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	Food Security is a Global Challenge by Kofi Annan Foundation   (Speech by Kofi Annan to mark the opening of the Centre on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford).   The challenges you are focussing on could hardly be more important. Nor could your timing better underline their urgency.   Only last week the UN marked the world’s population reaching seven billion. And it was just 13 years earlier, in Sarajevo, where the world celebrated the birth of the six billionth child.   This growth has been driven by great advances in healthcare, higher levels of prosperity, and longer life expectancy.   But these achievements are marred by the knowledge that our successes go hand in hand with a shameful failure.   For almost one in seven people on our planet will today not have enough to eat.   Addressing this failure, urgent as it is, will be made much harder by climate change.   For rising temperatures and more frequent severe weather will have a disastrous impact on the availability and productivity of agricultural land. Indeed they already are.   It is these two inter-linked global challenges- food security in an era of climate change, and their impact on our ambitions for a fairer and more secure world that I want to talk about today.   I will focus in particular on the challenges and opportunities that currently exist in Africa.   We live at a time of great contrasts. New technologies and the benefits of globalisation have created greater prosperity and more opportunity than ever before. But this progress has not been shared evenly.   Hundreds of millions of our fellow citizens continue to live in poverty, and without dignity.   At the heart of this global inequality lies food and nutrition insecurity. The lack of food security for almost one billion people is an unconscionable moral failing.   But it is also a major brake on overall socio-economic development. It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth.   But despite the increase in our knowledge and capabilities, instead of seeing a reduction in the number of people going hungry, we are seeing an increase.   According to the World Bank, rapidly rising food prices during 2010 and 2011 pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.   We also know that we will have to find food to feed many more mouths in the coming decades.   Recent projections warn that the number of people may not stabilize at nine billion, as was forecast only two years ago, but could surpass 10 billion by the end of the century.   At the same time, greater prosperity in developing countries will see three billion people moving up the food chain with a growing appetite for meat and dairy products.   So grain, once used to feed people, is increasingly being switched to feed animals.   And rising oil prices have brought greater competition from heavily subsidized agro or bio fuels.   These factors alone could lead to demand for food increasing by 70 per cent by 2050. This would be a tough enough challenge. But it is only half of a dangerous equation.   For we are facing new constraints on food production of which the most severe is climate change. Climate change is an all-encompassing threat to our health, security, and stability.   It will have a major impact on fresh water resources and the productivity of the land.   Some experts warn that we may still be badly under-estimating the damaging long-term impact of climate change on food supply.   What is certain is that rising temperatures and changes to rainfall patterns are already affecting crop yields negatively.   This is a terrible legacy to leave our children. Yet so far, our generation of leaders - including those here in the United States - have failed to find the vision or courage to tackle it.   This is despite the last 12 months seeing record-setting floods and snowstorms, prolonged drought, and devastating wildfires here in the United States.   Worldwide, 20 countries in 2010 experienced new record-high temperatures; a heat wave in Russia proved the deadliest in human history; and the current flooding in Thailand highlights that the threat of extreme weather events driven by man-made climate change is growing.   Yet those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies, still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests.   This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change- the poorest and most vulnerable, that will pay the highest price.   Populations in developing regions which are heavily reliant on rain water for crops will immediately feel the impact of rising temperatures and water shortages.   In Sub-Saharan Africa, crop yields from rain-fed farmlands are forecast to fall as much as 50% by the end of this century, while 8% of fertile land is expected to be transformed into dustbowls, useless for cultivation or grazing.   These damaging changes are taking place in a continent where agriculture has already suffered badly from sustained lack of investments.   A lack of investment in research, human resource development and infrastructure means that cereal yields are a quarter of the world’s average, and have barely increased in 30 years.   As a result, Africa - the continent where the biggest future growth in population is projected - is already failing to produce enough food to feed its own peoples.   This is the deeply worrying backdrop against which the work of this Centre will begin. It is why no challenge is in greater need of the innovation and intellectual rigour for which this university is internationally renowned.   But there are also signs of hope and opportunities to be seized. First – and almost counter-intuitively - the rise in food prices may help us find solutions, provided we can find mechanisms to protect the vulnerable and prevent price volatility.   * Visit the link below to access the complete speech. Visit the related web page
