earth-policy.org

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

by Lester R. Brown

With food scarcity driven by falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures, control of arable land and water resources is moving to center stage in the global struggle for food security. “In this era of tightening world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new form of geopolitical leverage. Food is the new oil,” Lester R. Brown writes.

What will the geopolitics of food look like in a new era dominated by scarcity and food nationalism? Brown outlines the political implications of land acquisitions by grain-importing countries in Africa and elsewhere as well as the world’s shrinking buffers against poor harvests. With wisdom accumulated over decades of tracking agricultural issues, Brown exposes the increasingly volatile food situation the world is facing.

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http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep

Chapter 1. Food: The Weak Link
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch1

Image: A worker mounts solar panels on the roof of a  barn in Binsham, Germany, in March 2012. (photo: Michaela Rehle/Reuters)

slate.com - March 29th, 2013 - Andrew Curry

It’s been a long, dark winter in Germany. In fact, there hasn’t been this little sun since people started tracking such things back in the early 1950s. Easter is around the corner, and the streets of Berlin are still covered in ice and snow. But spring will come, and when the snow finally melts, it will reveal the glossy black sheen of photovoltaic solar panels glinting from the North Sea to the Bavarian Alps.

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The researchers found the highest levels of lead in rice from China and Taiwan

submitted by Lloyd Helferty

bbc.co.uk - by Jason Palmer - April 10, 2013

Analysis of commercially available rice imported into the US has revealed it contains levels of lead far higher than regulations suggest are safe.

Some samples exceeded the "provisional total tolerable intake" (PTTI) set by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by a factor of 120.

The report at the American Chemical Society Meeting adds to the already well-known issue of arsenic in rice.

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Journal of Environmental Science and Health (Part B)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22099990

Click on each balloon for more information on individual patients infected with the avian flu virus: blue, patients infected with the H7N9 virus under treatment; red, those infected with H7N9 who have died; and pink, those infect with the H1N1 avian flu virus.

CLICK HERE - WHO - Global Alert and Response - Disease Outbreak News

CLICK HERE - ProMED-mail updates on H7N9 Bird Flu (Avian Influenza) - www.promedmail.org

ALSO SEE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN LINKS BELOW:

China reports nine bird flu cases amid allegations of cover up on social media

xinhuanet.com - China reports 2 more H7N9 bird flu cases

National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China

China's deadly new H7N9 bird flu virus may be harder to track than predecessors, scientists say

foreignpolicy.com - by Laurie Garrett - April 1, 2013

China's mysterious pig, duck, and people deaths could be connected. And that should worry us.

Here's how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks. And three unrelated individuals would stagger into three different hospitals, gasping for air. . .

. . . the facts delineated are all true, and have transpired over the last six weeks in China.

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                                           (TO ENLARGE MAP - CLICK ON MAP IMAGE BELOW)

The map shows the prevalence of undernourishment in the total population as of 2010 - 2012. The indicator is an estimate of the percentage of the population having access to an amount of energy from food insufficient to maintain a healthy life.

http://www.wfp.org/hunger/downloadmap

The Humanitarian Kiosk (H.Kiosk) application provides a range of up-to-the-minute humanitarian related information from emergencies around the world.

OCHA now offers a Humanitarian Kiosk app for Apple devices (iOS5+).

unocha.org - March 21, 2013

What is Humanitarian Kiosk?

One of the challenges faced by humanitarian workers is access to timely, relevant and accurate information.   New technology provides an opportunity for humanitarian workers to develop better ways to access and share this information, and get aid to those who need it more quickly and effectively.  OCHA has developed the Humanitarian Kiosk to address the diverse information needs of humanitarian agencies and workers.

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You can install the app on any of your Apple devices (iOS5+) through this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/humanitarian-kiosk/id546482411

submitted by Stella Tarnay

securityandsustainabilityforum.org - by Kristina Byrne - January 31, 2013

A rescue worker uses a two-way radio transceiver during heavy snowfall at a factory area devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in Sendai, northern Japan, 16 March 2011. Credit: REUTERS/KIM KYUNG-HOON

unocha.org - March 15, 2013

When one of the most technologically sophisticated countries in the world is hit by a triple emergency, should we count on web platforms and social media to deliver lifesaving information? Not necessarily, according to a new report by Internews into the communications aspects of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.

. . . instead of their usual high-tech operation, local newspaper reporters went back a few decades in time and produced a handwritten newspaper.

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Internews Report - Connecting the Last Mile: The Role of Communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake
http://www.internews.org/research-publications/connecting-last-mile-role-communications-great-east-japan-earthquake

                            (LINKS TO STUDY ABSTRACT AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ARE BELOW)

Scientists look at an ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide coring site.  Credit: Thomas Bauska, OSU

CNN - by Ben Brumfield - March 8, 2013

Global warming has propelled Earth's climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest -- in just one century.

A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

"If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record," he said.

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Study Abstract - A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract

submitted by Albert Gomez

energymanagertoday.com - by Allan McHale - March 6, 2013

Smart Grid sales across the world in the last three years at installed prices have grown by CAGR of approximately 35% and climbed to $36.5 billion in 2012. Given the general economic demise during this period these figures are remarkable. However they include a steady flow of refurbishment business that has for more than 10 years incrementally improved and smartened up the control and reliability of the electrical network.

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Image: People adapt. Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

irinnews.org - March 5th, 2013 - Jaspreet Kindra

Contrary to popular belief, most rural communities facing recurrent climate shocks learn to adapt, using their own resources and knowledge. Yet many international aid programmes have outside “experts” craft interventions without the involvement of those they seek to help.

And many development projects do not actually promote adaptability, said Simon Levine of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), in a 2012 Oxfam blog post.

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Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

This report reviews the interventions of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) that have strong implications for increasing resilience and reducing vulnerability to natural disasters, and it aims at improving the understanding of how Sida has worked with these issues so far and how the work can be further strengthened. The report combines findings from a mapping phase with more in-depth analysis of resilience initiatives related to climate change adaptation, agriculture and water hazards.

The purpose of the study presented in the report is to:

Submitted by The Earth Policy Institute