Seeking hope in plant biology

Plant biologists are at work exploring both fundamental principles and applied techniques to find new benefits for humanity from plants.

Surely the efforts to change the photosynthetic mechanism of rice are not without controversy. But should they be successful, the rice-dependent populations of Asia will have increased food security.

The denouement of Rio+20

The declaration of 19 June was adopted by the principals, amid frustration from environmentalists and advocates. Grassroots and indigenous organizations seemed to display the most indignant reactions as the conference wound down.

The focus of Rio+20 was sustainability, supposedly. There seems to be a mood to blame corporate power for the failure of the conference. But the real problem was there were too many rice bowls to be filled. The definition of sustainability seemed to be SO broad that it would have been difficult to resolve all the interactions and conflicts between the interests of all the groups represented. "Indigenous rights were not made a part of the declaration"--is that a key sustainability issue? Really?

Work will go forward on sustainable development goals. That's positive.

The focus of THIS blog is scarcity--food, energy and water. Perhaps the world would be more urgently served by a UN Conference on Starvation. The food problem is just too large for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to solve on its own. Serious resource commitments by developed nations will be needed to prevent widespread famine by the time population reaches 9 billion.

And while we're dreaming up UN conferences, perhaps another on Energy Justice, and a third on Water Equity, would also help to achieve progress on these real, tangible, near-term crises.

There's still hope at Rio

It's interesting listening to coverage of Rio on Australian televsion. The coverage is frequent and extensive--I'm guessing that's not the case in the US.

An Australian official observer, Don Henry of the Australian Conservation Foundation, was extensively interviewed by ABC News (the Australian Broadcasting Company). His take was similar to that of the BBC reporting--the draft statement is very weak. But he also held out two threads of hope:
--it is still possible for the leaders gathered in Rio to produce an action statement that goes beyond the diluted draft statement
--the leadership is hearing about the world's sustainability and poverty problems, which could lead to action after the conference.

Henry also held up the importance of Sustainable Development Goals to be developed in the coming months.

The anticlimactic climax at Rio

The news as the principals meet:

• the UN Secretary General says progress in this area has been too slow.
• the BBC's Richard Black says "there is already a palpable feeling in the corridors that the serious business is over."
• Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs recommends (too late) concentrating on Sustainable Development Goals that mirror the highly effective Millennium Development Goals.
• some scientists think that the growing human population may be a problem. Whoa, really?

Sachs' call for SDGs is fine. The Millennium Development Goals have allowed donor nations to communicate effectively with recipient nations--"you achieve these minimum standards, we will provide grants that help you develop key projects." Sustainable Development Goals should take the same approach: measurable, consistent, implementable.

We know that the MDGs have been effective. Some nations, ineligible for Millennium Development Grants because of their low achievements in some areas, still worked to raise their performance so that they might be eligible some day! Now THAT's effective.

In fact, the conference agreement "The Future We Want" does call for the development of SDGs mirroring MDGs, but that will be an extensive process, much longer than the delegations had at Rio. But this is in fact where the serious work will have to take place. In particular, the conflicts and interactions between the myriad of Rio priorities and affirmations will have to be dealt with. The world, after all, has finite resources.

Rio--too many goals, and not the right ones

The best coverage from Rio is by Richard Black of the BBC. There's certainly little in US media.

Naturally the delegates have reached agreement on the declaration language prior to the convening of the principals. How could they not? But the discontent with the document is pretty universal:

--the EU "would like to have seen a more ambitious outcome"
--Friends of the Earth finds it a "damp squib of a draft negotiating text" that shows the talks "lack the firepower needed"
--the UN Secretary General must be displeased that his Sustainable Energy for All initiative is "noted" but not "endorsed"
--water as a challenge does not seem to have generated any action.

