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Global Food Prices a Warning Beacon |
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By Tierramérica Editor's Desk*
Rising food prices may be the first economic indicator of the global environmental crisis, said experts gathered for a U.N.-sponsored seminar in the Mexican city of Monterrey. The final declaration of the meeting, the Monterrey Initiative, urges governments around the globe to promote sustainable farming practices.
MONTERREY, Mexico - Global demand for food will grow an estimated 60 percent by 2030 and, unless urgent action is taken, the crisis in the farming sector will push the world economy to the edge, warned experts from 60 countries gathered in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.
According to United Nations projections, there will be some 78 million people added to the global population each year. ''It is not a trivial issue. We are talking about adding an equivalent of 2.5 Canadas each year. How will we possibly feed them?'' asks Lester Brown, a U.S. activist and one of the standout voices in the global environmental debate.
''The current world grain stocks are the lowest in 30 years. Continued expansion of food production faces two big threats: falling water tables and rising temperatures,'' said Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and the Worldwatch Institute, two major environmental think-tanks in the United States.
Within the next few years, said the expert, rising food prices may be the first global economic indicator to signal serious trouble in the relationship between the world's 6.3 billion people and the Earth's natural systems and resources on which we depend.
The author of ''Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble'', participated Nov. 15-16 in Monterrey in the eighth High-Level Seminar on Sustainable Consumption and Production, organized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
In the final declaration, the ''Monterrey Initiative'', the group of experts call for implementing clean consumption and production strategies in the agricultural sector to promote the sustainable use of resources, like water, land and energy.
According to a report by Garrete Clark and Charles Arden-Clarke, of UNEP's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, 26 percent of the planet's land surface has been converted into farmland and pasture since the 1970s, causing contamination, loss of biodiversity, depletion of aquifers and the deterioration of quality of life for millions of small farmers.
Small-scale farming employs at least a billion people in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Africa.
Farming, say the UNEP specialists, is the world's leading consumer of freshwater, and the groundwater tables are on the decline in the three leading grain-producing nations: India, China and the United States.
''Water resources depletion is a more important issue than oil scarcity. We lived millions of years without oil, we can only live days without water,'' warns Brown.
Meanwhile, increasing average temperatures, which according to scientific consensus rose 0.7 degrees centigrade in the last quarter century because of the greenhouse effect, also exerts negative pressure on crops and food security.
The demand of China alone -- where food production fell 70 million tons in 2003 -- would drive up global food prices, he said.
International prices for wheat flour this year increased 38 percent, maize 36 percent and rice 39 percent.
''Some 840 million people worldwide suffer hunger, and their subsistence is critical for the sustainable management of natural resource,'' said UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer.
The countries of the developing South ''have a comparative trade advantage in the agricultural sector that, if exploited in a sustainable way, could provide a clear route to development,'' he said.
The Monterrey Initiative also urges government to take concrete steps towards clean production and sustainable consumption in the areas of water, energy and natural resources, technology and manufacturing.
''We believe sustainable consumption and production are basic tools for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, particularly those related to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger to ensure environmental sustainability,'' said the document drafted by the experts at the Monterrey seminar.
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