The Feeding of the Nine Billion

by | Jan 26, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global Dashboard

Today sees the launch of The Feeding of the Nine Billion, my Chatham House pamphlet on food prices and scarcity issues, which brings a year-long research programme to its conclusion.  This morning’s Financial Times has a piece on the report here, and there’s a BBC World Service interview with me here (scroll to 9.42; you need RealPlayer installed).

The report’s key diagnosis is that while food prices have fallen significantly from their peak last year, they remain acutely problematic for poor people and por countries at their current levels – and poised to resume their upwards climb when the world emerges from the downturn.  Accordingly, the last thing policymakers can do at this stage is to heave a sigh of relief – on the contrary, they need to treat the current easing in prices as a window of opportunity in which to agree the comprehensive, long-term collective action needed to ensure food security for all in the 21st century.

Long term demand drivers, above all a population set to reach over 9 billion by mid-century and the rising affluence and expectations of a growing ‘gloal middle class’ are half the story, with the World Bank forecasting 50% higher demand for food by 2030. 

On the other hand, scarcity issues will present increasing challenges on the supply side.  Oil prices are also set to resume their climb after the downturn, given that investment in new production has collapsed as oil prices have fallen, setting the stage for a future supply crunch; food prices can be expected to follow them, as biofuels, fertiliser prices and transport costs all play their part.  Climate change, water scarcity and competition for land will all also push prices upwards.

So what needs to be done?  The report sets out a ten point agenda for action at the international level and in developing countries, but overall I think of the challenge in four key areas. (more…)

Throwing yoghurt, and other responses to the credit crunch

by | Jan 25, 2009 | Economics and development

A year or so ago, I did a post wondering what had happened to the anti-globalisation movement. Well, something looking very like it now certainly seems to be reappearing in Iceland at least. Here’s Roger Boyes in the Times on Wednesday last week:

Icelanders all but stormed their Parliament last night. It was the first session of the chamber after what might appear to be an unusually long Christmas break. Ordinary islanders were determined to vent their fury at the way that the political class had allowed the country to slip towards bankruptcy. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, fired rockets at the windows and lit a bonfire in front of the main door. Riot police moved in.

Eirikur Bergmann thinks this amounts to “at the very least, a revolution in political activism”.  And both writers are having a grand old time identifying the baddie.  (more…)

What are we missing?

by | Jan 25, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence, Global system, UK

Over the past few weeks the UK government has been organising an extensive series of horizon scanning events to feed into the current revision of the National Security Strategy.  In all, some 24 workshops have been held on the full range of foreign policy issues; various other events have also been held, including the Wilton Park conference I mentioned a couple of weeks back. 

Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work.  Like Charlie, I’m starting to feeling a sense of deja vu each time I attend an awayday or brainstorming session that concludes that emerging economies are, well, emerging; that resources are becoming more scarce; that everything’s interconnected; and so on. 

I can see the utility of futures work that focuses on a pretty specific area – prospects for the pharmaceutical sector, say, or the future of UN peacekeeping – but I suspect that very big picture horizon scanning is only really helpful at this stage if it yields up insights or possibilities that are being ignored or overlooked.

For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing (viz. climate change, organised crime, economic meltdown, terrorism, energy scarcity – you know, the usual list).

Normally, when we think about state fragility we assume that we’re talking about the Lebanons, Somalias and Guinea-Bissaus of the world.  But as people who work in the counter-insurgency sphere have been pointing out for some time, the problem of erosion of state capacity is a whole lot more widespread than that.  (more…)