I'd say the problem is that everyone and his/her brother had to get their agenda into the document. Perhaps the outcome is not so bad after all, considering that the goals list includes:

• food, energy and water, as noted in an earlier post; 
• the green economy;
• gender equality;
• "promoting full and productive employment, decent work for all, and social protections";
• ocean conservation, including commitments to end illegal and exploitative fishing, support local small-scale fishers, and set up a process that would eventually regulate fishing and protect life on the high seas (a future post will discuss the impact of ocean issues on the Century of Scarcity);
• improvement of life in cities;
• health;
• mountains;
• forests;
• disaster risk reduction;
• small island developing states;
• chemicals and waste;
• land degradation;
• biodiversity;
• eradication of poverty;
• sustainable tourism;
• and buried within, "urgent action on unsustainable production and consumption," but without timetables or concrete actions.

Whew.

There is no discussion of the conflicts and interactions between all of these goals. To give just one example, the conference nourishes a lot of bashing of developed nations for overconsumption; yet it is the economic strength of the developed nations that has lifted so many in the developing world out of poverty.

Let's give a shout out to the Rio delegates for identifying the world's problems. Evidently it will be up to the rest of us to generate the solutions.

The UN forest initiative--helpful or a recipe for starvation?

Here's an interesting UN report being rolled out in Rio: how forests can become part of a sustainable future. Who knew?

To quote from the BBC article, the UN report states that forests "are sources of food, energy and income for a billion of the world's poorest people." A reforestation activity is also being announced, with a goal of 18 million hectares of restored forests. This should also have a beneficial effect on the level of atmospheric CO2.

While the reforestation effort is laudable in itself, there is an unaddressed tension here. In a previous post, we reported that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization believes that it will be possible, barely, to feed the world in 2050. Among the steps that are critically important to avoiding mass starvation: create more farmland. And where is this new land going to come from? The FAO report does not say, and the UN State of the World's Forests report does not bring it up.

Three shopping days until Rio

With three working days to go until the principals' meeting on the 20th, here is what the delegations are working on:  the "zero draft" of the conference agreement, to be known as "The Future We Want."

For the big resource issues--food, energy and water--here are the proposed commitments, extracted from the document:

"Food security
64. We reaffirm the right to food and call upon all States to prioritize sustainable
intensification of food production through increased investment in local food production,
improved access to local and global agri-food markets, and reduced waste throughout the
supply chain, with special attention to women, smallholders, youth, and indigenous farmers.
We are committed to ensuring proper nutrition for our people.
65. We call for more transparent and open trading systems and, where appropriate,
practices that contribute to the stability of food prices and domestic markets; ensure access to
land, water and other resources; and support social protection programmes.
66. We further support initiatives at all levels that improve access to information, enhance
interactions among farmers and experts through education and extension services, and
increase the use of appropriate technologies for sustainable agriculture.
Water
67. We underline the importance of the right to safe and clean drinking water and
sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.
Furthermore, we highlight the critical importance of water resources for sustainable
development, including poverty and hunger eradication, public health, food security,
hydropower, agriculture and rural development.
68. We recognize the necessity of setting goals for wastewater management, including
reducing water pollution from households, industrial and agricultural sources and promoting
water efficiency, wastewater treatment and the use of wastewater as a resource, particularly
in expanding urban areas.
69. We renew our commitment made in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI)
regarding the development and implementation of integrated water resources management
and water efficiency plans. We reaffirm our commitment to the 2005-2015 International
Decade for Action “Water for Life”. We encourage cooperation initiatives for water
resources management in particular through capacity development, exchange of experiences,
best practices and lessons learned, as well as sharing appropriate environmentally sound
technologies and know-how.
Energy
70. We propose to build on the Sustainable Energy for All initiative launched by the
Secretary-General, with the goals of providing universal access to a basic minimum level of
modern energy services for both consumption and production uses by 2030; improving
energy efficiency at all levels with a view to doubling the rate of improvement by 2030; and
doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030 through promoting
the development and use of renewable energy sources and technologies in all countries. We
call for provision of adequate financial resources, of sufficient quality and delivered in a
timely manner, to developing countries for providing efficient and wider use of energy
sources.
71. We agree that each country should work for low-carbon development. We encourage
more widespread use of energy planning tools to provide a robust framework for donors and
partners to coordinate their development cooperation efforts."

These take their place along many, many other sustainability issues, such as: quality of life in cities; green jobs; social inclusion; oceans and small island nations; natural disasters; and climate change.

What do you think?

