World food crisis: take action

I just got this message below on a Transition Stroud email list. It is full of passion about the need for action - and certainly the message further below from Avaaz should make us all think - a world food crisis is hitting - do please follow the link and sign the petition.

Grangemouth has shown us we are also enormously vulnerable to oil prices and availability - see my letter to local press copied on this blog on Saturday 26th April and the comment re £10 a gallon on my blog on 5th April and the 13th Feb about why the price of peak oil is famine - indeed it is an issue I've returned to regularly - and an issue our Government has completely failed to grasp. Let us hope all this tragedy will awake them...

as you can see from the message below, everything we have talked about is becoming more and more our daily reality. a world wide food crisis is happening out there and is imminent everywhere else. still there are so many folk that brush it off thinking anything they could do would make little difference anyway, that one more shopper in the local supermarket is but a drop in the ocean, that eating out of season veg is normal, that a quick trip to the video store in the car won't hurt much, that government will someday do something... it is this apathy that stifles movements for change. we need to take action and to believe that every act builds the collective act. here in Stroud we have huge potential to create a sustainable local economy. there are so many ideas and projects being developed but we must support them in every way to make them a reality. this is really a plea (and a rant) to get out there whenever you can to join all the positive efforts and events, workshops and talks, and most importantly to bring these messages back into your own home where you can make the most difference... eat seasonal veg (join a CSA)!! (your kids will learn to love it and your bellies and wallets will feel better for it!); dig up part of your lawn; change where your electricity comes from; switch off things you don't need; share your bath water or take a shower!; make your own conserves, preserves and booze; buy local; walk and cycle more; join the car club; rediscover charity shops and swap stuff with friends; carry cloth shopping bags and refuse plastic; get an allotment... and please get yourselves out there to any proactive event you have time for!! xx

Avaaz write: "We're plunging headlong into a world food crisis. Rocketing prices are squeezing billions and triggering food riots from Bangladesh to South Africa. Aid agencies say 100 million more people are at risk of starvation right now. In Sierra Leone alone the price of a bag of rice has doubled, becoming unaffordable for 90% of citizens. Fears of inflation stalk the whole world, and the worst could be yet to come. We need to act now - before it's too late. As Ban Ki-Moon holds a high-level UN meeting on the crisis, we're launching an urgent campaign with African foreign minister and human rights campaigner Zainab Bangura. Click below to see Zainab's video message and add your name to the food crisis petition - we need to raise 200,000 signatures by the end of this week to deliver a massive global outcry to leaders at the UN, G8 and EU. The prices of staple foods like wheat, corn and rice have almost doubled, and the crisis is slipping out of control - so we're calling for immediate action on emergency food aid, speculation and biofuels policy, while asking forthcoming summits to tackle deeper problems of investment and trade."

Please sign: www.avaaz.org/en/world_food_crisis/9.php

The impacts of climate change are clearly going to make the situation worse. Today Green MEP Jean Lambert was speaking at a major event investigating the impact of climate change on mass migration will bring together key environment and population experts tomorrow to discuss how climate change will affect migration patterns and how policy-makers should respond. The conference organised by the IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) was at The British Librar and included Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn, the Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Kim Howells, and Lord Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank.

As the conference I am sure showed, one of the greatest impacts of climate change that we are going to see in the near future will be widespread human displacement as changing weather patterns cause crops to fail and create food and water shortages. What is unknown is when and where these human crises will unfold and how best to cope with the resulting migration. There are already an estimated 25 million environmental refugees in the world, but they are not recognised as such by the international community and thus have no legal protection. Closing borders is not a long-term solution. Countries that have the greatest responsibility for creating climate change also have a responsibility to deal with the casualties.

See useful analysis here and Paul Rogers good article on the subject here:
www.opendemocracy.net/article/conflicts/global_security/the_worlds_food_problem