	Beyond hunger by Action Aid International   Beyond hunger, by Hannah Burrows.   Mohamed Bilala, ActionAid Kenya’s Warehouse Supervisor in drought-hit Isiolo, shows me a room packed with maize and through to another packed with pulses. So far so normal in a drought relief situation.   The next room, however, leaves me momentarily disoriented. With row upon row of shovels and pile upon pile of pick axes, it looks less like an emergency distribution warehouse and more like a DIY centre.   Another way of looking at it though, is that this is a room with a long-term answer to Kenya’s current food shortages.   This is the main warehouse for ActionAid’s food distribution in Isiolo – which, in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), is providing food relief to communities who are currently unable to provide enough food for themselves. It is also the centre of ActionAid’s Food for Assets programme. In exchange for staple foods people are working on projects which will build ‘assets’ for their community.   The work communities are involved in takes many shapes and forms. Michael Thiauri, ActionAid Technical Advisor, explains that communities decide what is going to be most appropriate to the area they are living in and which will yield the biggest results.   In areas that receive erratic rainfall, for instance, they may work on structures like irrigation channels or zai pits, which enable them to collect run off rain water. These simple structures mean farmers can store precious rain water and channel it to their farms or home gardens.   Elsewhere, communities may choose to work on surfacing a road so they are better able to transport their produce to a nearby market. Or they may plant trees to provide pasture for their livestock and help to regenerate a piece of land which has been overused. Whatever the project, and however their working day is spent, communities are investing their time in projects that address the challenges they face today.   Mike explains, “vulnerable people living in North East Kenya are living day to day. They have families to feed so they rely on work that will give them immediate sources of income to buy food and water. As a result, they spend most of their time working on the farms of the rich or doing casual labour just to take care of their stomachs.”   This means they have to leave their own farmers unattended and renders them forever dependent on others. If farmers want to improve the productivity of their own land, they need to invest time and resources – a luxury that most can’t afford as tilling land or digging a water dam won’t put food on the table today.   Drought will happen again in Kenya, but aid agencies like ActionAid intervening with food relief is not a foregone conclusion. There are simple, cheap and practical solutions which farmers can use to increase their productivity. They just need the support, the tools and resources to be able to implement them.   Aug 2011   Not your usual humanitarian worker.   My name is Ilana Solomon, Senior Policy Analyst for ActionAid USA, and I am a humanitarian worker. When people think of humanitarian workers they see disaster responders handing out water, food and first-aid kits. However, the majority of my work takes place in an office, in Washington D.C.   The people that I support need developed countries to take responsibility for their role in one of the gravest challenges facing our time: climate change. My job is to hold policy makers accountable for solving the climate crisis and to amplify the voice of people living in poverty who are disproportionately affected by climate change.   My objective is to increase awareness of climate change and encourage people to raise their voice and take a stand alongside the communities who are most impacted by it.   To me, one of the greatest injustices is that it is those who have done the least to create the climate crisis that are the first and worst hit. My work is dedicated to advocating for policies that will help poor countries address the effects of climate change.   Some communities in East Africa are currently experiencing their worst drought in over sixty years. Previously, droughts in Northeastern Kenya used to occur every 5 to 6 years, however since the late 1990s droughts now come to East Africa every 3 months.   With droughts occurring so frequently, communities are unable to main their pastures and livestock- their main source of food and income.   Droughts also increase the potential for the spread of disease by limiting the availability of fresh water and by reducing food security. These circumstances are deepening poverty and forcing those suffering to resort to desperate measures to survive.   Abdi Omar Farah, a Somali pastoralist living in Northeastern Kenya and working with ActionAid Kenya, recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak directly with policy makers and the US public about climate change and drought. Abdi illustrated how a little support can go a long way to help communities adapt to drought.   He said: “With resources, my community could adapt and the effects of droughts and other disasters could be reduced. In between droughts my community experiences flash floods. If we were able to catch the rain water from the floods and store it, such water could sustain school children in times of drought. One cistern in my community could serve water to 400 school children for 3 months, and costs only approximately 100,000 Kenyan shillings[US $1,100].   There is water in some of our rivers still, but no way to transport that water to communities. Irrigation technologies could save lives. Providing support for livelihood alternatives could be another adaptation strategy. But all this takes resources, and our community is very poor.”   At international conferences, the United States has pledged to help generate money to deal with the impacts of climate change on poorer countries. So far, they have done very little to actually mobilize these funds. In November 2011, policymakers will go to a major climate conference in Durban, South Africa. A good outcome in Durban— commitment to significant emissions reductions and improved financing - could mean the difference between life and death for millions of people.   ActionAid US is working to address these issues. We need urgent action, not just words, in the lead up to Durban and beyond to help countries deal with impacts of climate change. Visit the related web page
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