Lessons learned about lessons learned about hunger and
Lessons learned about lessons learned about hunger and the right to food II ICID Fortaleza, August 19, 2010 Marcos Ezequiel Filardi mfilardi@yahoo. com Interdisciplinary Seminar on Hunger and the Right to Food University of Buenos Aires - School of Law
A food-insecure (or hungry) world • 1. 02 billion hungry • 90% in Asia and the Pacific (642 million) and Africa (265 million) • 2 billion malnourished • 1 child dies every seven seconds – 60 during this presentation • 50% in the drylands • 75% are subsistence farmers and pastoralists in rural areas
Lesson 1: There is enough food for all • In 1985 world´s food sufficiency – and one million starved to death • 25 years later, enough food to provide 2700 calories to 12 billion people –double of the current world population(FAO) • 1 billion hungry and one billion with obesity
Lesson 2: Nature´s not to blame: Hunger is a man-made disaster • Natural phenomena • Conflicts • Human displacement • Unfair trade • Inefficient and disrupting aid • Lack of or inadequate policies • Unequal access to land, credit and inputs • Concentration of the food chain • Unemployment • Lack of social safety nets • Trade related intellectual property rights • Globalization • Problems of infrastructure • Large scale acquisitions and leases and forced evictions • Food devoted to energy-sources of protein • Promotion of biofuels • Market speculation • Discrimination
Lesson 3: Green revolution is not that green • Contributes to climate change • No sustainable use and pollution of fresh water resources • Soil degradation and depletion • Biodiversity loss • Land concentration • Diet-related problems and malnutrition
Lesson 4: Climate change is making matters worse for those already hungry • Increase in 1 -3 degrees will not affect world food production, but adverse impacts at the regional level • Adverse impacts on fisheries and livestock • Those who contributed the least to climate change, and are already the most food-insecure, will be the worst affected • 600 million new hungry (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights). New famines. • More than 3 degrees= total disruption of food production
Lesson 5: There is a human right to adequate food • Legal recognition of an ethical claim • Naming and shaming • Accountability • Naming and shaming • Mobilizing force and rallying point • Local enforceability and justiciability • International monitoring and supervision
There is a drought of courage. There is a shortage of political will. What is your science for, if it doesn´t serve to transform the reality? What is your knowledge for, if it doesn´t serve to improve people´s lives? When you abandon this world, Try not only to have been good, because this is not enough, But to abandon a good world. Bertolt Brecht, Santa Juana de los Mataderos Thank you.
- Slides: 8