ACE1049:

GLOBAL CONTROVERSIES, CRISES & CITIZENSHIP: 

ISSUES AND SOURCES

TARGET:  Stage 1 students on the ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, AGRI-BUSINESS MANAGEMENT and COUNTRYSIDE MANAGEMENT degrees.

AIMS:
1.    To encourage students to become familiar with current issues and controversies in agriculture, food & rural development globally.
2.    To understand basic data interpretation and synthesis.
3.    To practice analysing and presenting data and argument/stories.
4.    To provide students with basic information literacy and information technology training.
5.    To understand how data and knowledge is used in academia, public policy, business and practice.
6.    To develop communication and study skills to enable independent learning at a HE level.

THE ISSUES:
  1. The world is pretty full - see also CEISIN - SEDAC: Socio-economic Data and Applications Centre, or The Population Reference Bureau. There is virtually no 'new territory' for expansion - No more scope for such major migrations as happened between 1850 and 1914, when a million people a year  emigrated to the new world from Europe.  See here for the 'social mechanics' of population growth. and a sociological historial perspective. (QUESTION - who produced these pages, and what provenance are they likely to have?). 
World Population Growth
What is wrong with this picture?

  1. There is no away to throw to - we run the risk of being buried or drowning in our own refuse, and of seriously altering our climate (probably for the worse).

  2. Natural Resources are finite - as we consume more non-renewable resources (oil, coal, gas and minerals) so further use will become more expensive, or see here or here or here for more of the debate - though can we 'validate' any of these sites?

  3. Technology is different, more capable and quicker - so mistakes are (perhaps) more likely and bigger, and villainy has more scope.

  4. But, we should all be smarter - learning from history and standing on the shoulders of giants - the future is up to you!
SOME BACKGROUND:
As an introduction to the recent history and current state of the world, try GAPMINDER WORLD - an excellent visualisation of our current condition, or try WORLD MAPPER - for a different perspective.
YOUR TASKS: 
FOOD SECURITY: 
"Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years.
Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment.
The effects of climate change are a further threat.
But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably.
A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security." Source - Godfray et al, Science, 2010
WFP World Hunger Map
IFPRI World Hunger Index
The UK's Global Food Security Programme. (see, especially, "the issue")

Definition? The UN World Food Summit, 1996, defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. - see, e.g. the UN WHO site for elaboration.

Since 1960, the world's population has grown from 3 bn. to 7 bn (October, 2011) - the suprise, perhaps, is not that there are still so many hungry in the world, but that there are so (relatively) few.  The major reason is the "Green Revolution"
We now need at least a Doubly Green Revolution (Gordon Conway, 1998 - and his new book (2012, with Kate Wilson) "One Billion Hungry: Can we feed the world?"

Need to produce enough food for 9bn. people by 2050,
without destroying much (or any?) more of the natural environment,
without using as much fossil fuel energy (rather than more),
using less (or no more) water,
in the face of a less reliable, and possibly less benign climate.
A Quadruple Green Revolution
- and it is all up to you.
Some indicative issues.
Don't forget the history: see, e.g. Fuglie & Wang, 2012 (Amber Waves)
Real Food Prices & world population 1900 - 2010

Some Recent References on the issue of global food security
[Note - Godfray et al, Science, 2010, is an important and relatively recent source.]
'Food security: feeding the world in 2050' Special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, September 27, 2010; 365 (1554), compiled and edited by H. Charles J. Godfray, John R. Beddington, Ian R. Crute, Lawrence Haddad, David Lawrence, James F. Muir, Jules Pretty, Sherman Robinson and Camilla Toulmin (which reports the findings of the UK Government's Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures (report published, January 2011)

Ana Iglesias, Sonia Quiroga and Agustin Diz: "Looking into the future of agriculture in a changing climate", European Review of Agricultural Economics, 38 (3), August, 2011 p 427 - 447, for a recent summary of work under the EU CIRCE Project and related work on Agriculture and Climate change.

