Dear Friends,
I believe that the “new” CFS is now sufficiently mature to begin to look objectively at what type of institution is needed to provide for the fair and equitable management of food in the world, especially if and when global shortages occur.
This is not an abstract issue, because the absence of institutions endowed with the necessary powers and competence to take timely decisions and actions led to 258,000 people dying of hunger and related causes in Somalia just 3 years ago. Good early warnings were given and specific interventions were proposed that would have saved many lives and prevented millions of people from abandoning their farms – but the institutional arrangements were not in place internationally to ensure a timely follow up.
The Somalia incident is small and quite isolated in relation to the possible scale and complexity of a global food shortage. We have got used to maintaining a reasonable balance between global food supplies and demand and therefore may have become dangerously complacent. But there is a real and, I personally believe, growing, danger that such a shortage could occur and the global community would be totally unprepared to prevent it and, still less, to ensure that it was managed in ways that would minimize the number of casualties.
I would hope that, in the coming biennium, the HLPE could be tasked with completing a wide-ranging study on “Threats to Global Food Security and Possible Response Strategies”. The work could involve:
- Developing an understanding of the nature, origins, extent and probability of possible threats (especially covariant threats) to the continuing availability of adequate food supplies at the global level;
- Identifying measures to forestall or reduce risks of potentially catastrophic events;
- Outlining the scope of contingency plans to be activated in the event of emerging crises,
- Proposing institutional arrangements, endowed with the necessary powers of intervention to take measures to cut risks of emerging crises and to intervene in the event of serious shortages to ensure fairness in access to food and the minimisation of casualties.
The findings of the HLPE study would be presented to the CFS and hopefully be taken up as a major workstream in the following biennium, leading to agreements on the required coping arrangements.
Early action on this is important, given the growing risks to global food security posed by the accelerated spread of pests and diseases, by the probable speeding up of climate change processes, and by the growing concentration of ownership in international trade in food commodities and farm inputs. I would go as far as suggesting that it would be irresponsible for the CFS not to start work soon on this theme which, though potentially contentious, is of fundamental to the safeguarding of global food security and hence central to its mandate.
Andrew MacMillan
Andrew MacMillan