pledge to start paying for loss and damage

“There are forest fires all over the world almost every day.

“This is actually becoming scary and serious”.

The video was produced by the Our Kids’ Climate and Parents For Future Global networks to send the message that it’s time to put ‘Kids First’ and deliver real climate action.

“The aim was to create a film that the kids could identify with, using a kids’ perspectives, making kids feel empowered and recognised,” Sandra Freij, the photographer and filmmaker who directed and produced the short, told IPS.
“We wanted to put kids’ voices before the decision-makers at COP because their voices need to be heard and they have so much to say”.

Children from 16 different countries feature in the film, speaking about their dreams and fears for the future.
Freij had the tough task of selecting them from contributions from almost 100 children sent in by parents from all over the world.

“It was super important for us to make sure we did not put words into their mouths. When we invited them to speak about their dreams we encouraged them to speak about simple things like football or rainbows,” she said.

“I never imagined we’d receive messages of such a grown-up nature.

“It was an emotional few months receiving message after message from kids that have connected the dots and who experience grief and fear about what the future holds”.

Our Kids’ Climate and Parents For Future Global are among several groups of people who are channelling their concerns about the impact the climate crisis will have on their children into action to bring about positive change.

Other groups include India’s Warrior Moms, who focus on the need to fight air pollution, and Britain’s Mothers Rise Up.

The latter group hit the headlines in June when they staged a spectacular song-and-dance protest outside the headquarters of Lloyd’s of London, inspired by the Let’s Go Fly a Kite scene in Mary Poppins, to tell the insurance giant to stop underwriting the fossil-fuel projects that endanger our children’s future.

Parents For Future is a network of independent national groups from countries both in the Global South and North.
The national and local groups take action that is most fitting to their contexts.

Parents for Future Italia, for example, prepared an ‘eco-manifesto’ outlining the policies the country needs to adopt to deliver climate action ahead of Italy’s general election in September.

Then these groups join forces at the global level.

Among other things, Parents for Future Global has been working hard to support the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. What makes this cooperation between different national groups possible is the recognition by all involved that you cannot solve the climate crisis unless you tackle the injustices that cause it.

And that means the countries of the Global North owning up to being largely to blame and taking action to remedy that via, among other things, loss-and-damage compensation.

Parents for Future Global’s demands for COP27 are that nations must agree to no new coal, oil and gas projects and to stop subsidising existing fossil-fuel projects and that they pledge to start paying for loss and damage.

The actions of these determined parents have not gone unnoticed.

“World leaders better watch out,” Dr Maria Neira of the World Health Organization said at the launch of the #KidsFirst film at COP27. “There is nothing worse or better than a mom fighting for the health of her children. “Now I have a lot of hope. This battle will be the one that we are going to win.”

Petrol pump in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

When it comes to moral endorsements, having the Vatican’s backing takes some beating. So the international campaign for a legally binding Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty took a huge step forward in July when Cardinal Michael Czerny, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, gave it his total support.

“The planet already is 1.2°C hotter (with respect to pre-industrial levels), yet new fossil fuel projects every day accelerate our race towards the precipice,” the Czech-Canadian prelate said.

“Enough is enough. All new exploration and production of coal, oil, and gas must immediately end, and existing production of fossil fuels must be urgently phased out.

“This must be a just transition for impacted workers into environmentally sound alternatives. The proposed Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty holds great promise to complement and enhance the Paris Agreement”.

Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon emissions in the past decade. So despite our efforts over the last 30 years, emissions have continued to increase, and this hasn’t changed since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago

The name of the proposed treaty has a familiar ring as it is inspired by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that came into force in 1970 and successfully helped reduce the threat of nuclear war.

The supporters of the proposed treaty say that, like atomic bombs, fossil fuels pose an existential threat to humankind as they are the main cause of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuels have been equated as weapons of mass destruction because of the way they threaten our ability to protect livelihoods, security, and the planet,” Rebecca Byrnes, the Deputy Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told IPS.

“Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon emissions in the past decade. So despite our efforts over the last 30 years, emissions have continued to increase, and this hasn’t changed since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago”.

Under the Paris Agreement, the international community agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a degree necessary to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and, failing that, to keep them “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels.

But Byrnes said that, as things currently stand, governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels consistent with limiting global temperature rises to within a 1.5-degree trajectory by 2030, and 10% more than their own climate pledges.

So, she argued that a separate treaty specifically dealing with fossil fuels is needed to stop States from making empty pledges on climate policy.

“We need both domestic action and international cooperation to explicitly stop the expansion of fossil fuel production and therefore emissions,” she said.

“Only addressing half of the equation has allowed countries and companies to claim climate leadership while also supporting new coal, oil and gas extraction projects, directly or indirectly.

“In countries that are particularly dependent on fossil fuel profits for government revenue and economic development, fossil fuel supply is now a driver of demand.

“It will not be possible to reduce demand for, and therefore emissions from, fossil fuels without first breaking this fossil-fuel lock-in through phase-out, economic diversification measures and finding new development opportunities.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will complement and implement the Paris Agreement by directly addressing the supply side of the equation and providing support to fossil-fuel-dependent developing countries to make this transition”.

