The Contemporary World 2020

UNIT VI TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE WORLD

Coverage: Weeks 15 and 16

Duration: 6 hours

Sustainable Development (3 hours; week 15)

Global Food Security (3 hours; week 16)

Learning Objectives: After studying the unit, students should be able to:
● Examine the measures of the governments in addressing environmental crisis like
climate change
● Relate everyday encounters with the various environmental problems
● Analyze the effect of environmental problems that the world faces today
● Identify the four dimensions of food security
● Explain the issues, interventions and public policy implications of global food
security
● Identify the challenges in food security
● Critique existing models of global food security

1. Sustainable Development
2. Global Food Security

Sustainable Development and Climate Change

By its meaning, sustainable development has been variously defined, but one of
the most quoted definitions of this term is from the Brundtland Report also known as
Our Common Future, which is a publication released by the World Commission on
Environment and Development in 1987, “sustainable development is development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs.” 207
As this term primarily relates to how the needs of the people basically through
the consumption and utilization of resources, sustainable development is often linked
with climate change which due to its hazardous effects in the environment is known to
be a major restriction in achieving sustainability.
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This link between sustainable development and climate change is considered

strong. Poor developing countries particularly those developed countries tend to be the
most severely affected by climate change. Undoubtedly, climate change is often seen
as a part of the broader challenge in sustainable development thru a two-fold link: 208
1. Impacts of climate change can severely hamper development efforts in
key sector (e.g. increased threat of natural disasters and growing water
stress will have to be factored into plans for public health infrastructure)
2. Development choice will influence the capacity to mitigate and adapt to
climate change (e.g. policies for forest conservation and sustainable
energy will improve communities’ resilience reducing thereby the
vulnerability of their sources of income to climate change)
In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Member States express
their commitment to protect the planet from degradation and take urgent action on
climate change. The Agenda also identifies, in its paragraph 14, climate change as “one
of the greatest challenges of our time” and worries about “its adverse impacts
undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development. Increases in
global temperature, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other climate change impacts
are seriously affecting coastal areas and low-lying coastal countries, including many
least developed countries and Small Island Developing States. The survival of many
societies, and of the biological support systems of the planet, is at risk”. 209
Various efforts are underway to deal with climate. However, strong resistance on
the part of governments and corporations counters these. There are significant
challenges involved in implementing various measures such as “carbon tax” and
‘carbon neutrality” to deal with environmental problems. 210 It is also difficult to find
alternatives to fossil fuels. For instance, the use of ethanol as an alternative to gasoline
has an attendant set of problems - it is less efficient and it has led to escalation in the
price of corn, which currently serves as major source of ethanol. Although biofuels
themselves produce lower emissions, their extraction and transport contribute
significantly to total emissions. 211

The World’s Leading Environmental Problems

The Conserve Energy Future website 212
lists the following environmental
challenges that the world faces today:
1. Depredation caused by industrial and transportation toxins and plastic in the ground;
the defiling of the sea, rivers, and water beds by oil spills and acid rain; the dumping of
urban waste
2. Changes in global weather patterns (flash floods, extreme snowstorms, and the
spread of deserts) and the surge in ocean and land temperatures leading to a rise in

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sea levels (as the polar ice caps melt because of the weather), plus the flooding of
many lowland areas across the world
3. Overpopulation
4. Exhaustion of the world’s natural non-renewable resources from oil reserves to
minerals to potable water
5. Waste disposal catastrophe due to excessive amount of waste (from plastic to food
packages to electronic waste) unloaded by communities in landfills as well as on the
ocean; and dumping of nuclear waste
6. Destruction of million-year-old ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity (destruction of
the coral reefs and massive deforestation) that have led to the extinction of particular
species and decline in the number of others
7. Reduction of oxygen and increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to
deforestation, resulting in the rise in ocean acidity by as much as 150 percent in the last
250 years
8. Depletion of ozone layer protecting the planet from the sun’s deadly ultraviolet rays
due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere
9. Deadly acid rain as a result of fossil fuel combustion, toxic chemicals from erupting
volcanoes, and the massive rotting vegetables filling up garbage dumps or left on the
streets
10. Water pollution arising from industrial and community waste residues seeping into
underground water tables, rivers and seas
11. Urban sprawls that continue to expand as a city turns into a megalopolis, destroying
farmlands, increasing traffic gridlock, and making smog cloud a permanent urban fixture
12. Pandemics and other threats to public health arising from wastes with drinking water,
polluted environment that become the breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease
carrying rodents, and pollution
13. A radical alteration of food systems because of genetic modifications in food
production

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Global Food Security

What is Food Security?

As said, food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to
adequate, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for
an active and healthy life. 213 This widely accepted definition of food security
emphasizes the four dimensions of food security 214 which are as follows:
1. food access: access to adequate resources to acquire a healthy and
nutritious diet
2. food use: use of food through adequate diet, clean water and health care to
reach the state of a healthy well-being
3. availability: availability of adequate supply of food, produced either through
domestic or foreign import, including as well the food aid received from outside
the country
4. stability: access to sufficient food at all times, without losing access to food
supply brought by either economic or climatic crisis

Global Food Security: Issues, Interventions and Public Policy Implications

The global food security situation and outlook remains delicately imbalanced
amid surplus food production and the prevalence of hunger, due to the complex
interplay of social, economic, and ecological factors that mediate food security
outcomes at various human and institutional scales. Food production outpaced food
demand over the past 50 years due to expansion in crop area and irrigation, as well as
supportive policy and institutional interventions that led to the fast and sustained growth
in agricultural productivity and improved food security in many parts of the world.
However, future predictions point to a slow-down in agricultural productivity and a food-
gap mainly in areas across Africa and Asia which are having ongoing food security
issues.

