Financial Times 

By Robert B. Zoellick

As leaders gather in Rome to discuss the global food crisis, our task is clear, but not simple: to help those in danger today and ensure that the poor do not suffer this tragedy again.

What has been described as a silent tsunami is not a natural catastrophe, but is man-made. The nexus between high energy and food prices is unlikely to be broken, and will be exacerbated by global climate change. The results have been rising production and transport costs for agriculture, falling food stocks and land shifted out of food production to produce energy substitutes. This is a 21st century food-for-oil crisis.

In April, ministers from 150 countries, meeting at the World Bank, endorsed a new deal for global food policy. The United Nations summit next week in Rome, the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations' finance ministers meeting in June and the G8 summit in July offer opportunities for action. We need co-ordinated steps on policy, backed by resources. Let me suggest a 10-point plan.

First, we should agree in Rome to fund fully the World Food Programme's emergency needs, support its drive to purchase food aid locally and ensure the unhampered movement of humanitarian assistance. Second, we need support for safety nets, such as distributing food in schools or offering food in return for work, so that we can quickly help those in severe distress. The World Bank, working with the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, has already made rapid needs assessments for more than 25 countries. In Rome we should agree on co-ordinated action.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48660/story.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: June 9, 2008GURGAON, India--- When the scorch of summer hit this north Indian boomtown, and the municipal water supply worked only a few hours each day, inside a high-rise tower called Hamilton Court, Jaya Chand could turn on her kitchen tap around the clock, and water would gush out.

The same was true when the electricity went out in the city, which it did on average for 12 hours a day, something that once prompted residents elsewhere in Gurgaon to storm the local power office. All the while, the Chands' flat screen television glowed, the air-conditioners hummed, and the elevators cruised up and down Hamilton Court's 25 floors.

...

India has always had its upper classes, as well as legions of the world's very poor. But today a landscape dotted with Hamilton Courts, pressed up against the slums that serve them, has underscored more than ever the stark gulf between those worlds, raising uncomfortable questions for a democratically elected government about whether India can enable all its citizens to scale the golden ladders of the new economy.

...

Gurgaon, a largely privately developed city and a metonym for Indian ambition, has seen a building frenzy to satisfy people like the Chands. The city's population has nearly doubled in the last six years, to 1.5 million. The skyline is dotted with scaffolds. Glass towers house companies like American Express and Accenture. Not far from Hamilton Court, Burberry and BMW have set up shop.

State services, meanwhile, have barely kept pace. The city has neither enough water nor electricity for the population. There is no sewage treatment plant yet; construction is scheduled to begin this year.

India has long lived with such inequities, and though a Maoist rebellion is building in the countryside, the nation has for the most part skirted social upheaval through a critical safety valve: giving the poor their chance to vent at the ballot box. Indeed, four years ago, voters threw out the incumbent government, with its "India Shining" slogan, because it was perceived to have neglected the poor.

PORT MORESBY, 8 June 2008 (IRIN) - The 1,500 residents of Carteret Island, an atoll of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, are fast becoming the world's first climate change refugees.

Sea levels around the atoll have risen 10cm in the past 20 years, inundating plantations, and the situation is deteriorating, islanders told IRIN, saying they urgently need assistance to be relocated to higher ground.

"Food gardens and coconut groves have been destroyed and children are going to school hungry," Ursula Rakova, chief executive officer of Tulele Peisa, a local NGO advocating for the rights of islanders, told IRIN when asked about the rising sea levels on Carteret Island.

Many of the island's inhabitants have run out of food and their staple, coconuts, are being wiped out as the sea level rises.

"It is extremely difficult now for food crops to grow on the atolls. Salt water seeps through the land making it impossible for food to grow," Rakova said. "Breadfruit is seasonal and not as plentiful as it was 30 years ago and fruits are getting smaller in size ... bananas struggle to grow in the salt-inundated land."

For the full article, please visit: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78630
 

LAKE CHAD, 7 June 2008 (IRIN) - The UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on conflict, Jan Egeland, is travelling in the Sahel this week to draw attention to a region the UN says is experiencing the worst effects of climate change in the world. He is sharing his thoughts and experiences every day with IRIN. This is the fifth and final instalment, this time from Lake Chad, Niger.

