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	Investing in ecosystem services can boost food security, raise incomes by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)   22 August 2011   Investing in healthy ecosystems can boost food security, improve resilience to climate change and provide economic benefits for poor communities, says a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its partners.   “An Ecosystems Approach to Water and Food Security,” launched during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, advocates managing and investing in the connections between ecosystems, water and food, through diversifying crops, planting trees on farmland and improving rainwater collection and other practical steps.   “This could help avoid water scarcity and meet the growing food demands of a global population set to reach 9 billion by 2050,” states a press release on the report, produced by UNEP and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), in partnership with 19 other organizations.   One of the main challenges in boosting current levels of food production, says the report, is the availability of water, which is needed for livestock, crop irrigation and fisheries and other agricultural uses.   Groundwater levels, for example, are declining rapidly in several major breadbaskets and rice bowl regions such as the North China plains, the Indian Punjab and in the Western United States.   “Maintaining healthy, resilient ecosystems to ensure water availability for agriculture and other ecosystem services is thus essential for long-term food security,” the news release points out.   The report, written by over 50 contributors and using case studies from China, Guatemala, Jordan and other communities, recommends changes to three specific areas – environmental protection, water resources management and food production – that are needed to improve food security and reduce stresses on water supply.   It also sets out recommendations for drylands, wetlands, crop systems, fisheries and livestock systems.   Water scarcity and land degradation are the most prominent constraints for food production in drylands, which support one third of the world’s population, up to 44 per cent of its cultivated systems and about 50 per cent of its livestock.   Among its recommendations for drylands, the report suggests creating corridors to promote the movement of livestock, which can reduce overgrazing and land degradation caused when animals are confined to small areas, as well as cultivating local plants better adapted to dry conditions.   In addition to boosting food security, the report notes that an ecosystem services approach to agriculture can also help raise living standards and income. The Peruvian Amazon, for example, is home to indigenous communities that rely on forest ecosystem services for their food supply, livelihoods and cultural practices. Recently, conservation groups have been working with local people to develop agricultural and economic resources.   Through better ecosystem management, some 600 families saw their incomes increase, mainly through revenues from more productive fish farms and agroforestry. Increased food production came hand-in-hand with conservation plans, which were developed for 16 forest communities. Visit the related web page
	Half of the world’s workforce earns less than $2 a day by International Trade Union Confederation   Half of the world’s workforce earns less than $2 a day. 12.3 million women and men work in slavery. 200 million children under the age of 15 work instead of going to school. 2.2 million people die due to work-related accidents and diseases every year.   Add to this massive global unemployment, the lack of social protection for the majority of workers employed in the “informal economy”, and the violation of trade union rights and the consequences of the lack of decent work are clear.   October 2011   With unprecedented public demand for decent jobs, and pressure mounting on banks and the finance industry, the 2011 World Day for Decent Work today features over 400 actions across more than 80 countries.   “More than 200 million people worldwide are unemployed according to official figures, and hundreds of millions more lack decent, secure jobs.   “People’s rights at work are under attack as never before, and governments lack the vision and commitment to fix a global economy which is failing working people,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.   Actions on the World Day for Decent Work this year aim at tackling “precarious work” – the deepening trend towards casual, temporary and insecure jobs, often with little legal protection. Young people and women in the workforce are most likely to be affected, with their incomes and earning potential suffering as a result.   “Decent work – rights at work, job creation policies, social protection and social dialogue involving unions and employers – is crucial to turning the global economy around and generating the tax revenues for governments to tackle the fiscal situation.   “With the G20 leaders soon to meet in France, we are looking to them to take the steps needed and to stop following the failed policies which put the vested interests of banks and finance ahead of people’s lives and livelihoods,” said Burrow, who is addressing a special conference in Amsterdam today to mark the World Day.   Events include some 50 activities across Japan, with marches, conferences and youth meetings in several African countries and meetings and mobilisations throughout Russia and Ukraine. A series of activities in Latin America includes initiatives by trade unions in Peru and Chile to get official government recognition of the World Day for Decent Work.   