The problem of food insecurity is expected to worsen due to, among others, rapid
population growth and other emerging challenges such as climate change and rising
demand for biofuels. Climate change poses complex challenges in terms of increased
variability and risk for food producers and the energy and water sectors. There is a
need to look beyond agriculture and invest in affordable and suitable farm technologies
if the problem of food insecurity is to be addressed in a sustainable manner. This
requires both revisiting the current approach of agricultural intervention and reorienting
the existing agricultural research institutions and policy framework.

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Proactive interventions and policies for tackling food security are to be discussed
which include issues such as agriculture for development, ecosystem services from
agriculture, and gender mainstreaming, to extend the focus on food security within and
beyond the agriculture sector, by incorporating cross-cutting issues such as energy
security, resource reuse and recovery, social protection programs, and involving civil
society in food policy making processes by promoting food sovereignty. 215

Challenges in Food Security

Demand for food will be 60% greater than it is today and the challenge of food
security requires the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Global food security means
delivering sufficient food to the entire world population. It is, therefore, a priority of all
countries, whether developed or less developed. The security of food also means the
sustainability of society such as population growth, climate change, water scarcity, and
agriculture. The case of India show how complex the issue of food security is in relation
to other factors:
Agriculture accounts for 18% of the economy’s output and 47% of its workforce.
India is the second biggest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world. Yet,
according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, some
194 million Indians are undernourished, the largest number of hungry people in any
single country. An estimated 15.2% of the population of India are too malnourished to
lead a normal life. A third of the world’s malnourished children live in India (n.p.) 216
But perhaps the closest aspect of human life associated with food security is the
environment. A major environmental problem is the destruction of natural habitats,
particularly through deforestation. 217 Industrial fishing has contributed to a significant
destruction of marine life and ecosystems. 218 Biodiversity and usable farmland have
also declined at a rapid pace.
Another significant environmental challenge is that of the decline in the
availability of fresh water. 219 Because of the degradation of soil or desertification,
decline in water supply has transformed what was once considered a public good into a
privatized commodity. 220 The poorest areas of the globe experience a disproportionate
share of water-related problems. The problem is further intensified by the consumption
of “virtual water”, wherein people use up water from elsewhere to produce consumer
products.221 The destruction of the water ecosystem may lead to the creation of “climate
refugees, people who are forcibly displaced due to effects of climate change and
disasters.222
Pollution through toxic chemicals has had a long-term impact on the environment.
The use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has led to significant industrial pollution.
223
Greenhouse gases, gases that trap sunlight and heat in the earth’s atmosphere,
contribute greatly to global warming. In turn, this process causes the melting of land-
based and glacial ice with potentially catastrophic effects 224, the possibility of
substantial flooding, a reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, and the destruction of
existing ecosystems. Ultimately, global warming poses a threat to the global supply of
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food as well as to human health. 225 Furthermore, population growth and its attendant
increase in consumption intensify ecological problems. The global flow of dangerous
debris is another major concern, with electronic waste often dumped in developing
countries.
There are different models and agenda pushed by different organizations to
address the issue of global food security. One of this is through sustainability. The
United Nations has set ending hunger, achieving food security and improved security,
and promoting sustainable agriculture as the second of its 17 Sustainable Goals (SDGs)
for the year 2030. The World Economic Forum (2010) also addressed this issue through
the New Vision of Agriculture (NVA) in 2009 wherein public-private partnerships were
established. 226 It has mobilized over $10 billion that reached smallholder farmers.

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References:
Sustainable Development
207.What is sustainable development? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iisd.org/about- iisd/sustainable-
development

208.The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). A Background Paper under contract. United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development, New Delhi,
April7.Retrievedfromhttps://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/1489mitigation_
paper.pdf

209. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/climatechange
210.Armitage, K.C. (2005). State of denial:The United States and the politics of global warming.
Globalizations. 2, (3).

211.Barrionuevo, A. (2007, January, 23). Springtime for ethanol. New York Times.
212.Conserve energy Future, “Environmental Problems,” Retrieved from https://www.conserve- energy-
future.com/15-current-environment-problems.php (accessed last July 29, 2020)

References:

Global Food Security

213.World Food Summit 1996, Rome Declaration on World Food Security

214.Food and Agriculture Organization. Food Security. Policy Brief, June 2006, Issue 2

215.Hanjra, Munir A.; Ferede, T.; Blackwell, J.; Jackson, T. M.; Abbas, A. 2013. Global food security:
facts, issues, interventions and public policy implications. In Hanjra, Munir A. (Ed.). Global food
security: emerging issues and economic implications. New York, NY,USA: Nova Science
Publishers.pp.1-35.(GlobalAgricultureDevelopments)Retrievedfrom
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/37212
216.Breene, k. (2016). Food security and why it matters. World Economic Forum.
217.Diamond, J. (2006). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Nwe York: Penguin
218.Goldburg, R. J. (2008). Aquaculture, trade, and fisheries linkages:Unexpected synergies.
Globalization. 5, (2)

219.Conca, K. (2006). Governing water: Contentious transnational political and global institution
building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

220.Glantz, M. (1977). Desertification. Boulder, CO: Westview.

221. https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org.

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222. https://www.unhcr.org
223. Revkin, A. C. (2008, March 2). Skeptics on human climate impact seize on cold spell. New York
Times.

224. Brown, D. (2007, December 17). As temperature rise, health could decline. Washington Post.
225.Dinham, B. (2007). Pesticides. In Scholte, J.A. & Robertson, R. (eds.). Encyclopedia of globalization.
New York: MTM Publishing

226. World Economic Forum (2010). Realizing a new vision for agriculture: A roadmap for stakeholders.
Retrievedfromhttps://www.weforum.org/docs/IP/2016/NVA?WEF_IP_NVA_Roadmap_Report.p
df.