A pessimistic thought: probably the proposed 0.7% GNP commitment from developed nations is going to be a hard sell, or if agreed to will not be honored. For the US, that would amount to $70 billion per annum. Given the state of the debt, that seems like a non-starter.

Three days to go! And the BBC has provided some insight into the disunity prior to the Rio conference. So the path to making the agreement workable will be rocky indeed.

Vertical farming: how important will it be?

Vertical farming is about reuse and recycling of all parts of the ecosystem: "closing the loops" if you will. A relatively large building in Chicago has been converted to growing a wide range of agricultural products.

I wonder how important this might be in China? There arable land is shrinking and the population continues to grow. Vertical farming has some features in common with aquaculture, which is heavily practiced in China. But aquaculture does not have the "loop-closing" feature of vertical farming; and in fact, aquaculture is a significant pollution concern.

The African land grab

An earlier post, "Worse than scarcity," suggested that the Chinese investment in African land leases might create tensions if there were local food shortages. I just came across this excellent graphic, which shows how many wealthy nations are engaging in the African land grab:

But this also proves the point about the tension between land leases and local hardship. Compare this map with the FEWS NET map of food crises in the previous post. At the very least, the foreign investments in Ethiopia, the Sudan and Mali coincide exactly with the food crises happening NOW. So the question is: are any of these leases being used to MITIGATE the food crises? Or is food actually being EXPORTED from the same countries listed as food-insecure?

There will be more crises, and bigger ones

The current food crisis we are being asked to respond to is happening in the Sahel, the stressed region of just-barely-sub-Saharan Africa. Looking at the whole Africa situation on the Famine Early Warning System Network created by the US Government, we can see that the Sahel crisis is really part of a belt stretching the width of Africa:

There appear to be multiple causes for this belt of food insecurity; civil conflict, drought, high prices, and weak infrastructure are probably the most significant. As appeals for help in response to such crises are brought to the world community, we often hear of "donor fatigue." Looking into the future, as food, energy and water availability are challenged globally, how often is the world going to have to respond to such crises?

I will argue that, on a percentage basis, there will be MORE AND LARGER such crises as the years pass. This is NOT based on any pessimism about food production levels. Although concerns abound about food production including the effects of climate change, there appear to be paths forward to make agricultural production meet the demand.

The problem for places like the Sahel as the Century of Scarcity unfolds is going to be in FOOD INFRASTRUCTURE: storage, processing, transportation and distribution. If this infrastructure does not keep pace with demand--and I will argue that it CANNOT--agricultural production increases will not stanch the frequency of food crises and famines. In fact, increases in production may be almost irrelevant to these crises.

The figure below is an attempt to isolate the INFRASTRUCTURE effects from the PRODUCTION levels.

The horizontal direction represents how much food is produced; the vertical direction, how much actually makes it to the consumer. Curve 1, the dashed green curve, represents the ideal situation: every calorie, every gram of protein or fiber, makes it to the person who needs it, even as the amount produced gets larger. That is clearly not happening--for example, we know that 30% of all food produced in Africa is lost due to poor storage--part of the INFRASTRUCTURE problem.

Curve 2, the orange curve, has the following meaning: some food is always going to be lost; but that is a fixed percentage of the total food produced. Could be--but here is what would be required:

• storage facilities, processing plants, distribution centers, and transportation all increase proportionately with agricultural production
• therefore, there must be no COMPETING demands for the resources that build the infrastructure.

But we know that ENERGY will become more dear as well as food. And ENERGY is a key factor in food processing and distribution, as well as for building storage facilities and roads. For this reason among others, the real relationship between food production and consumption will be more like curve 3:  as production increases, the infrastructure WILL NOT keep pace.

At the bottom of the figure are triangles for today's production level, and for a 2050 production level that is 70% higher--the amount estimated by the UN FAO to be needed. The population between now and 2050 will grow by "only" 28%, so perhaps the FAO production increase is intended to make up for the inadequate infrastructure.

But the problem with places like the Sahel is that they are at the end of the MOST DEMANDING distribution chains: long distances from PORTS, where food can be economically delivered by sea. The conclusion is that larger and more frequent food crises are far more likely in the coming decades.