Alex Evans, "The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century",  Chatham House Report,  January 2009

Nelson, Rosengrant, et al. "Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation". Food Policy Report. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC: USA. 30 p.

Nelson, Rosengrant et al. "Food security, farming, and climate change to 2050, Scenarios, results, policy options", IFPRI Research Monograph, 2010, and related Policy Brief:  "Food security and climate change: Challenges to 2050 and beyond"

Martin Parry, Alex Evans, Mark W. Rosegrant and Tim Wheeler, "Climate change and hunger: Responding to the challenge", World Food Programme, 2009

Foley et al, 2011, Solutions for a cultivated planet, Nature,  478,  337–342,  October,  doi:10.1038/nature10452, [what, exactly, is the analytical framework here? e.g.  See if you can discover how they estimate the size of their 'yield gap', and thus the consequences of closing it] - see, e.g. FAO, CFS, HLPE - "Price Volatility and Food Security" - especially p. 34.

Swinnen, 2011:  "The Right Price of Food", Development Policy Review, 29, 6, November, 667 - 688, which points out and explains why international organisations and NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) such as Greenpeace and Oxfam 'bend' the 'truth', at least as far as headlines are concerned.
[And, in a similar vein, and from the same 'stable':  Vandemoortele, 2009, "The MDG Conundrum: Meeting the Targets Without Missing the Point", Development Policy Review, 27, 4, November, 355 - 371]

Harvard Centre for International Development: "Enhancing Food Security in an Era of Global Climate Change: An Executive Session on Grand Challenges of the Sustainability Transition, San Servolo Island, Venice – June 6-9, 2010",

[Who is doing and has done the major thinking and research on global food security?  - how reliable do you think these people are - more to the point, where might you look for alternative research?]
A model?
IFPRI IMPACT MODEL
Source:  Nelson et al., 2010, p. 6. (can you spot the 'deliberate error'??)
MAJOR STATISTICAL SOURCES:
OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook: 2012 - 2021.

United Nations World Food Programme. See, e.g. World Hunger Map (above)

World Bank:  a vast amount of data by country, including 420 indicators from the World Development Indicators (WDI) covering 209 countries from 1960 to 2008, which can be displayed as tables, maps or graphs, under the headings:
Agriculture & Rural Development; Infrastructure; Aid Effectiveness; Labor & Social Protection; Economic Policy and External Debt; Poverty; Education; Private Sector; Energy & Mining; Public Sector; Environment; Science & Technology; Financial sector; Social Development; Health; Urban Development.

WB's Annual World Development Reports  "Published annually since 1978, the World Development Report has long been an influential publication and an essential reference on the world economy and the state of economic and social development. Each year's report focuses on a specific topic in development such as labor, infrastructure, the role of the state, transitional economies, health, the environment, agriculture, or poverty."
World Development Report, 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography :
World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change.
World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security & Development.
World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality & Development.
Note, also,  IFC's Doing Business Economy Rankings, "Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1 – 183. A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. This index averages the country's percentile rankings on 9 topics, made up of a variety of indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings are from the Doing Business 2011 report, covering the period June 2009 through May 2010."

United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), (whose site notes that 20.10.2010 is World Statistics Day) has major collections of data on economic, social and development conditions world-wide. Especially important are the Millenium Development Goals data ("This site presents the official data, definitions, methodologies and sources for more than 60 indicators to measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. You will also find the official progress reports and documents produced by IAEG. Links to related sites and documents and constantly updated news will keep you up to date with the ongoing activities on MDG monitoring.").  This site also includes MDGInfo 2010 online, which looks very promising though I have not had time to explore it.
See, also, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Population Division: World Population Prospects: 2009 revision.
See, also, the UN Human Development Reports and Human Development Index (for what the HDI measures, see the Compsite Indices page) and Interactive map of migration data.
See, also, UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (UNEP) - and the related site:  GRID ARENDAL, "Environmental Knowledge for Change", for detailed maps, graphics and data. "Established  in 1989  by the Government of Norway as a Norwegian Foundation, our mission is to communicate environmental information to policy-makers and facilitate environmental decision-making for change." Especially informative are the Global Maps and Graphics. - e.g. World Greenhouse Gas Emissions by sector, and by country, and population by income level.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC (1994), under which a "Conference of the Parties (COP)" to the UNFCCC is held annually. COP17 is being held in Durban, South Africa, 28th Nov. - 9th December 2011.

