Lessons learned aboutlessons learned about

hunger and the right to food

II ICIDFortaleza, August 19, 2010

Marcos Ezequiel Filardimfilardi@yahoo.com

Interdisciplinary Seminar on Hunger and the Right to FoodUniversity of Buenos Aires - School of Law

A food-insecure (or hungry) world

•1.02 billion hungry

•90% in Asia and the Pacific (642 million) and Africa (265 million)

•2 billion malnourished

•1 child dies every seven seconds – 60 during this presentation

•50% in the drylands

•75% are subsistence farmers and pastoralists in rural areas

Lesson 1: There is enough food for all

• In 1985 world´s food sufficiency – and one million starved to death

• 25 years later, enough food to provide 2700 calories to 12 billion people –double of the current world population(FAO)

• 1 billion hungry and one billion with obesity

Lesson 2: Nature´s not to blame: Hunger is a man-made disaster

•Natural phenomena•Conflicts•Human displacement•Unfair trade•Inefficient and disrupting aid•Lack of or inadequate policies•Unequal access to land, credit and inputs•Concentration of the food chain•Unemployment•Lack of social safety nets•Trade related intellectual property rights•Globalization•Problems of infrastructure•Large scale acquisitions and leases and forced evictions• Food devoted to energy-sources of protein•Promotion of biofuels•Market speculation•Discrimination

Lesson 3: Green revolution is not that green

•Contributes to climate change

•No sustainable use and pollution of fresh water resources

•Soil degradation and depletion

•Biodiversity loss

•Land concentration

•Diet-related problems and malnutrition

Lesson 4: Climate change is making matters worse for those already hungry

•Increase in 1-3 degrees will not affect world food production, but adverse impacts at the regional level

•Adverse impacts on fisheries and livestock

•Those who contributed the least to climate change, and are already the most food-insecure, will be the worst affected

•600 million new hungry (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights). New famines.

•More than 3 degrees= total disruption of food production

•Legal recognition of an ethical claim

•Naming and shaming

•Accountability

•Naming and shaming

•Mobilizing force and rallying point

•Local enforceability and justiciability

•International monitoring and supervision

Lesson 5:There is a human right to adequate food

There is a drought of courage.There is a shortage of political will.

Thank you.

What is your science for, if it doesn´t serve to transform the reality?What is your knowledge for, if it doesn´t serve to improve people´s lives?When you abandon this world,Try not only to have been good, because this is not enough,But to abandon a good world.

Bertolt Brecht, Santa Juana de los Mataderos