(Press-News.org) MADISON – An independent commission of scientific leaders from 13 countries today released a detailed set of recommendations to policymakers on how to achieve food security in the face of climate change.
In their report, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change proposes specific policy responses to the global challenge of feeding a world confronted by climate change, population growth, poverty, food price spikes and degraded ecosystems. The report highlights specific opportunities under the mandates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Group of 20 (G20) nations.
"Food insecurity and climate change are already inhibiting human well-being and economic growth throughout the world and these problems are poised to accelerate," said Sir John Beddington, chair of the commission. "Decisive policy action is required if we are to preserve the planet's capacity to produce adequate food in the future."
The report was released today at the Planet Under Pressure conference where scientists from around the world are honing solutions for global sustainability challenges targeted to the Rio Summit to be held June 20-22 in Brazil.
The commission was created in 2011 and charged with identifying the best research-based approaches toward global food security in the face of climate change. The new report, available at http://bit.ly/ClimateFoodCommissionFinal, outlines seven recommendations they hope to see implemented concurrently by a constellation of governments, international institutions, investors, agricultural producers, consumers, food companies and researchers. They call for changes in policy, finance, agriculture, development aid, diet choices, and food waste as well as revitalized investment in the knowledge systems to support these changes.
"It's past time to realize that farms of every size all over the world are fundamental to providing for human nutritional demands and economic well-being, but they also face critical choices with significant implications for the way we manage the planet for long-term sufficiency," says U.S. Commissioner Molly Jahn, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Further, changes in agricultural practices have the potential to deliver benefits for both adaptation and mitigation of climate change. For example, in China, nearly 400 kilograms of chemical fertilizer are used on every hectare of farmland and, in Mexico, agriculture accounts for 77 percent of domestic water use, in part due to substantial subsidies for water and electricity used for irrigation.
Such practices offer both challenges and opportunities to refocus policies and budgets, say Jahn and the other commissioners, and they have urged the UNFCCC to establish a work program that addresses these issues together under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice.
In addition to tackling agriculture, the commission's recommendations explicitly recognize the "demand side" of food insecurity, calling for policies and programs to support healthy and sustainable eating as well as those explicitly designed to empower vulnerable populations.
In particular, they underscore the need for improved data and decision support for land managers and policy makers. "The elements of the food system – soil, water, climate, energy, people – are intimately connected and it is critical that we understand how they work together as a system, and get that information into the hands of those who need it most," Jahn says.
The commission's report presents a stark picture of the challenges ahead and calls for decisive action on a global scale to ensure a "safe operating space" [link http://bit.ly/SafeSpaceClimateFood] for current and future generations.
"Many public and private sector leaders are already taking steps to overcome technical, social, financial and political barriers to a sustainable food system," says Bruce Campbell, director of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, which convened the commission in February 2011. "The commission's work spells out who needs to do what to take these early efforts to the next level."
The commission is financially supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development. The commission brings together senior natural and social scientists working in agriculture, climate, food and nutrition, economics, and natural resources from Australia, Brazil, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, France, Kenya, India, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Additional materials can be found at http://ccafs.cgiar.org/commission.
Commission Recommendations:
1. Integrate food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies
2. Significantly raise the level of global investment in sustainable agriculture and food systems in the next decade
3. Sustainably intensify agricultural production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other negative environmental impacts of agriculture
4. Target populations and sectors that are most vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity
5. Reshape food access and consumption patterns to ensure basic nutritional needs are met and to foster healthy and sustainable eating habits worldwide
6. Reduce loss and waste in food systems, particularly from infrastructure, farming practices, processing, distribution and household habits
7. Create comprehensive, shared, integrated information systems that encompass human and ecological dimensions
INFORMATION:
-- Jill Sakai, jasakai@wisc.edu, (608) 262-9772
END
BOSTON—A report from the nation's leading cancer organizations shows rates of death in the United States from all cancers for men and women continued to decline between 2004 and 2008. The findings come from the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer.
The report also finds that the overall rate of new cancer diagnoses for men and women combined decreased an average of less than one percent per year from 1998 through 2006, with rates leveling off from 2006 through 2008. Edward J. Benz, Jr., MD, president of Dana-Farber Cancer in Institute in Boston, ...
Britain's best loved playwright, William Shakespeare, is to be commemorated this year with a series of global events and performances, starting on the occasion of his birthday (and anniversary of his death), the 23rd April. The World Shakespeare Festival will run until November.
To help travelling fans find a reasonably priced London hotel, website LondonTown.com has announced details of discounted hotel rooms close to the Globe.
37 international companies, performing in 37 different languages will be taking part in 37 plays, from a Korean Midsummer Night's Dream ...
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 28, 2012 – Recent clinical studies have shown that general anesthesia can be harmful to infants, presenting a dilemma for both doctors and parents. But new research at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center may point the way to treatment options that protect very young children against the adverse effects of anesthesia.
As detailed in a study published in the March 23 online edition of the journal Neuroscience, Wake Forest Baptist scientists explored a number of strategies designed to prevent anesthesia-induced damage to the brain in infants.
Using ...
The Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks should win their divisions, while the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds will make it to Major League Baseball's post-season as wild card teams in the National League (NL) in 2012, according to NJIT's baseball guru Bruce Bukiet. The San Francisco Giants, Milwaukee Brewers and Florida Marlins could be close on the heels of the Reds and Braves but should miss out on the post-season by 3 or 4 wins. For more than a decade, Bukiet, an associate professor and associate dean, has applied mathematical ...
Environmental issues like global warming, climate changes and climate-linked disasters are threats to human beings. They affect access to food, water and housing and they also affect our health and well-being.
The occurrence and severity of extreme weather such as heavy rainfall, floods, storms and hurricanes have risen in recent years. They affect millions of people around the globe and cause damages amounting to billions of dollars.
Immediate action is needed to deal with climate-linked and natural disasters. To bring about changes require coordination and cooperation ...
TAMPA, Fla. (March 28, 2012) – Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and colleagues from the UF Shands Cancer Center in Gainesville, Fla., have found that cases of myeloid malignancies are being underreported since a change in registry protocols and laboratory practices starting in 2001.
Their study is published in a recent issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Since the 1970s, cancer registries have monitored myeloid leukemia incidence in the United States," said study ...
New Haven, Conn. — A person's mere presence in a room can add 37 million bacteria to the air every hour — material largely left behind by previous occupants and stirred up from the floor — according to new research by Yale University engineers.
"We live in this microbial soup, and a big ingredient is our own microorganisms," said Jordan Peccia, associate professor of environmental engineering at Yale and the principal investigator of a study recently published online in the journal Indoor Air. "Mostly people are re-suspending what's been deposited before. The floor dust ...
Are diet sodas good or bad for you? The jury is still out, but a new study sheds light on the impact that zero-calorie beverages may have on health, especially in the context of a person's overall dietary habits.
For the average person, the scientific evidence can seem confusing. A number of studies have implicated diet beverage consumption as a cause of cardiovascular disease. However, others have suggested such drinks may be a viable tactic for people who are trying to lose or control their weight.
Either way, most previous research has tended to focus either on ...
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered a key protein that regulates insulin resistance—the diminished ability of cells to respond to the action of insulin and which sets the stage for the development of the most common form of diabetes. This breakthrough points to a new way to potentially treat or forestall type 2 diabetes, a rapidly growing global health problem.
In a paper being published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Investigator Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, describe ...
WASHINGTON, DC, March 26, 2012 — While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to new research from Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
"You can see this distrust in science among conservatives reflected in the current Republican primary campaign," said Gauchat, ...