Aug 2011   Plan B for the World Economy, by Christian Kellerman. (Extract)   Crises will continue to be the norm rather than the exception if we keep on working with the dysfunctions of current capitalism. Many of us will be unable to live a decent life under conditions of increased insecurity, inequalities and pressure in terms of wages, jobs, raising children and providing for old age. An excessive degree of unequal income distribution and personal insecurity is not only detrimental to a good life; it is also economically dangerous and inefficient.   The reasons for economic crises and increasing inequality, which are symptom and root of personal and systemic insecurity and inefficiency alike, are manifold. Finance has played a crucial role in most of the economic crises we have experienced since the 1990s. Financial markets are both gigantic amplifiers of imbalances within and between our economies and a root of imbalances themselves. Illuminating the cracks in finance is therefore the logical starting point for the Plan B of fixing our current capitalistic system.   The excesses of finance are only one part of the fundamental problems economies and societies are facing and which have contributed to the recent crisis. There are at least three dimensions of instability which are related to finance but go beyond the narrow instabilities of the financial system.   First, imbalances between different sectors within economies have escalated. One expression of this is highly indebted private households as well as governments, as a consequence of real-estate and other bubbles which were fuelled by the financial system. Second, international imbalances have never been as big as they are today. Third, together with financial deregulation the shareholder-value principle of corporate governance became dominant. This led to a short-term orientation of management and high bonus payment for management at the cost of long-term sustainable development of companies and firms.   Besides these developments, the radical market globalisation of the last decades led to a huge increase in wage dispersion and an ever-growing low-wage sector which had not been seen since the early times of capitalism before the First World War. Labour markets in almost all industrial countries became more deregulated while at the same time trade unions became weaker. In many cases economy-wide or sector level collective bargaining was eroded. Firm-based wage negotiations or individual working contracts without any collective agreements started to dominate.   Increasing inequality is a phenomenon which can be found in almost every country. High inequality does not only provoke a feeling of ‘unfairness’ in and between societies; it also hinders social mobility and has negative impacts on health and productivity. Hungry wolves do not hunt best – in fact, the very opposite is true for present day economies.   The American dream of high social mobility within a society and the opportunity for anyone to become rich if they work hard enough is in fact little more than a mirageToday, mobility within society is more of a reality in the Nordic countries of Scandinavia where equality is higher than in the Anglo-Saxon world of capitalism.   Capitalism has more problems: in the past, it led to a very special type of technology, production and consumption growth which is blind to ecological problems and the fact that natural resources are limited. Prices systematically fail to adequately incorporate ecological dimensions and the deterioration of nature.   Prices also give the wrong signals for the direction of innovation as well as of production, consumption and the way we live. After experiencing a number of regional ecological disasters in the past century, the world is now heading for a global ecological disaster, unless fundamental changes take place very soon. This makes the search for solutions very complicated: the present crisis is not only a deep crisis of traditional capitalism, but it has emerged at a time when a deep ecological crisis is also evolving.   A global Plan B should therefore include three interrelated dimensions. First, the model should be ecologically sustainable: preventing global warming, changing to a renewable energy basis and preventing other problematic developments such as a reduction in biodiversity.   Second, it should be formed in such a way that the growth process is not jeopardised by either asset-market bubbles or goods market inflation or deflation, and does not result in the excessive indebtedness of individual sectors or even whole economies, thereby leading inevitably to the next crisis.   At the same time, such a model should promote innovation and, therefore, technological development necessary both for solving ecological problems and, in the medium and long term, increasing labour productivity and so holding out the possibility of growing prosperity for all. Third, it is critical that all population groups have a share in social progress. Inequality of income and wealth distribution must be at politically and socially acceptable limits.   At the core of Plan B is a more equitable income distribution. It is crucial to reverse the negative changes in income distribution and grant all population groups an adequate share in the wealth created in society.   * Christian Kellermann is the Director of the Nordic Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) in Stockholm. Visit the related web page
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