When I embarked on this mission I think there were those who asked why a Special Adviser on Conflict Prevention should go on a trip to see climate change and environmental disasters. Well, this trip has convinced me that there is a very clear link between climate induced resource competition and conflict, and I will be using what I have seen here to convince sceptics ahead of the Copenhagen meeting in 2009.

Today we visited what was once Lake Chad in eastern Niger, which as recently as the 1960s covered a total 25,000 sq km, of which 4,000 sq km were inside Niger. Since the droughts that have been recurrent since the 1970s the lake has now has shrunk to nothing inside Niger.

This is a very dramatic environmental crisis, with enormous consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. For me the visit was epitomised by an old customs boat which is now stranded in the middle of the desert, a desert covered in sea shells. Next to the boat I visited an old fishing village where the fishermen no longer have a lake to fish in and have instead tried to make it as farmers harvesting meagre crops of millet and beans to keep their families alive.

It took us five hours to get to Lake Chad - three hours of air time and two hours on invisible desert roads, but it was worth it because we were there in the presence of the Ambassadors to Niger from the US, France, Germany, Denmark, Egypt and the European Community and we saw together both the scale of the problem, and that there is a feasible solution to it.

There is now a Lake Chad Basin Commission consisting of all the countries around Lake Chad - Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Central African Republic and Nigeria. These countries in a recent summit agreed to study whether water can be brought from one of the abundant Congolese rivers to the River Chari, which is now the only remaining source of water for Lake Chad.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78626 

Vanguard (Lagos)

11 June 2008
Posted to the web 11 June 2008

By George Onah

Thousands of Ogoni of Rivers State took to the streets of Port Harcourt, Monday, jubilating over the sacking of Shell Petroleum Development Company by the Federal Government from their land, and the resolve to replace the oil giant with another oil prospecting company.

The people carried placards with various inscriptions, some of which read "Non violence pays, bye-bye to Shell, no more shell in Ogoni land, justice for Ogoni, justice for all, thank you President Yar'Adua, no more genocide in Ogoni land", among others.

They sang and danced through major streets of Port Harcourt and terminated at Government House, where they delivered their solidarity message to President Yar'Adua through Governor Chibuike Amaechi.

In the message delivered on their behalf by MOSOP President, Mr. Ledum Miitee, expressed gratitude over the decision of the Federal Government to replace Shell as the oil exploiting company in Ogoniland.

For the full article please visit: http://allafrica.com/stories/200806110340.html

For additional background, also see a Guardian article from June 5, 2008: http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/news/article01//indexn2_html?pdate=050608&ptitle=New%20firm%20replace%20Shell%20in%20Ogoni \\

From: Reuters
Published June 13, 2008 08:50 AM

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37384

Following his declaration last week of a drought in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed on Thursday a state of emergency in nine counties in the state's farm-rich Central Valley.

"Just last week, I said we would announce regional emergencies wherever the state's drought situation warrants them, and in the Central Valley an emergency proclamation is necessary to protect our economy and way of life," the Republican governor said in a statement.
"Central Valley agriculture is a $20 billion a year industry. If we don't get them water immediately the results will be devastating," he added. "Food prices, which are already stretching many family budgets, will continue to climb and workers will lose their jobs -- everyone's livelihood will be impacted in some way."

...

California has had two years of below-average rainfall and its water woes are being compounded by a federal court order to limit water pumping from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, the state's fresh-water hub, to protect a fish species.
Even before Schwarzenegger's drought declaration, many California water districts had imposed restrictions on water use and many farmers had prepared fields and orchards for reduced water allocations.
The city of Long Beach in Southern California, the city of Roseville in Northern California and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves 1.3 million people in the SanFrancisco Bay area, have ordered water rationing.

Source: Los Angeles Times
Published June 24, 2008 03:17 PM

In an aggressive move to finish building 670 miles of border fence by the end of this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it will waive federal environmental laws to meet that goal.

The two waivers, which will allow the department to slash through a thicket of environmental and cultural laws, would be the most expansive to date, encompassing land in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas that stretches about 470 miles.

The waivers are highly controversial with environmentalists and border communities, which see them as a federal imposition that could damage the land and disrupts wildlife.

