UN Food and Agricultural Organization announced that the dry weather in Brazil and the violence in the Black Sea Region, caused a 5.2 percent surge in cereal prices, bringing the average to 205.8 points. In March the Index rose to its highest value since August 2013, it remained well below, 14.4 percent, its March 2013. Rice prices were generally stable.
This announcement makes me think that one of the fundamental problem of this world is food. I believe that the food problem becomes a dramatic one.
For the first time, the idea of hungry population appears in the report "The Limits of Growth" -- 1972 (commissioned by the Club of Rome) and has had a significant impact on the conception of environmental issues.
In the XIX sec. we are already one billion on the globe. The population growth is accelerated and now we are over seven billions on the planet and in the next two decades we will be 9 billion. Now we are at the limit, we eat everything that we produce, no surplus, no reserve. In the last period of time we can see that the world's grain reserve decreased, some specialists in the field say that they fell by a third and the food prices have doubled. From 2008-2009 we can observe a real rush, planetary, for agricultural land. It is like Golden Rush? Let's hope is not.
But who will feed us? We all agree that the developed countries will suffer less because they have enough agricultural land and water resources to feed themselves, the major concerns come from the undeveloped and developing countries whose population increases.
In my opinion, hunger is the leading cause of The Arab Spring. Look at any map and you can see the states most affected of poverty in the world: Egypt, Algeria,Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Iran; small scale events in Western Sahara, Sudan, Djibouti, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Senegal, Saudi Arabia and Oman; protests out of the area in Somalia, Albania, Serbia, Mauritania and Gabon. At the moment we can speak about a crise based on lack of food in Ukraine and all the other states who are Russia's targets. Why I am saying that? Because at this moment we can speak about a new world order, based on who have more food, control for land and for water sources. So today the land is oil and the food is the new gold. It is a fight for power or if you want is like in soccer, we are witnessing a positional attack. Who will win? Who's the real enemy?
Based on the report " The Limits of Growth" the lack of food is determined by five elements: the nature exponential global growth, the limits to exponential growth, technology, the growth in the world system and the world equilibrium.
We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources -- in short a new geopolitics of food. ('Full planet, empty plates.'-- Lester R. Brown)
In Yokohama, during a press conference, IPCC Chairperson Rajendra K. Pachauri said that
nobody on the planet will be untouched by climate change
, based on the report "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, from Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).
The world has to take this report seriously because there are implications for security of food supply, impacts of extreme events on morbidity and mortality, severe and irreversible impacts on species, and a risk of crossing various points because of increasing temperatures
said Mr. Pachauri, explaining that those impacts also affect human security, in that climate change could spark mass population displacement or increased conflict. I think is already started.
The report shows that all continents and oceans of the world have suffered climate changes with major impacts in natural and human systems.
In Africa, a main regional feature has been the drying of the Sahel during 1970 till the most recent decade when this trend has halted.
In Europe warming has been occurring across the continent in all seasons, with an associated frequency of cold extremes and increasing frequency of hot extremes. The Mediterranean basin has been getting drier, while northern areas have been getting wetter, with a general increase in the frequency of extreme wet events everywhere.
Asia spans a particularly wide range of climate types. Warming has been observed throughout the continent with northern areas amongst the fastest warming on the planet. Precipitation trends vary geographically, with a but wheaker Indian monsoon and contrasting increasing and drying trends over coastal and inland China.
In Australasia during the past century warming has occurred, with hot extremes more frequent than cold extremes. Winter in southern areas of Australia has become drier and the northern has become wetter. In New Zealand the precipitation increased over the south and west.
North America has been amongst the fastest warming regions on the planet, the southeast of the USA experienced slight cooling. Even if the intensity in precipitation has been increased over most of the continent the trends in dryness is heterogeneous.
All Pollar are the area with the largest warming. That mean we are expecting earlier spring runoff, decrease in summer, earlier thaw, thawing of permafrost.
All these climate modifications bring changes in political and strategic field. These days we are witnessing a rearrangement of the influence boundaries. I consider that all the violence from Ukraine, the tension from the Black Sea zone and the violence from Middle East are the consequences of this phenomenon.
A logical conclusion shows that the real enemy is pollution, is an individual fault or a collective one? You can not say. Even if it will be a war, and some states will hold the majority control of the agricultural land and water resources, if we don't resolve the climate change problem, nobody will win. In fact all the wars will end and all the guns will go silent but the important thing is not that, is what wars leave behind.