One of the positive aspects of the treaty would be that it would help put an end to the perverse situation in which States are sometimes forced to pay compensation to polluters when they put a halt to fossil-fuel projects because of the protection that corporations enjoy under legal mechanisms such as the Energy Charter Treaty.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will mitigate the risk of legal liability faced by country governments in both national courts and international tribunals, by providing legal justification for phase-out policies,” Byrnes said.

Critics have suggested the plan is simply too ambitious to ever come to fruition.

The treaty campaign might have the Vatican on its side, but the fossil-fuel lobby has powerful allies, lots of money and it has not been shy about using its clout to sow doubt about the climate crisis and stop or delay emissions cuts.

“Some of the criticism we get on the idea of the treaty is that it’s unfeasible and that we don’t have time to negotiate something like this,” said Byrnes.

“The same was erroneously said about weapons treaties.

“But we don’t have time for more of the same. We know it’s unlikely that oil-producing countries will enthusiastically embrace a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the fossil fuel industry has huge influence.

“But so did the tobacco industry at one point before the formation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“Just creating the concept of a treaty is already sparking new ambition and new conversations”.

Indeed, the treaty campaign is on a roll.

It has the support of over 100 Nobel Laureates, including the Dalai Lama, and dozens of the world’s biggest cities, such as London, Barcelona, Paris, Montreal, Lima, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.

In September the World Health Organization joined the host of international organizations backing the campaign.

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Vanuatu became the first nation-state to call for a fossil fuel treaty in the speech made by President Nikenike Vurobaravu at this year’s United Nations General Assembly.

And on October 20 the European Parliament called on nation-states to “work on developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty” in a resolution outlining its demands for COP27.

“The world has seen treaties deliver when the world has needed to manage, restrict and phase out dangerous products, including weapons of mass destruction, ozone depleting substances and tobacco,” concluded Byrnes .

“Today, we see oil and gas are fuelling war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and are a paramount danger that demands of us and world governments to rally behind a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

It is possible to endorse the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty via the campaign’s website.

Furthermore, the Parents For Future Global network of climate parent groups has launched a letter that people can sign online to express their support.

Dr Alice Karanja is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Oct 31 2022 (IPS)

Dr Alice Karanja knows from personal experience the tough choices the climate crisis is putting people before in the Global South. Choices such as whether to have a healthy diet or give your children an education. Choices such as whether to go hungry or allow your children to have any schooling at all.

Having grown up on a small farm in Kenya, Karanja’s family made those tough calls and the huge sacrifices necessary to enable her to go all the way in education, obtaining a PhD in Sustainability Science from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

“I grew up on the slopes of Mount Kenya to a smallholder farming family,” Karanja told IPS at the recent World Food Forum at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Both my parents are small-scale farmers. My motivation for my work is inspired by what I saw when I was growing up.

“In Africa one of the issues that is affecting us regards the limited set of crops that are grown, mostly maize, wheat and rice. So when people grow maize, they expect then to get some income to get some vegetables or fruit to include in their diets. But often, because of climate change, that money can only be channeled to other needs of the household.”

“I observed my parents and how they were affected, and still are affected, by climate change in terms of extreme weather patterns, prolonged droughts, inconsistent rainfall patterns.

“The income that they got from their farms sometimes was mostly used to support us with education or health, while the expectation was that we could diversify our diets at home.

“In Africa one of the issues that is affecting us regards the limited set of crops that are grown, mostly maize, wheat and rice. So when people grow maize, they expect then to get some income to get some vegetables or fruit to include in their diets. But often, because of climate change, that money can only be channeled to other needs of the household.”

Karanja is now using her skills to help people just like her parents.

She is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems.

She also plans to pilot food-tree portfolios in Zambia to help smallholder families obtain year-round access to nutritious foods, diversify their incomes, and boost their resilience to increased food prices and climate change.

“Most of my work is at the intersection of resilience to climate change in terms of livelihoods, food security and conservation and the use of agro-biodiversity for improved diets,” Karanja said.

“For the past two years in my work at ICRAF, I have been looking at the role of agricultural biodiversity and the interplay it has with dietary diversification, also looking at how this interplay affects nutritional status, especially for women and children”.

Many other experts selected to take part in the Young Scientists Cohort (YSG) at the World Food Forum had similar stories.

Ram Neupane decided to study agriculture after being born on a small family farm in Gorkha, Nepal, and seeing the economic and psychological implications of devastating plant diseases.

Ram Neupane. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

“Climate change is a tentacular threat to all aspects (of life) and plant health is affected too,” Neupane, who is pursuing a dual-title doctorate in plant pathology at Penn State University in the United States thanks to a scholarship, told IPS.

“Novel pathogens and viruses are emerging right now because of climate change. I am from one of the more rural parts of Nepal. I was raised in a farming family, so I have first-hand experience of the impact on the farming community there. For example, in my village, the main crop is rice and most of the rice is rain fed.”

