Research in Real Time
Dear Naresh,
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro! I am in Rio attending the UN Conference on Sustainable Development,
also known as Rio+20. At the conference I'm working to highlight the
role that agriculture, sustainable food systems, women, and youth can
play in sustainable development and "greening" the global economy.
For those that are here, join me this morning at the Peoples Summit for Social and Environmental Justice in the Ecumenical Food Tent in the Parque do Flamengo, where I will be on a food waste panel hosted by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EEA) and the Ecumenical Coalition. Nourishing the Planet is also in Rio partnering with Women Deliver
to highlight women's empowerment, reproductive health issues, and the
important role that youth play in sustainable development. Check out
some of the blogs that we have written: in this post we highlight women and sustainability fact sheets for Rio+20, in this post we discuss 5 youth-led initiatives that are shaking up Rio+20, and in this post we highlight organizations that are putting women issues on top at Rio+20.
Next week, we will be launching Eating Planet—Nutrition Today: A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet, a new book produced in collaboration with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition
(BCFN). We are blown away by the number of people who registered and
are figuring out how to accommodate more people. If you will be in New
York City on June 28th and are not currently registered, please email me
and I will add you to the waiting list. We are trying to accommodate as
many more people as possible. The event will be streamed live here. The event is moderated by Samuel Fromartz, editor-in-chief of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, and speakers include global food waste expert and author of American Wasteland, Jonathan Bloom; creator of The 30 Project and BCFN Board Member, Ellen Gustafson; and author of Eat Here, Brian Halweil,
among others. We will be taking questions LIVE from the livestream.
Stay tuned we may be announcing more of these types of events in other
cities.
We want to offer some sneak previews of Eating Planet including interviews with some of the authors. Check out our interviews with Tony Allan, Ellen Gustafson, Hans Herren, Raj Patel, and Paul Roberts.
In the 24-hour period where NtP readers got to download the book for
free, more than 7,000 of you picked up the book. We are getting a great
response and have decided to price it extremely low at US$3.99 so anyone
can afford it. You can purchase the book on Amazon.com and iTunes.
We continued to receive some exciting news coverage this past week. Our research on land grabs was featured on National Public Radio, a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States.
Last week we asked for nominations for a weekly interview series
featuring the work of our readers. We received more than 250 submissions
and will start profiling one a week every Saturday on Nourishing the
Planet.
All the best,
Danielle Nierenberg
Nourishing the Planet Project Director
Worldwatch Institute
Here are some highlights from the week:
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Women and Sustainability: Recognizing the Role of Women at Rio+20
From
sustainable cities to renewable energy, some of the most crucial areas
of development policy remain devoid of any mention or dialogue on the
issue of women’s rights. To put these neglected issues on the global
agenda, numerous governments, executives, NGOs, and civil society
activists are gathering this week to represent the voices of the women,
youth, and children around the world at the United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20.
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Putting Youth and Reproductive Rights on the Agenda at Rio +20: An Interview with Ivens Reis Reyner
As Rio +20 rapidly approaches,
organizations from around the world are pushing for issues related to
youth and reproductive rights to be prioritized within the sustainable
development agenda. The Youth Coalition is an organization of young
activists from around the world who bring attention to the sexual and
reproductive rights of youth locally and globally. Representatives from
the Youth Coalition will be at Rio +20 to inform governments about the
connections between sustainable development and sexual rights.
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Four-Year-Old Seed Vault Protects Hundreds of Thousands of Crop Varieties
Buried deep in a mountainside located in a
group of islands nearly 1,000 kilometers off the northern Norwegian
coast lies a vault charged with the task of safeguarding nearly
three-quarters of a million seed samples from around the globe. Svalbard
Global Seed Vault is located near the village of Longyearbyen,
Svalbard, a far-northern location that exists in total darkness for
nearly four months out of the year. The vault serves as backup to living
crop diversity collections housed in “genebanks” around the world and
is designed to protect seed varieties from both natural and manmade
disasters.
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UN Food Agency Urges Companies and Organizations to Join Global Food Waste Initiative
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization
recently issued a statement calling upon companies and organizations
around the world to join the Save Food Initiative and reduce global
waste. Established in 2011, Save Food has over 50 partners including
donors, bi-and multi-lateral agencies, and financial institutions
including the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World
Bank, the World Food Programme, the UN Industrial Development
Organization, the European Union, and the African Development Bank. The
initiative aims to reduce the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted each year
totaling nearly US$1 trillion?US$680 billion in industrialized countries
and US$310 billion in developing nations.
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Biovision President, Hans Herren, Gets to the Roots of Sustainable Agriculture at Rio+20
The
world’s food and agricultural system is fraught with problems such as
toxic pesticide use and poor resource management that jeopardize its
ability to support a population of 9 billion by 2050. World Food Prize
Laureate and President of the Biovision Foundation for Ecological
Development, Hans Herren, will address some of the root causes of food
insecurity and poverty in two panel discussions on sustainable food and
agriculture at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference for Sustainable
Development. “The main focus in Rio must be on implementing sustainable
farming methods and linking science and policy more closely,” demands
Herren. “This is the only way for the economy to become truly green as
well as socially sustainable.”
