FOOD: WTO „must address“ food security

UPDATE 30.01.2012 Haircut Negotiations – Hedge Funds Bet on Profits from Greek Debt Talks SPIEGEL ONLINE – http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/debt_crisis

The negotiations over the Greek debt haircut are becoming increasingly suspenseful, with euro-zone finance ministers and the IMF pushing investors to accept greater losses. Hedge funds, more than any others, stand to profit, and are betting that the voluntary debt rescheduling will fail. By Stefan Kaiser http://www.facebook.com/spiegelinternational

Coming Events:

7 February 2012: European Economic and Social Committee sustainability conference

Olivier De Schutter will address Workshop 1, entitled „food, water and energy for everyone“, held between 4.30 and 6.00 pm, of the Conference of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) Go sustainable, be responsible! European civil society on the road to Rio+20.

30 January 2012: No enough food, energy for World as population increases: U.N. report | Morocco World News http://moroccoworldnews.com

30 January 2012: With new blueprint in hand, Ban calls for action to chart more sustainable future http://www.un.org/apps/news/sustainable development

http://www.srfood.org

http://www.irinnews.org/Report WTO

http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/

“ Trade and food security is in effect a WTO issue, and so there is great frustration within the UN that this enormously restricts the role of, for example, the Food and Agriculture Organization-based Committee on Food Security „

Olivier de Schutter, UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, says: “Food security is the elephant in the room, which WTO [the World Trade Organization] must address”, pointing out that food import bills had soared by a third for poor countries this year.

WTO defending an outdated vision of food security [16 December 2011] Geneva – „Globalization creates big winners and big losers. But where food systems are concerned, losing out means sinking into poverty and hunger. A vision of food security that deepens the divide between food-surplus and food-deficit regions, between exporters and importers, and between winners and losers, simply cannot be accepted.

Food security hostage to trade in WTO negotiations: UN right to food expert [16 November 2011] Geneva – „The world is in the midst of a food crisis which requires a rapid policy response. But the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agenda has failed to adapt, and developing countries are rightly concerned that their hands will be tied by trade rules.”

Food aid on the back burner as WTO talks collapse

Some issues WTO needs to address in agriculture:

Ceilings on subsidies: Current ceilings on how much the US and the EU can spend on subsidies that distort trade are still rather high

Cotton subsidies: The US has still not fully complied with a WTO ruling in 2009 to remove subsidies for its cotton producers. African farmers could have gained from a 3.5 percent average increase in world cotton prices, if the US had cut subsidies.

Biofuel Subsidies : Not covered yet. A new study found that US ethanol subsidies may have artificially inflated maize prices by as much as 17 percent in 2011. Source: ICTSD

Some Further Sources such as http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

Read http://www.srfood.org/ Press release, „Eco-Farming Can Double Food Production in 10 Years, says UN Report“, 8 March 2011.

FARMAfrica FARM-Africa http://www.farmafrica.org.uk

Research by American Prof of International Development shows that small farms in Africa could be the solution to hunger http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/01/13/

http://www.righttofood.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/Right_to_food

http://cesr.org/index.php Center for Economic and Social Rights

http://www.facebook.com/World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO)

The G20 & Food Security – missing the big picture? World Trade

https://www.facebook.com/boellstiftung

http://www.business-humanrights.org/Categories/Issues/Other/Righttofood

http://www.stwr.org/imf-world-bank-trade/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals

http://viacampesina.org/en/

http://donttradeourlivesaway.wordpress.com/

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/issues

http://farmlandgrab.org/Olivier De Schutter: “Principles for responsible investment in agriculture”

http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/signon/stop-wto-s-doha-development-round-and-other-FTAs

The right to food, and its variations, is a human right derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food in 2002 defined it as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food

http://www.amnesty.org/en/economic-social-and-cultural-rights

Join the energy [r]evolution! http://www.energyblueprint.info/ The report: ‘Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook’, provides a detailed practical blueprint for cutting carbon emissions while achieving economic growth by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency. This phase-out of fossil fuels offers substantial benefits such as energy security, independence from world market fuel prices as well as the creation of millions of new green jobs.