“When there is rainfall, farmers plant their rice. Due to climate change there has been irregularities in the timing and frequency of rainfall and this is affecting planting times.

“This, in turn, affects the whole cropping system.

“This has led to flows of people going from more rural areas to urban areas because farming is no longer profitable”.

Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, a lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana, employs his quantitative and qualitative research skills and experience to offer solution-oriented contributions to issues of climate change, food security, adaptation and environmental management, particularly in smallholder agriculture systems in developing economies.

“I chose this (career path) because of what I saw about climate change,” Asare-Nuamah told IPS.

“I work within the context of climate change and smallholder agriculture systems.

“I was born in a rural farming community where we engage in cocoa, cassava and other food crops, and you could see the impact of climate change.

“At the time the conversation about the impact of climate change was not so high, it had to do with high political level discussions, and I thought there was a need to engage individuals in the conversation on how to address climate change.

“People from my community are suffering. They plant (crops) and because of the absence of rainfall, the plants do not ripen. Even if they ripen, they give very low yields.

“There are pests and disease all over the world and in Ghana we are currently suffering with fall armyworm, which has arrived because of climate change and is having devastating consequences.

“Smallerholder farmers feed a lot of the population of the African continent but they have not been able to push themselves out of poverty and they continue to struggle.

Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

Education is an issue. Basic necessities are also an issue.

“So all this combines to put them in a position where they are highly vulnerable.

“Even though African economies contribute less than 3% to global carbon emissions, the impact is so high in this part of the continent.

“This calls for the need to address climate change, how developed economies, which have contributed so much to climate change, can come together and help smallholder farmers and developing economies to mitigate some of the challenges caused by the actions and inactions of some of the developed economies.

“So these are the issues that drove me personally to go into the climate change arena, so I can contribute to making sure that we have solutions for smallholder farmers, we have conversations, we have financing, and we are able to build the capacities of smallholder farmers”.

XR Red Rebels at a climate protest in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Blocking metros and highways in rush-hour traffic to stop commuters getting to work. Vandalizing petrol pumps to put them out of use.
Halting sporting events such as the French Open and the British Grand Prix. Disrupting bemused art lovers by gluing oneself to priceless masterpieces.

The methods used by the radical climate groups that have sprouted up in many countries in recent years, such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil (JSO) and Insulate Britain, seem better suited to alienating people than bringing them on board efforts to stop the looming environmental catastrophe. And alienate people they have.

We don't want to make people feel guilty for driving a car or not doing much to have a lighter carbon footprint. But we do want them to remember that they're citizens and members of a community

So they have rights, as we live in a democracy, but they also have duties

The reaction to a series of road-block protests in Rome in June by Italy’s Ultima Generazione (UG – Last Generation) group is a good example. Videos released by the group have you on the edge of your seat in fear for the protestors. In one, a car drives so close to a young woman sitting in the road that she appears to go under the vehicle.

In another, motorists violently drag protestors from the highway, with a young male protestor getting pulled away by his pony tail.
The online abuse is high voltage too, with group members getting called everything, from spoilt brats to terrorists.

Many commentators cannot understand why the protests hit ordinary people going about the business, rather than the rich and powerful. Other actions, such protestors gluing themselves to Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera at the Uffizi’s gallery or throwing paint over the Ecological Transition Ministry, have generated bafflement too.

The actions have not just come under fire from people unaware of the scale of the environmental crisis.

Even Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, told The i newspaper that “we don’t always agree with their tactics” when asked about Insulate Britain blocking motorways.

But, with the effects of the climate emergency increasingly manifest, these groups are not worried about being unpopular, as long as their message is heard.

“The main aim of our protests is to break the wall of indifference and polarize people,” Beatrice Costantino, a qualified vet who quit her career to dedicate herself full-time to fighting the climate emergency with UG, told IPS.

“We cannot have a constant, deep discussion on climate and ecological emergency without touching people’s emotions. We don’t want to make people feel guilty for driving a car or not doing much to have a lighter carbon footprint. “But we do want them to remember that they’re citizens and members of a community.

“So they have rights, as we live in a democracy, but they also have duties. We cannot offload our social responsibilities anymore and we must accept that our inaction is the biggest part of the problem. We cannot ask the government to change if we don’t put enough pressure on it and we are not willing to lose our privileges, our goods and our liberty for the (common) good and the truth”.

The group that led that way in adopting non-violent civil disobedience to demand climate action was Extinction Rebellion in the UK in 2018. UG and JSO are among several younger, even more radical groups that are part of the international A22 network.
Stop Old Growth in Canada, Derniere Renovation in France and Declare Emergency in the United States are other members.

They are inspired by examples of the successful use of civil resistance in the past, such as with the Suffragettes and the civil rights movement in the United States.

They believe that small groups of determined people can garner the active support of a relatively small proportion of the population, perhaps as low as 1% or 2%, to reach a sort of social tipping point that generates rapid change.