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Food for All: How to Respond to Market Excesses
In his introduction to a chapter in the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition’s new book, Eating Planet—Nutrition Today: A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet,
award-winning writer, activist, and academic Raj Patel describes
reasons for the multiple failures of today’s modern food system and
suggests important policy responses. More than 1.5 billion people
worldwide are overweight and another 1 billion are hungry. Both problems
are signs that while the current food system has worked to produce
calories and profit, it has failed to nourish the world.
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Virtual Water: an Interview with Tony Allan
Tony
Allan, a leading international expert on water, introduced the concept
of virtual water, the water used in the production process of an
agricultural or industrial product, to help quantify something most
people haven’t considered: how much water does it really take to
produce food and goods, and how can we stop taking our water resources
for granted? Our relationship with the true value of water has only
recently come under scrutiny, as the population increases more rapidly
than ever before. To begin reevaluating our water use, Allan suggests
turning to the “de-facto water managers of the world”: farmers. Seventy
percent of our water use is in agriculture, which makes farmers the
stewards of this resource.
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Eating Planet: An Interview with Ellen Gustafson
Ellen Gustafson is a social entrepreneur
working for food system change to address issues like global hunger and
obesity. In 2010, Gustafson launched The 30 Project in an effort to
bring together key stakeholders to chart a healthier and more
sustainable path for the food system. In an interview for the Barilla
Center for Food & Nutrition’s new book, Eating Planet: Nutrition Today—A Challenge for Mankind and for the Planet,
Gustafson discusses how global hunger and the obesity epidemic are two
symptoms of the broken global food system, and how consumers have the
power to change things for the better.
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Improving Agricultural Inputs to Fix our Global Food System
Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil andThe End of Food,
discusses the main reasons that the global food system is not working
properly: increasing risks to agricultural inputs like energy,
fertilizers, and water. When the global food system was designed in the
1960s, oil cost less than US$30 a barrel, around a quarter of the
current price. Currently, agriculture is increasingly under pressure due
to rising oil costs, which make it difficult for producers to keep
costs down without compromising quality or safety.
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Eating Planet: An Interview with Hans Herren
Hans
Herren is an entomologist, farmer, development specialist, World Food
Prize laureate, and co-chair of the International Assessment of
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. He is
also the president of the Millennium Institute, which works to inform
decision-making centered on a shared responsibility for the planet’s
common future. In an interview for Eating Planet, Herren discusses the key challenges for transitioning to sustainable agriculture systems that can feed the planet.
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Carlo Petrini: “Good, Clean and Fair Food” for Sustainable Development
Carlo
Petrini, the founder and president of the Slow Food Movement, is
invited to speak at the Sustainable Development Dialogue on Food and
Nutrition Security at Rio+20. The dialogue is one of ten dialogues that
will take place during the conference. The goal of the sustainable
development dialogues is to bring together representatives from NGOs,
the private sector, the scientific community, and other relevant
groups?no UN representatives or governments will be present?to debate
and compile tangible recommendations to present to the Heads of state
and governments present in Rio.
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De Schutter Highlights the Importance of a Rights-Based Approach to Food Security
Olivier
De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, spoke last
week at the International Food Policy Research Institute about the
“right to food.” According to De Schutter, a rights-based approach is
crucial in attaining global food security, particularly in developing
nations. Addressing recent developments in the right to food movements
in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, De Schutter described the
potential of a rights-based approach in replacing the current
supply-and-demand model. This approach is not just about availability,
but requires that we pay attention to both food accessibility and
adequacy.
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Certification and Business Models that Contribute to Sustainability
Over
the past six years, the Committee on Sustainability (COSA) has engaged
in field research regarding the impacts of sustainability practices and
certifications. COSA is a nonprofit global consortium of institutions
that are dedicated to evaluating the impacts of sustainability programs
within business models. This year’s Rio Conference will provide a
platform for the presentation of the results of this research. The
events will also be comprised of panelists of global companies and
policymakers who will unveil their approaches at using certification to
reduce poverty and to create a green economy.
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New York Times Discusses Brazil’s Land Conflicts
Over the last few decades, farmers and ranchers have settled on land
that the Guarani Peoples have inhabited and relied on for centuries.
Although this fertile region of southern Brazil has helped the country
become the world’s leading producer of soy, sugar cane, and beef,
Brazil’s economic success has come primarily at the expense of the
Guarani Peoples’ land rights. Many Indigenous Peoples rely on their
traditional lands for food, shelter, clothing, and a source of income.
Consequently many Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, like the Guarani, have
been fighting for their homelands ever since colonization.
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Irrigation Innovator Honored at World Food Prize Ceremony
Last week, the World Food Prize Foundation announced that Israel's Dr.
Daniel Hillel will receive the 2012 prize for his work in improving
irrigation techniques in arid regions. The announcement was made at the
World Food Prize Laureate announcement ceremony in Washington, D.C. Dr.
Hillel was honored for his work in microirrigation, an innovative
irrigation method that applies water in small, continuous amounts
directly to plants. Many traditional methods of irrigation, including
soaking fields during a region’s wet season and allowing them to dry out
during the arid season, are relatively inefficient in both crop
productivity and water conservation.
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