Food security improving now
Financial Times, 5/28 (“Boost for global food security,” 5/28/2014, http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/05/boost-for-global-food-security/, JMP)
Some good news for a change. Food security - the availability and affordability of food – has got better, according to research published on Wednesday.
The 66-page report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by DuPont, the chemicals company, found that despite last year’s freak weather patterns - drought in California, heatwaves in Australia and floods in Russia – food security improved in almost three-quarters of the world’s countries.
Food security is a growing concern, given the expectation that the world’s population is likely to peak at 10bn mid-century, meaning an extra 3bn mouths to feed.
The biggest improvements were in countries with the worst food security problems, namely sub-Saharan Africa, where only two – South Africa and Botswana – have a global food security index of more than 50 per cent.
This has led to a narrowing of the gap with the most food-secure countries – headed by the US – where improvements were slower.
Lower wheat and rice prices were behind the improvement, as was a better world economy. The EIU report backs up the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recent research showing a fall in the number of hungry people from 868m in 2010-12 to 842m – still 12 per cent of the global population.
Food insecurity empirically doesn’t cause conflict
Salehyan 7 – Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. (Idean, 6-14 “The New Myth About Climate Change Corrupt, tyrannical governments—not changes in the Earth’s climate—will be to blame for the coming resource wars.” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/08/13/the_new_myth_about_climate_change)
First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. Furthermore, if famine and drought led to the crisis in Darfur, why have scores of environmental catastrophes failed to set off armed conflict elsewhere? For instance, the U.N. World Food Programme warns that 5 million people in Malawi have been experiencing chronic food shortages for several years. But famine-wracked Malawi has yet to experience a major civil war. Similarly, the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of environmental refugees, and led to severe shortages of shelter, food, clean water, and electricity. Yet the tsunami, one of the most extreme catastrophes in recent history, did not lead to an outbreak of resource wars. Clearly then, there is much more to armed conflict than resource scarcity and natural disasters.
Wars are mostly regional – won’t escalate internationally
Allouche 11 – fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Brighton, UK (Jeremy, "The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade" Food Policy, Volume 36, Supplement 1)
This article has provided an overview of the current and future challenges in terms of global food and water systems. The major focus of the argument has been on how resource scarcity is a contested and subjective concept which cannot fully explain conflict, political instability or food insecurity. The politics of inequality and allocation are much more important variables in explaining water and food insecurity. This is particularly true for conflicts. Although resource scarcity has been linked to international wars, the current data shows that most conflict over water and food are much more local. But there again, although resource scarcity can be linked to malnutrition, hunger and water insecurity, in the majority of cases, water and food insecurity are rarely about competition over resources but rather reflect the politics of allocation and inequality. In this respect, war and conflicts aggravate these insecurities not just on the short term but also on the long term. At the global level, food security has considerably improved and provides the means to address these insecurities. Trade can certainly be seen as a way to address access for countries that are under severe stress in terms of food and water and provides logical grounds for questioning the various water and food wars scenarios. Although global trade and technological innovation are key drivers in providing stable and resilient global systems, the most destabilizing global water-related threat is increasing food prices and hunger. Overall, decision-makers should show greater concern for the human beings who make their living in agriculture, so that those at risk of livelihood and food-security failures, especially under anticipated scenarios of climate change, will be less deprived. Current debates linked to global food security and climate fail to address the political dimension of resource scarcity which is primarily linked to the politics of inequality, gender and power.
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