“We’re confident that this is the number of people that we really need for a non-violent revolution, as it has happened like this most of the time in the past,” Costantino said.

“When people are constantly bombed by news about climate crisis and people struggling against it, they start looking for more information, discussing it with friends and family, reflecting within themselves”.

She says the actions of the A22 network have produced results already.

“In Canada in 2021 more than 1,000 people protested against the destruction of virgin forests, going into the forests, blocking trucks, climbing up trees and tying themselves to them.

“But they received little media attention and lots of Canadians were not aware of the problem or didn’t care. “Now the Save Old Growth campaign is disrupting the public with fewer than 70 people. “They have been on the national news, they have been taken to prison and they have shocked the nation. “According to polls, now more than 80% of Canadians are worried about the problem and want the government to stop the destruction of their forests”.

Another characteristic of these protestors is their fearlessness when it comes to putting their safety and freedom on the line.
Indeed, many have faced prison for the cause, including 51 JSO supporters jailed on September 15 after taking action at the Kingsbury Oil Terminal in Britain.

Whether the majority like these tactics or not, with more protests planned in the coming weeks and months, we are certain to hear more about these groups. “What’s the price of inaction?” said Costantino.

“If we don’t cut emissions immediately, more than three billion people will be forced to leave their homes by 2070. “We must open our eyes and understand that our parents, our children, our loved ones are going to die in huge numbers if we don’t act now”.

Excerpt:

74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change, survey finds. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

In 1972 the Club of Rome alerted the world to the harm human economic systems were doing to the health of our planet in its seminal, best-selling report, The Limits to Growth. With the devastating impacts of the climate crisis hitting home harder than ever, especially in the Global South, that warning about the dangers of exponential economic growth has been fully vindicated.

The club, an international network of scientists, economic experts and former heads of State and government, is marking the 50th anniversary of that landmark work with a new contribution that builds on ‘Limits’ and the dozens of other reports that it has released over the last half century to consolidate the case for an overhaul of the prevailing economic paradigm.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis

‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’, which is coming out late in September, warns that if the world continues with the economic policies of the last 40 years, the rich will get richer while the poor fall farther behind, creating extreme inequalities and growing social tensions within and between countries.

In this ‘Too Little, Too Late Scenario’, political division and lack of trust will make it increasingly difficult to address climate and ecological risks, with regional societal collapse, driven by rising social tensions, food insecurity and environmental degradation, increasingly likely.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis by: ending poverty through reform of the international financial system; addressing gross inequality by ensuring that the wealthiest 10% take less than 40% of national incomes; empowering women to achieve full gender equity by 2050; transforming the food system to provide healthy diets for people and planet; and transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“With bold action now a large population can thrive on a livable planet,” Owen Gaffney, one of the six authors of the new report, told IPS.

“We argue that we need five transformations in parallel at speed with the biggest effort this decade on poverty, inequality, food, energy and gender equity”.

“This is the minimum. This does not lead to some utopia, but this leads to societies that are functional enough to deal with the scale of the crises we know are coming.”

Gaffney, a sustainability analyst at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said that it is necessary to break away from “a system that will create the first trillionaire this decade” and distribute wealth more fairly to create a system that benefits the majority in the long run.

“High wealth inequality has a destabilizing influence in societies,” he said.

“It erodes social cohesion. Compare Sweden to the United States. In the US there has emerged an ‘elite versus the rest’ worldview. This, compounded by race and religious divisions, has contributed to an increasingly dysfunctional society.

“In more economically equal societies there is more trust in governments. We need trust in governments to allow societies to take large, long-term decisions”.

Earth for All, which is the result of a two-year research project, goes on to give 15 policy recommendations with the greatest potential to accelerate these turnarounds.

It also calls for the creation of a novel financial innovation, the Citizen’s Fund, which would distribute the wealth of the global commons to all people as a Universal Basic Dividend, in order to tackle inequality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable through economic shocks.

Furthermore, the book tackles the fierce debate between supporters of ‘degrowth’ and advocates of ‘green growth’.

It sides with the latter, saying the ‘Giant Leap’ would not spell the end of economic growth, but the end of the directionless economic growth that is destroying societies and the planet.

“Exponential economic growth comes hand in hand with exponential growth in material consumption, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the current economic system,” said Gaffney.

“This does not necessarily need to be the case. An energy transformation to clean energy will cause economic growth in the clean energy sector and a contraction of the fossil fuel sector.”

“So, it depends what is growing. If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good.”

“If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth”.

Although the solutions proposed in the book are largely macro-economic ones that can only be implemented by governments, the book is also a statement against climate doomism and a call to action for everyone.

Gaffney points to the impact social movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are having and to a survey done for Earth4All with Ipsos MORI of G20 countries which suggests that 74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change.

He hopes that we are reaching a positive “social tipping point” in which these new ideas take hold and embed in the political sphere rapidly.

Remarkably, one of the authors of the report is Norwegian climate expert Jorgen Randers, who was also among the co-authors of The Limits to Growth.

“We are standing on a cliff edge,” Randers said. “In the next 50 years, the current economic system will drive up social tensions and drive down wellbeing.”

