7 December 2015, Huffington Post, Will Climate Change Break the Global Food System? Extreme weather events scuttling harvests. Skyrocketing food prices causing famine for millions and driving multitudes into poverty. Governments toppling – again – in Pakistan and Ukraine. Massive floods driving millions of refugees from their homes in Bangladesh and putting pressure on neighboring India. Droughts devastating harvests in traditional bread baskets like the U.S. and Brazil. The E.U., in a panicked move, suspending its environmental rules for agriculture and instituting a tax on meat. The world’s top greenhouse gas emitters ultimately banding together to raise a global carbon tax.The events described above are not the real world, but they could be. They were part of what transpired at Food Chain Reaction a few weeks ago, a high-level crisis simulation in Washington, DC that brought together 65 international leaders to explore how climate change may strain the world’s food system from 2020 to 2030. What the simulation taught us, is that policymakers attending this week’s U.N. climate summit in Paris cannot afford to neglect food security. The world’s population is on a path to 9.5 billion by mid-century. That means we will have to grow up to 70 percent more food. To make matters more complicated, we’ll have to do so in a changing climate that alters the very way we grow our crops. We must figure out how we can make that happen within the limits of the Earth’s natural resources. We’ve talked long enough. It is time to decide on a course of action that will actually improve the situation. Read more here
Tag Archives: consumption
1 December 2015, The Conversation, When climate change hits our food supply, city foodbowls could come to the rescue. Australians may need to get used to coping with more disruptions to their food supply and rising food prices in a warming climate. But the food produced near our cities – our “city foodbowls” – could play a vital role in increasing the resilience of our food supply, as discussed in a new briefing from our Foodprint Melbourne project. The urban fringes of Australia’s major cities are some of the most productive agricultural regions in Australia. They also have access to valuable urban waste streams to support food production, including recycled water from city water treatment plants and desalination plants. Nonetheless, Australia’s city foodbowls are at risk of urban development, and the opportunity to develop them as climate resilient foodbowls could be lost unless their value is recognised in metropolitan planning policy. Climate shock The Queensland floods of 2010-11 showed how a sudden extreme weather event could disrupt a city’s food supply. Major transport routes to Brisbane and other cities were cut off and supermarkets began to run short of some food. And the Millennium Drought demonstrated the impact that drought could have on food prices, when fruit prices in Australia increased 43% between 2005 and 2007, and vegetable prices by around 33%. Climate change is expected to reduce the capacity for food production across southern Australia due to water scarcity, increasing temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events. Read More here
30 November 2015 The Conversation, We can achieve sustainability – but not without limiting growth. Can Australians be sustainable and enjoy endless economic growth? It’s not likely. In a recent article on The Conversation, Steve Hatfield-Dodds argued that sustainability was possible in Australia without sacrificing economic growth. He also argued the necessary policy changes would not require fundamental changes to Australians’ values. This research was based on a detailed paper in Nature and modelling undertaken for CSIRO’s recent National Outlook Report. Contrary to this pro-growth outlook, I will argue that sustainability would be almost impossible to achieve in practice without ending growth in population and consumption per person. I’ll also argue that the claim that we don’t need to change our values cannot be proven (or disproven) by the method used by Hatfield-Dodds and colleagues. Recent experience suggests we may need to change our values. This debate is important, because the argument that sustainability is compatible with growth is likely to be misused by those who have vested interests in endless economic growth. Growth and sustainability are rarely compatible. Read More here
November 2015, Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience – A concept paper by Post Carbon Institute, Communities across the United States are talking more and more about resilience. They’re spurred by recent natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, weather extremes like the harsh Northeast winter of 2014-15, and long-term drought in the West. Many people think of a community’s resilience as its ability to “bounce back” from disruption, and efforts to build resilience often focus on the impacts of climate change. Climate change is indeed an urgent and existential threat, with untold potential to destroy and disrupt countless lives. But it is not the only crisis we face, nor is preparing for disruption the only way to build resilience.[1] Truly robust community resilience should do more. It should engage and benefit all community members, and consider all the challenges the community faces—from rising sea levels to a lack of living wage jobs. And it should be grounded in resilience science, which tells us how complex systems—like human communities—can adapt and persist through changing circumstances. Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience describes how communities can approach the full scope of the 21st century’s challenges equitably and sustainably. The report draws on some of the most compelling recent thinking about resilience from academia, sustainability advocacy, and grassroots activism, as well as Post Carbon Institute’s prior work.[2] It is intended as an accessible resource for local leaders and activists in the United States, and as a contribution to the larger public conversation about resilience in human communities. It provides a conceptual starting point for community resilience that we will build on in future products focused on practical actions and tools. Read Full Report here