See, also, an excellent interactive data source for a new Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in conjunction with the UNDP.


FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) for comprehensive data on food supply, food balance sheets, food security, resources (land and water etc.).  See, especially, FAO's Annual Hunger Report (e.g. recent media report on 2011 Hunger report), and their State of Food Insecurity Report from the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) site, and also their Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS), and also their Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and the associated "High Level Panel of Experts" (HLPE) who have just published a report on "Price Volatility and Food Security" (available on the HLPE site - link above).

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) (part of the CGIAR network) for major international food issues and data, including the 2011 Global Hunger Index (above).  See, especially, IFPRI's IMPACT project: Food security, farming, and climate change to 2050, which includes a data visualisation tool for Food Security case maps, and also the Food Security Portal (hosted by IFPRI)

IMF - Global economic data, including commodity price indices, and a visualisation- data mapper.
World GDP/capita in ppp terms, (IMF Data Mapper) 1980 - 2010 + forcasts to 2015, showing an apparently increasing divergence between the 'advanced' and 'emerging and developing' economies - note the capacity to alter the countries and the scales of these graphs, and also the plots. Is Germany richer in terms of GDP/hd than the UK? Was it? How come?

Homework: See if you can discover what has happened to GDP (real terms) per unit of energy use (i.e. the efficiency of energy use) for the major players -   Canada, China, Russia, India, Brazil, US, Germany, UK, Australia, Nigeria, South Africa - over the last forty years or so.  What do you conclude?

 INCIDENTAL AND CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION AND DATA RELEVANT TO THE FOOD SECURITY ISSUE.
UNCTAD - United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, especially their Foreign Direct Investment Database (FDI), which presents aggregate inflows, outflows, inward stocks and outward stocks of foreign direct investment (FDI) for 196 reporting economies in an interactive format. Also produces the World Investment Report (WIR). Detailed statistics on foreign direct investment (FDI) and operations of transnational corporations (TNCs) in selected countries are available at the World Investment Directory on-line, which includes country fact sheets and profiles.

WTO:  statistical information on:
See, also, the WTO's new page on Food Security (November, 2011).

OECD - basic data for each and all OECD countries (not for emerging or developing countries).
See, especially,  Perspectives on Global Development 2010:  Shifting Wealth: the first edition of Perspectives on Global Development, a new publication from the OECD Development Centre: "Shifting Wealth examines the changing dynamics of the global economy over the last 20 years, and in particular the impact of the economic rise of large developing countries, such as China and India, on the poor. It details new patterns in assets and flows within the global economy and highlights the strengthening of “South-South” links – the increasing interactions between developing countries through trade, aid and foreign direct investment.  What do these changes imply for development and development policy? The report explores potential policy responses at both national and international levels. Nationally, developing countries' need to re-position their development strategies to capitalise on the increasing potential of South-South co-operation and to fully benefit from new macroeconomic drivers. Internationally, the global governance architecture needs to adjust to better reflect current economic weights." [You can browse this volume, in read only form, from the University Library e-book section - go and find it].  Some Highlights:
International Labour Organisation: one of whom's major themes is Globalisation (alongside Sustainability, Poverty, Gender and Aid) - see, especially, their database of labour statistics, including international labour migration stats (which tend to be incomplete).