“We can already see how inequality is destabilising people and the planet.”

“Unless there is truly extraordinary action to redistribute wealth, things will get significantly worse. We are already sowing the seeds for regional collapse.”

“Societies are creating vicious cycles where rising social tensions, which are exacerbated by climate breakdown, will continue to lead to a decline in trust.”

“This risks an explosive combination of extreme political destabilisation and economic stagnation at a time when we must do everything we can to avoid climate catastrophes.”

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Mar 17 2010 (IPS)

Employees at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) may have cause to fear for their jobs after Yukiko Omura was appointed vice president of the United Nations’ rural poverty agency in February.

Yukiko Omura Credit: IFAD

The Japanese economist is not one of those ruthless job-slashing executives that organisations bring in when they want to downsize to efficiency though. But, she is a determined, capable woman who believes that IFAD’s mission is to help create a world where the agency is no longer needed, by empowering rural people to haul themselves out of poverty.

Omura, who joins the Rome-based agency after being head of the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and some 20 years in the private sector as an investment banker before that, recognises that this is a massive challenge, with around three-quarters of the planet’s 1.02 billion hungry people living in rural areas.

She believes a key component to meeting it is to tap the enterprising spirit of women farmers in developing countries.

Q: Your previous job was as a senior executive at the World Bank, a body that many non-governmental organisations blame for exacerbating the poverty IFAD is trying to combat. Is this switch like changing sides from the baddies to the good guys? A: No. I did not leave the World Bank because it is a bad institution. I left because I thought I could do something different to add more value to development. I worked in political risk insurance, a very specific field within the World Bank group. I wanted to do something that is even more effective by getting involved in grants, loans and investments, reaching out to the poorest of the poor and helping them become effective private sector business people.

Q: How do you intend to do that? A: I’m here to support the president [Kanayo Nwanze] to ensure we become an even bigger contributor to assisting small-holder farmers worldwide, increasing projects and becoming more flexible in terms of satisfying our clients’ demands by becoming more of an IFI (international financial institution) than we are today. We are also going to keep supporting women and women small-holder farmers because we firmly believe, as do many development IFIs and agencies, that they are an important part of economic development in any part of the world.

Q: What qualities do you bring to the job? A: I bring both multilateral, development experience and private sector, investment experience – in my view skills needed more and more in international financial institutions. The private sector part is important because we are here to promote private sector development by small-holders in developing countries.

Q: As an economist, do you think we should stop seeing helping small-holders, and the fight against hunger as a whole, as charity and start seeing it as an opportunity for people with money to invest in agriculture and, ultimately, make a profit? A: Yes. I absolutely think we should change the way we look at this. We at IFAD think small-holder farmers are the way to go because they are the bulk of the population in the poorest countries. If they cannot produce food those countries will not become self-sufficient. If we are successful, these farmers will be more successful private sectors and they won’t need people or institutions like IFAD any more. That is IFAD’s goal.

Q: To put itself out of business? A: Yes.

Q: Is empowering women in rural areas a big part of your new job? A: I’m not here specifically to empower women – that is the responsibility of all international organisations because it’s Millennium Development Goal Three. But I will absolutely help IFAD in that movement. I just happen to be a woman

Q: Do women have entrepreneurial qualities that make them better suited to transforming small farms into thriving operations? A: I’m sure there’d be a lot of men who would disagree. I’m open, but I’d say that if you look at women in small-holder farmer areas, they grow crops, they buy seed, they sell crops, they cook food, they raise children, they take responsibility of the money at home. So in effect the woman is acting like the CEO, CFO and COO of a household and that is the basis of the private sector. There is no way we should not take advantage of that in the more expansive role of running a business.

Q: There seems to be growing consensus about the importance of gender equality in the fight against poverty, but this message is still frequently delivered by men. Is part of the problem that the majority of policy-makers are still men? A: At the Bank I think close to two-thirds of top senior management are women. At the U.N. there are a lot of senior women. Even in the private sector there are, so I’m not sure I agree with that statement. But it is important to recognise that women are equally, if not more, important in development. Fifty percent of the population is women, at the very minimum. If you want a developed economy, you must involve that 50 percent.

Q: The challenges IFAD is trying to help the world meet are enormous. Ending hunger and rural poverty in a sustainable way while coping with the effects of climate change and increasing food production to meet the demands of a rising global population and at the same time achieving gender equality! Many would say the progress up to now has not been great. How do you rate our chances for the future? A: We have a lot of work to do in all the areas you mentioned. If we are to meet the Millennium Development Goals we really have to push much more. I think the recent (economic) crisis has woken us up a little, not just people working in development directly, but the general population. We cannot be complacent, we have to push forward. We have a long way to go. They all go in tandem, whether it is climate change, empowerment of women, food crises. You cannot solve one problem without affecting the others positively. We have to work on all fronts.

Excerpt:

If the first step towards solving a problem is recognising you have one, the Italian authorities look to be some way from tackling the growing racism and xenophobia affecting sections of its society.

