[ad_1]
LONDON – In 1984, I brought together the most successful musicians of the time to form a "supergroup" called Band Aid in order to raise funds for the relief of famine in Ethiopia. The following year, an even bigger group was formed for Live Aid, a major benefit concert, and a music-based fundraising initiative that continues today. At the International Forum on Food and Nutrition held last month by the Barilla Foundation, the ongoing and increasingly pressing need to strengthen food security could not be more evident.
The fate of Easter Islanders illustrates the current problem. During the twelfth century, a group of Polynesians found their way to a remote volcanic island where dense forests provided food, animals, tools and materials to build hundreds of complex and mysterious stone carvings. But, little by little, people destroyed these forests and finally committed social, cultural and physical suicide.
Today, in relative terms, we have collectively only a small forest – and we are destroying it quickly. We are short of land to cultivate, and the desert is spreading. The food we produce is often wasted, while nearly a billion people do not have enough to eat – a reality that leaves little choice to others than to emigrate.
Most media focus on refugees fleeing armed conflict seeking better economic opportunities than at home (think of Nigeria or Pakistan). But the link between food shortage and migration is stronger than it could seem to those who are not hungry.
For example, the uprisings of the 2010-2011 Arab Spring, which provoked a mbadive wave of refugees, were triggered by a rise in wheat prices, which led to widespread bread riots that turned into wider political revolutions. In fact, many armed conflicts, and the mbadive displacements that they cause, can be attributed to food insecurity.
While the poor South dies of hunger, the rich gorges of the North. More than two billion of us are overweight, swollen by low energy sugars and processed foods mbad produced and high in fats. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, only a quarter of the food we throw or waste each year would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people. Around the world, one-third of all crops are wasted. Like the Easter Islanders of the past, we are preparing ourselves for frustration.
Moreover, climate change led by humans threatens to intensify existing pressures affecting food supply and migration. In a report published last December, the European Commission's European Policy Center predicted that increasingly frequent droughts and floods will overshadow all other migration factors, with one billion people displaced by the crisis. Global scale by 2050. According to the report, 25 million migrants affected by climate change "would exceed current levels of new refugees and displaced persons".
Admittedly, measures are being taken to remedy food waste and scarcity. For example, this year the European Commission has proposed reductions in agricultural subsidies, which contribute to overproduction. But this approach – framed in terms of "evolution" rather than the "revolution" that is needed – is not even adequate.
The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has long been very problematic. The CAP authorized the use of taxpayer money to grow surplus food, which was then stored (at an additional cost) and eventually destroyed (at an even higher cost). The system has improved somewhat over the years, but not enough. The US Farm Bill, the federal government's main agricultural and food policy tool, is also wasteful.
What is needed is not just a politically tolerable adjustment to existing policies, but rather a fundamental reform. results. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether there are politicians up to the task, whether in the polarized and polarized US or in the inefficient European Parliament and the Commission.
The time to intensify was yesterday; the time to adopt a new approach is now. We can discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals – which include goals such as "halving per capita food waste at the retail and consumer level and reducing food losses in production and supply chains". from here 2030 ". What matters are well-designed, effective and comprehensive policies that are implemented in a sustainable way.
The Earth has 45 million centuries, but our century is unique because it is the first where a species can destroy the entire basis of its own existence. Yet Easter Islanders of the last days seem to ignore this existential threat, preferring to build statues rather than sustainable systems for their survival.
The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. Each of us must recognize the seriousness of our situation and demand real action to change it. That means you …
The author is the founder and chairman of the Band Aid Trust for the Fight Against Famine in Africa, and a member of the Africa Progress Panel
Copyright: Project Syndicate.
Source link