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) - "an independent international research organisation, we are specialists in linking local to global. .. launched in 1971 by renowned economist and policy advisor Barbara Ward, making it one of the very first organisations to link environment with development. The institute has played key roles in the Stockholm Conference of 1972, the Brundtland Commission of 1987, the 1992 Earth Summit and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, and is now helping to shape the global debate on climate change."

BBSRC (UK)'s Food Security Site.

New England Complex Systems Institute: Food Briefing

ADDITIONAL RELEVANT INFORMATION SITES:
World Public Opinion: "The WorldPublicOpinion.org website provides information and analysis about public opinion on international policy issues from around the world. While the studies of the WorldPublicOpinion.org network figure prominently, the website draws together data from a wide variety of sources from around the world. We have found that data from all reliable sources are important contributions and that as more studies are integrated into analyses, world public opinion comes into increasing focus."  See, for example, their recent report of a BBC poll on what opinion is on free market capitalism.

UNU-Wider:   United Nations University, World Institute for Development Research, which also has the World Income Inequality Database. Country information sheets provide information about the sources and the surveys used as far as documentation was available. Country information sheets are only available in pdf format. The dataset is downloadable as an xl file.

World Economic Forum: (the organisor of the annual Davos Conference), produces the annual Global Competitiveness Report, from its Centre for Global Competitiveness and Performance, (The rankings are calculated from both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with its network of Partner Institutes (leading research institutes and business organizations) in the countries covered by the Report). WEF also has a Corporate Global Citizenship initiative. See the previous page for a complete listing of the indicators used to compile their Global Competitiveness Index.

Encyclopedia of Earth: "an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and are useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public."

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) [Publisher of Foreign Affairs] has a recent (19.09.2009) comprehensive report on World Opinion on the Global Economy. "International polls find strong support for globalization, though views lean moderately toward the position that the pace of globalization is too fast. People generally see international trade as positive for their country, their self and family, consumers, and their nation’s companies. However, views are more mixed about the impact of international trade on jobs and the environment. Polling conducted in the spring of 2009—during the depths of the global recession—found some softening of majority support for globalization in general with majorities in many nations favoring a temporary increase in protectionism in light of the recession.".

CIESIN "The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is a center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. CIESIN works at the intersection of the social, natural, and information sciences, and specializes in on-line data and information management, spatial data integration and training, and interdisciplinary research related to human interactions in the environment. See, especially, Thematic Guide on Political Institutions and Global Environmental Change, key documents and data sets pertaining to the relationship between political institutions and the human dimension of global environmental change. This guide provides only an overview of available information.

GDAE (pronounced gee-day) Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. "In our effort to understand actual and possible trajectories of economic development, GDAE researchers emphasize ecological health and the correlation between social and economic well-being. This requires expanding our theoretical understanding of economic systems, recognizing that they are embedded in the physical contexts of technology and the natural world, as well as in the social/psychological contexts of history, politics, ethics, culture, institutions, and human motivations. Throughout all of its activities, theoretical advances at GDAE are informed by the Institute's applied and policy work, while its practical applications of economics are enhanced by a growing theoretical understanding of what is required to promote socially and environmentally just and sustainable development."  GDAE is one of three institutions running the Triple Crisis Blog : “The world is experiencing three simultaneous crises in finance, development, and the environment.  A number of economists are questioning the mainstream narratives and analyses of these crises.  Some of us have joined to create Triple Crisis blog to contribute to a more open and global dialogue around these three crises: about how they interact, and how they can collectively be solved.”

Global Dashboard Notes from the future: "Global Dashboard explores global risks and international affairs, bringing together authors who work on foreign policy in think tanks, government, academia and the media. It was set up in 2007 and is edited from the UK by Alex Evans and David Steven".

BreathingEarth:  Population growth and CO2 emissions starkly and vividly portrayed (though with no easy access to the underlying data) (link supplied by a member of the 2010 class - thanks.)

Comments and Questions?

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