Last week’s riots by migrants in the southern town of Rosarno exposed an ugly side of the ‘Bel Paese’ – the beautiful country – that contrasts sharply with its romantic image abroad.

Instead of the architectural delights of Rome, Florence and Venice, viewers around the world saw pictures of seasonal farm workers driven to vandalism by exploitation and inhuman living conditions after the touch paper was lit by two of them being shot by air-rifles.

Instead of sun-kissed beaches and rolling Tuscan hills, there were pictures of the victims of the local retaliation being carried to hospital wards.

Instead of charming waiters and beautiful, immaculately dressed brown-eyed youngsters, cameras focused on angry faced locals applauding as around 1,000 Africans were rushed out of town on packed buses.

For Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni this was simply a law and order problem, a situation stemming from too much “mistaken tolerance” and a failure to apply the government’s strict immigration laws, which make being an undocumented migrant a criminal offence.

But the United Nations, the Catholic Church and, to a lesser degree, opposition parties see it as a symptom of a more profound problem, and not only because the majority of the Rosarno immigrants had the papers to stay in Italy legally.

“The violence is extremely worrying since it reveals serious and deep-rooted problems of racism against these migrant workers,” read a joint statement by U.N. officials Jorge Bustamante and Githu Muigai, respectively the special rapporteurs on migrants’ rights and on racism and intolerance.

The Vatican agreed in an editorial in its official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

“Italy needs to deal with its racism, it is a weeping sore that needs to be treated,” it read. “Not only are they disgusting in themselves, but the incidents which dominate the news at the moment take us back to a dumb and savage hate towards another skin colour which we thought we had left behind.”

The Egyptian foreign ministry also intervened, expressing concern about an example of “violations which migrants and minorities, including Arab Muslim minorities, in Italy face.”

Indeed, the trouble in Rosarno was the latest in a series of episodes and attacks that suggest to many that a climate of intolerance is taking grip.

For example, a local council run by the Northern League party that Maroni belongs to, a key partner in the governing centre-right coalition, attracted international attention with its ‘White Christmas’ campaign to purge the town of Coccaglio of undocumented migrants in time for the last month’s holidays.

Abusive songs and monkey chants directed at Inter Milan footballer Mario Balotelli, an Italy under-21 forward who is of Ghanaian descent, have shone the spotlight on the racism that has dogged Italian football for years, and made him a symbol of the country’s apparent refusal to embrace a multi- ethnic identity.

Many migrants, meanwhile, have the impression that Italians think of them solely as a source of crime and friction, forgetting the vital contribution foreign-born workers make to the economy and society as a whole. A one- day migrant strike is being organised for March 1 to help remind people how much they matter.

“People don’t seem to realise that immigrants are a resource for their country,” Mariana Chavez, a former literature teacher from Ecuador who has been working in Rome as a childminder for 12 years, told IPS.

“Italy needs immigrants because they do the jobs that Italians don’t want – in the fields, factories, kitchens and caring for the elderly. But there is an atmosphere of suspicion. Several of my compatriots say people do things such as move their bags to protect them when they see an immigrant on a bus. If Italy continues like this, it will become racist.

“If we paralyse the country for one day with a strike it might show how the country would be without us. It is necessary to do something because we need to be respected.”

Migrants make up around seven percent of Italy’s population of about 60 million, and account for about nine percent of its gross domestic product, according to International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates.

But rather than policies to help these migrants fit in, there is a tough stance that many say makes it harder for them to settle and integrate into Italian society and may, perversely, actually create illegality.

“Now they only issue residence permit for the period of your work contract, so if you lose your job at the end of it, you are no one,” Nelly Diop, a Senegalese intercultural mediator who is among the organisers of the March 1 strike, told IPS.

“It means you are only here as a worker, not as a human being. You have no prospects to be able to plan for the future. Then they make you wait so long to have your permit. I know a man who has been waiting two years and, of course, in the meantime he has been forced to take jobs on the black market because he still doesn’t have his papers.

“You don’t create an integrated society like this. There are no thoughts of integration but only of exclusion and the climate is getting worse. They want to make us invisible.”

Such protests, and the U.N.’s and the Vatican’s harsh words failed to provoke a reaction from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government, never mind a policy rethink.

They did help spark considerable public introspection though, and a debate in the media.

Many Italians are embarrassed by the Northern League’s xenophobic rhetoric, and disagree with government policies that include turning back boats carrying migrants on the open seas.

It is also true that Italy is having to quickly adapt to being a destination for migrants, having traditionally been an exporter of labour to other countries.

Some commentators believe that recent events and the government’s approach show the country has still not come to terms with its history.

“Britain has reflected on its colonial past, Germany has done the same with Nazism, but Italians still believe the myth of the Good Italian, soft colonialism and insist the racial laws of the 1930s were passed by fascists, not Italians,” Corriere della Sera journalist Gian Antonio Stella told The Guardian newspaper.

The Vatican’s daily agreed: “It seems Italians are incapable of overcoming their racist past.”

