‘Moral carbon’ offsetting tool for the G-8
Originally published by the Business Monitor
Written by Inter Press Service / Anuradha Mittal
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
OAKLAND—With world hunger reaching a historic high in 2009—over a billion people are hungry—the Group of Eight (G-8) summit concluded on July 10 will go down in history as a lavish Italian gala with 25,000 meals prepared over three days for the powerful elites from rich countries. The talks approved the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative generating much media coverage of the G8’s pledge of $20-billion aid commitment toward food security and agricultural development programs. With details of the package unclear, and some of the promised money, likely to be old money counted as new, the initiative is at most a “moral carbon” offsetting tool for the G-8.
Commitments, pledges and grandiose communiques to challenge hunger have become a common agenda item at international conferences, especially since the 2008 food crisis. But world hunger is deeply entrenched. The problem lies in the fallacy of explanations offered to explain world hunger, which has been framed as a crisis of demand and supply. The proposed solutions, such as the L’Aquila Initiative, thus primarily focus on boosting agricultural production through technological solutions, like genetic engineering (GE) and chemical inputs, and/or on removing supply-side constraints to ensure access to food through liberalization of agricultural trade.
This framework does not allow the questioning of policies promoted over the last several decades by the donor- countries and the international financial institutions that have undermined food security in developing countries.
While pledging commitment to fight hunger, G-8’s Initiative reiterates its continued support for open trade flows and efficient markets. Assertion that free trade will help solve hunger requires a certain degree of political amnesia. Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, in May, pointed out that the multilateral trading system is “heavily skewed in favor of a small group of countries, and in urgent need of reform.” He was referring to how rich countries have used their heavily subsidized agriculture to help secure markets by flooding developing countries with cheap farm imports, making subsistence farming uncompetitive and financially unstable.
The worst impact of the indiscriminate opening of markets has been felt in rural areas, where agriculture is the main occupation for most of the poor and the source of purchasing power. Increased imports, which have destroyed livelihoods, have not increased food security. Also, the notion that further liberalization of agricultural markets increases access to food overlooks the fact that the majority of the population in countries classified as having “widespread lack of access” is unable to procure food due to their low incomes.
Also, measures previously available to governments to soften the effects of price volatility—such as controlling import and export volumes, managing domestic stocks, using price control and price-support tools, consumer subsidies, and rationing systems—have been criticized for distorting free trade. Export bans of food in 2008, imposed by some 40 countries including India, Egypt and Vietnam, were seen as a threat to free trade and held responsible for increasing world food prices. But these measures had sought to protect national populations, especially the poor and vulnerable, against the global agricultural price shocks by ensuring national food availability below world prices before allowing exports to other countries.
Following the footsteps of the first ever G-8 Farm Summit held in April 2009, the L’Aquila Initiative upholds a technological agricultural revolution, such as the promotion of GE crops, to increase agricultural productivity. But the promises of feeding the world with GM crops have so far proven to be empty. A 2009 report from the Union of Concern Scientists, which analyzed nearly two decades worth of peer-reviewed research on the yield of GE crops in the United States, demonstrates that GE has failed to significantly increase crop yields. While only one major GE crop, Bt corn, has achieved a 3-percent to 4-percent yield increase over the 13 years that it has been grown commercially, this growth pales in comparison with what has been achieved over that time by other methods, including conventional breeding.
Other studies also demonstrate that organic and similar farming methods can more than double crop yields. Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, a study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Environment Program, found that organic or near-organic agriculture practices in Africa outperformed conventional production systems based on chemical-intensive farming, provided environmental benefits and were more conducive to food security.
In the face of growing evidence, continued efforts by the G-8 to improve agricultural productivity through technologies like genetic engineering only serves the interests of biotech corporations.
At the World Food Summit in 1996, heads of governments made a commitment to reduce the number of hungry people—815 million then—in half by 2015. The latest figure of 1.02 billion people living with hunger reveals a crisis that has gone out of control.
If the G-8 is indeed committed to ending hunger, the member-countries must stop the steady drumbeat of proselytizing for free markets and technological solutions.
A genuine commitment will require recognizing the need for developing countries to have policy space to determine agricultural policies that meet the needs of their populations.
Implement a genuine agrarian reform that will ensure farmers’ rights to land, water, seeds and other resources; ensure that the local products are competitive; see that farmers’ livelihoods and incomes are sustained; and assure national food security. In short, instead of promoting their old failed “development” formulas in new clothing, the G-8 need to take responsibility and support governments in developing countries to put in place or restore sustainable and resilient agricultural systems.
Anuradha Mittal is the Executive Director of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org and http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Oakland-Institute/89745521599?ref=ts)