UNEP "Environmental Food Crises" - an important report

At a meeting last week of the UNEP Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum (yes thats a mouthful) in Nairobi, Kenya, an important and powerful document was released entitled "The Environmental Food Crisis". The report can be found electronically here. Or you can also download the 104-page report in its entirety as a pdf file.

The focus of this report has been in the news for the last year or two as a number of factors (the report names "speculation in food stocks, extreme weather events, low cereal stocks, growth in biofuels competing for cropland and high oil prices" along with the loss of agricultural lands due to development pg. 6) have collapsed the global food status quo and drive more than 110 million people (in 2008 alone) into poverty, while leaving an additional 44 million undernourished. (pg. 13) (In case you weren't aware the 'extreme poverty' threshold has been valued at US $1.25 a day - about 50 cents less than my cup of coffee.)

Reports like this threaten our humanity and livelihood. They also threaten the common notion that caring for the environment is different from caring for the poor. When I consider how my own food choices implicate me in such systems of injustice, I am reminded of passages such as this one from the Prophets. Truly "The earth mourns" and "lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant."

For more news about this UN report try here and here. What these reports claim is that the changes which most make sense for the earth - smaller-scale organic operations, less waste of water and loss of topsoil - make the most sense for its inhabitants. The first report is of particular interest to me as I recall this same picture almost daily at my own University.