By Paul Virgo
VITERBO, Italy, Dec 7 2009 (IPS)

Dinner one evening when he was a kid put William Rees on track to becoming a sustainability pioneer. It was after a day at work on the family farm when he was nine or 10. He saw he had had a hand in growing everything on his plate. That brought a fascination with a connection to earth that would never leave him.

Prof. William Rees Credit:

Together with a team of post-graduates, above all former PhD student Mathis Wackernagel, Rees, now a professor at the University of British Colombia, went on to develop the concept of the ‘ecological footprint’. That is now prime measure of the demands humanity puts on nature.

He spoke to IPS at the Greenaccord conference in Viterbo, near Rome.

IPS: You have helped change our way of thinking about how our everyday lives have an impact on the world and climate change with the ‘ecological footprint’ concept. This must be very gratifying. WILLIAM REES: Yes. As a metaphor and as a scientific method, I’m very proud we’ve had such an impact on changing the debate. It has an enormous contribution in the climate debate because in many industrial countries the carbon footprint, a sub-set of the ecological footprint, amounts to half or more of the human eco-footprint.

IPS: Nevertheless consumption and energy use levels continue at unsustainable rates. According to the Global Footprint Network headed by your former student Mathis Wackernagel, if everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American, we would need five planets. So your message has not succeeded yet. WR: There are several ways of looking at this. It’s well known among cognitive scientists that new information often does not make a difference. People become habituated to a certain way of life. When there are great uncertainties, we tend to gravitate to the things we know.

And if I change my life entirely so I had a perfectly adequate eco-footprint, I would take a major hit. But if no one else did the same, I’d be overwhelmed by other people’s effects. So for individuals to change is almost meaningless, if they are not in a context of social change.

But what new knowledge does do is prepare people to be willing to accept the changes we make collectively. So if people are well informed about the drivers of climate change, about the role of consumption and population in creating an oversized ecological footprint, then they are more likely to accept the kind of government and international policy changes that are absolutely necessary to make a real difference.

I’m from North America, a car-driven society, and very few people will voluntarily change that. But if governments provide substitutes in cities, via major investment in public transit, then people are more likely to be willing to give up the car for much of the work week.

But I as an individual cannot provide the public transit. That’s a collective solution to a collective problem.

Similarly as an individual I can’t apply a carbon tax, I can’t apply a carbon- trading system. Education about climate change and the eco-footprint prepares people to be willing to accept those kind of major changes.

IPS: With the Copenhagen climate change talks, a lot of people seem to think that by tweaking our lifestyles and making a few changes such as more use of renewables, we can go on and live happily ever after. The impression is that you do not think this is true and we need more radical changes. WR: Absolutely. Technology has a major role. But the simple reality is that whenever we look at major technological efficiency gains, they tend to increase rather than decrease consumption. So think of a major change that reduces the energy content of something, then energy prices are likely to fall; if this operates through to the economy then people will simply consume more energy across the board.

IPS: Do we have to change the widespread view that economic growth is always a good thing? WR: There’s no question that economic growth is good if you are starting from virtually zero. People need basic food, clothing and shelter. But we see over and over again that as people become wealthier, there is a disconnect between improvements in wellbeing and per capita income. (After income of) something like 10,000 dollars per capita per annum in a country, there’s no further general improvement in longevity. You’ve obtained about 95 percent of the benefits of income growth at a relatively low income level. Similarly, in most high income countries we see no further correlation between felt wellbeing, a personal subjective feeling of how happy we are and our future prospects, and income growth. Most North Americans and many Europeans were happiest in the 1950s and 60s, when incomes were half what they are today. At low levels, extra income enhances your ability to consume the basics of life. But you reach a point where further income actually complicates life and quality of life begins to decline.

If we were really living up to our self-proclaimed capacity as rational beings, the evidence of intelligent life on earth, we would be reorganising the global economy, so that needed growth was taking place in countries where there are significant gains in wellbeing. Growth is simply an increase in the scale; development means an improvement in the quality, and we have seen increasing growth in rich countries but a decline in development. We are dis- developing even as we are growing. It’s growth that makes us poorer, rather than richer.

IPS: What you’re suggesting is a fundamental rethink of our values and an overhaul of our social and economic structures. Have you any idea how we can bring this about? WR: Education is important. But it’s very slow. There are obvious examples of social learning – the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, women’s liberation – but they take decades to take full effect. With climate change we simply don’t have 40 or 50 years.

One thing people do respond to is prices. The rhetoric suggests we are in a global market place – I can assure you it is nothing of the kind. We’ve organised this economy in ways that assure prices of goods and services do not reflect their true costs of production, hence the economy is a lie. We are willing to move all our dirty industries to Asia, so externalities such as pollution, waste and public health problems are now happening half a planet away.

Any economist will tell you this is a gross market failure. But we won’t do anything about it, because it facilitates trade and we love getting those cheap goods from China, so your laptop that costs 300 or 400 pounds is probably worth twice that if you were to internalise those external costs.

