http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/34367

From: Reuters
Published April 9, 2008 07:32 AM

By Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Food riots which have struck several impoverished countries could spread with shortages and high prices set to continue for some time, the head of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

A combination of high oil and fuel prices, rising demand for food in a wealthier Asia, the use of farmland and crops for biofuels, bad weather and speculation on futures markets have pushed up food prices, prompting violent protests in a handful of poor states.

Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO, said on Wednesday during a trip to India that there was a growing risk of social instability in countries where families spent more than half their income on food.

"The problem is very serious around the world due to severe price rises and we have seen riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso," he told reporters in New Delhi.

Five people have been killed in a week of demonstrations in Haiti over high food prices in the poorest country in the Americas, while unions in the West African nation of Burkina Faso called a general strike over soaring food and fuel costs.

"There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food," Diouf added.

He said world cereal stocks were enough to meet demand for eight to 12 weeks, while grain supplies were at their lowest since the 1980s.

"This is due to higher demand from countries like India, China, where GDP grows at 8-10 percent and the increase in income is going to food," Diouf said after meeting India's farm minister, Sharad Pawar.

He said he was advising governments to invest in irrigation, storage facilities and rural infrastructure and increase productivity to meet the challenge of food scarcity.

Published online 2 April 2008 | Nature452, 508-509 (2008) | doi:10.1038/452508a

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080402/full/452508a.html

Claim that the challenge of cutting emissions has been underestimated is debated.

Quirin Schiermeier

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has grossly underestimated the challenges of reducing and stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions, according to an influential group of climate-policy experts.

The scenarios produced by the IPCC assume that very substantial technological advances — leading to greater energy efficiency and reduced carbon dioxide intensity — will happen spontaneously, without extra policy measures (see page 531). Roger Pielke, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green argue that this is a "dangerously optimistic" assumption. To show its effects, the trio offer a contrasting 'frozen-technology' scenario, which assumes that future energy needs are met with technology available at the baseline year. They say that this demonstrates a need for new energy technologies as much as four times greater than that which seems to be required looking at some IPCC scenarios. Nature gets some reactions.

...

Fears that actual economic growth and energy use may develop in different ways than assumed in our scenarios are more justified. If so, it could be more difficult to reach low stabilization levels. The IPCC in 2006 initiated the development of new long-term scenarios. New scenarios will be developed over the coming years.

From: Reuters
Published April 9, 2008 07:54 AM

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34347 

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

A new report by the global institutions also warned that urgent action was needed to tackle climatechange, which threatens to exact a hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse progress in fighting poverty.

The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, released ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this weekend, said strong economicgrowth in much of the developing world had contributed to the decline in global poverty.

 ...

Turning to the environment, the report said poverty reduction may not be sustainable if forests are lost, fisheries depleted, water or air is polluted and soil degraded.

It said water scarcity and deforestation were already a factor in the developing world and are valuable assets and sourcesofincome to poor countries.

"The depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation undermines the long-term growth prospects of many developing countries," the report said.

It called for coordinated global action to avert further climate change, adding that extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods in the world's poorest countries may also exacerbate conflicts and cross-country migration.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Tom Hals)

http://www.middleeastprogress.org/wp-content/themes/meb/newsletter.php

"These water woes concerns more than just the people of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon or Gaza. These are problems touching the international community. Unless duly addressed they will add to the region's already explosive problems in years to come."

Contents:

1. Middle East Water Woes, by Middle East Times, Editorial

2.Water Policies in the Gulf and Recent Initiatives, by Dr. Mohamed Abdel Raouf Abdel Hamid, Senior Researcher, Gulf Research Center (Khaleej Times)

3. Regional Cooperation - Making It Real, Israeli Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni, Interfaith Dinner in Celebration of Regional Cooperation honoring "The Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC): A Joint Arab-Israeli Project to Solve Regional Water Problems," September 24, 2007

4.Carbon Emissions---What's All the Fuss About?, by Elizabeth Bains (ArabianBusiness.com)

5.Hopes Fade for Turkish Water as a Strategic Asset,by Gareth Jenkins (Eurasia Daily Monitor)