Wednesday 4 June 2008

Food security, climate change and conflict

This issue is deeply worrying. It's only become apparent to many of us these past few months. Here's a recent piece from a blog that is dedicated to the food crisis:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said last Saturday that if the spike in food prices continued, “thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives. As we know, learning from the past, those kinds of questions sometimes end in war.”

Meanwhile, the wider context is addressed in an interesting blog 'New Security Beat'
One of their recent pieces... U.S. Army War College Report Says We Ignore Climate Change Security Risks “At Our Peril”
The article concludes: '[Carolyn] Pumphrey - [editor of the War College report] calls for a three-pronged strategy that includes “better intelligence, better science, and better understanding of the relationships between such things as violence, society, and climate change.” She maintains that we must slow the rate of climate change and prepare for unavoidable changes, take action to alleviate international social distress, and prepare to address potential conflicts. And, she notes, this is “a job for everyone,” not just the military.'