There will be no change unless governments come together and begin to introduce the legal and institutional framework that causes us to have a more truly market-orientated economy and a more heavily regulated economy too. For those who recoil at the idea of government regulation, I can say without any fear of being proved wrong by history that the longer we wait, the more freedoms will be lost and the more stringent the regulations will become.

I think we need some very strong leadership here from one of the major countries – say look, it’s clear from the science that we’re committing a kind of cultural suicide, therefore we will take the lead and this is what we are trying to do. If that requires setting up trade barriers to make it possible, I’m all for it. We clearly need much stronger leadership.

Excerpt:

The World Food Security Summit in Rome this week opened up a dispute between what may be investment in farmland to some, but is seen as land grab by others.

There has been widespread alarm at a recent acceleration in purchases of farmland in developing countries, above all Africa, primarily by investors from the Middle and Far East.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the summit’s host, said it is estimated that up to 20 million hectares of African land have been acquired by foreign interests in the last three years.

States such as Saudi Arabia and China started to look for farmland abroad after a spike in the price of staples such as wheat and rice in 2007-08, prompting fears that smallholder farmers may be displaced from their territories, worsening the situation in countries already suffering grave food insecurity.

The rise in food prices and the financial crisis have driven more than 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry this year, to take their number beyond the one-billion mark for the first time, the FAO says. So it is perhaps understandable that hostility to foreign land purchases in Africa remains high.

“Our leaders (in Africa) are selling all our land,” Huguette Akplogan Dossa, coordinator of the African Network on the Right to Food, told IPS. “Selling national land is not a good thing. They have to think about what is good for the people. If they come to buy our lands for production, take it to their countries, transform it and sell it back to us very expensively, it is another form of colonialism. We have to ban it.”

However, the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are reluctant to stigmatise a possible source of capital, given that a long-running decline in agricultural investment is perhaps the main reason why so many people in rural areas of developing countries struggle to feed themselves.

“It is the wrong language to call them land grabs. They are investments in farmland like investments in oil exploration,” Kanayo Nwanze, head of IFAD, told a news conference. “The fact there are distortions does not suggest this should be banned.”

FAO and IFAD admit that the acquisitions, which continued to be called ‘land grabs’ in summit papers despite Nwanze’s objections, have had negative impacts in some cases. But they insist foreign investment can also help smallholders gain access to the resources they need to haul themselves out of poverty. So they are holding consultations on an international code of conduct to encourage positive forms of foreign agricultural investment and discourage bad practices.

“What strikes me is the heterogeneity of these situations. It appears superficially that all of these so-called land grabs are similar; it’s big foreign companies pushing smallholders off the land, and indeed some of them do look like that,” IFAD Assistant President Kevin Cleaver told IPS.

“But others are much more similar to old private investments in sugar, rubber and tea that actually put money into a country, developed an area that was underdeveloped, and helped smallholders,” Cleaver said. “My point is not to give a message about whether it is good or bad. I know for certain that the situation is highly heterogeneous. My suspicion is that there are horrible cases of grotesque exploitation and there are other cases of useful private investment.”

The agencies say the arrival of foreign investors could help smallholders by, for example, bringing with them greater access to modern seeds and other inputs needed to improve yields, as well as storage and processing facilities, loans and perhaps even markets.

They want the code of conduct to ensure that land purchases are carried out with the consent of local communities and do not damage the environment, and that smallholders are not rendered landless.

FAO and IFAD also want measures that would prevent weaknesses in the national laws of developing countries meaning that the interests of the rural poor are overlooked when it is time to sign contracts.

“One area of concern is the imbalance between domestic laws with respect to the terms of the contracts,” David Hallam, FAO deputy director of the trade and markets division told a news conference. “There tends to be very little reflection of domestic needs in terms of food security and the rights of all the stakeholders in those contracts.”

The two U.N. agencies said they were also looking to promote alternative, less controversial forms of inward investment, such as joint ventures in which foreign backers provide resources, know-how and a market for smallholders in exchange for guaranteed supplies.

The consultations will not be concluded until next year, Hallam said, and it will then take some time for the various contributions to be distilled into a set of guidelines. But he expressed confidence that the political support existed for the code of conduct’s approval once it is drawn up.

Nevertheless, the 450 civil society organisations taking part in a parallel forum were not won over. “Land grabbing by external capital must stop,” read a declaration by participants at the forum.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is also among those vehemently opposed. “Rich countries are now buying land in Africa. They are cheating African people out of their rights. This is going to happen in Latin America too,” Gaddafi said in his address to the summit.

“Small farmers are being bereft of their own land by new feudal powers coming from outside Africa and buying up land very cheaply. We should fight against this new feudalism. We should put an end to the land grab in African countries.”

The Food Security Summit, which ended on Wednesday after being snubbed by the world’s most powerful leaders, has been branded a flop by anti- poverty non-governmental organisations. They are disappointed at the failure to get the international community to commit to wiping out hunger by 2025 and to convince developed nations to agree to allocate 44 billion dollars in aid to agriculture each year.