For the full article, please visit ENN at http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37485 

 By Simon Montlake

posted June 23, 2008 at 10:20 am EDT

Source: Christian Science Monitor  

A rebel group in Nigeria has declared a cease-fire in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where crude exports have been curbed by pipeline sabotage and kidnappings of oil workers. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it was prepared to give dialogue a chance, paving the way for possible peace talks in a long-troubled region of Nigeria, the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States.

Last Thursday, MEND mounted an armed attack on an offshore oil rig and kidnapped an American oil worker, the latest in a string of such seizures. Most have later been released unharmed. The group says it's fighting for a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth for neglected delta communities, as well as reparations for pollution caused by oil extraction. Other militant groups operate in the delta, where about 20 million people live.

CNN reports that in a statement issued Sunday, MEND said it would begin its truce at midnight on Tuesday until further notice. It said its decision was in response to an appeal by "Niger Delta elders to give peace and dialogue another chance." Traditional chiefs hold great sway in parts of Nigeria. The strife in the area, which has affected American and other multinational oil companies, has cut Nigeria's crude output and contributed to higher global oil prices, according to analysts.

For the full text of the article, please visit http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0623/p99s01-duts.html \\

New Vision (Kampala)

25 June 2008
Posted to the web 26 June 2008

Gerald Tenywa
Kampala

THE United Nations Development Programme has earmarked $3.8m (sh6b) for funding two initiatives aimed at promoting the sustainable use of land in pastoral areas.

This was stated by Stephen Muwaya, the lead expert on the implementation of the UN Convention to combat desertification.

"It will help us involve farmers and cattle herders to invest in soil conservation, tree planting and bee-keeping," he said.

"The intervention will also help curtail loss of soil fertility and help restore degraded areas."

He said the inaugural project would start in three months and last three years. The project will also ensure that sustainable land management is integrated into the development plans of districts.

Muwaya explained that the second project, funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the UN, would address charcoal burning and land tenure sytems.

For the full article, please visit: http://allafrica.com/stories/200806260114.html \\

ZIGUINCHOR, 25 June 2008 (IRIN) - Civilians are growing increasingly desperate to return to their villages in Casamance, but with violent incidents continuing and the peace process "still at a stalemate" according to peace negotiators, some see little reason for hope.

"The peace process has not progressed in a long time - indeed I'd say now it's going backwards rather than forwards," said Landing Diedhiou, president of local non-governmental organisation APRAN-SDP which has long served as an intermediary between the Senegalese government and rebels with the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC).

The southern region of Casamance has been in a low-level conflict situation for 25 years, making it Africa's longest-running civilian war and leaving upwards of 60,000 people displaced, with up to 10,000 of these refugees in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau.

Rebels with the MFDC initially were fighting for an independent Casamance, though their demands have since shifted. A government-MFDC peace accord has not held, and while violence abated towards the end of 2007 there was a rise in violent attacks, lootings, killings and injuries from landmines in 2008. 

For the full article, please visit http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78944
 

From: , The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Published June 27, 2008 09:19 AM

The world needs a shift as radical as the Industrial Revolution to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 while safeguarding economic growth, the McKinsey Global Institute said on Thursday.

It said in a study that a modern "carbon revolution" to curb global warming would require a tenfold rise by 2050 in the level of economic output for every tonne of greenhouse gases emitted, mainly by burning fossil fuels.

"This is comparable in magnitude to the labour productivity increases of the Industrial Revolution," a 48-page report said. The institute is the economic research arm of consultants McKinsey & Co.

It estimated that the world needed to produce $7,300 of gross domestic product (GDP) for every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted by 2050, up from a carbon productivity rate of $740 now.

"Increasing carbon productivity tenfold in less than 50 years will be one of the greatest tests humankind has ever faced. But both history and economics give us confidence it can be done," it said.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/37502 \\

A warming climate would mean less food and more immigration, which could worsen ethnic strife.

By Arthur Bright

posted June 28, 2008 at 10:25 am EDT

A new National Intelligence Assessment says that food shortages and migration caused by a warming climate could threaten US national security by aggravating ethnic strife around the globe, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Washington Post writes that Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, delivered the report Wednesday to a joint meeting of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Select Committee on Energy Independence. He warned that global warming will reduce food supplies in Africa, which he predicted would in turn spark violence in the region.

"Without food aid, the region will likely face higher levels of instability, particularly violent ethnic clashes over land ownership," probably creating "extensive and novel operational requirements," for the fledgling U.S. Africa Command, according to a National Intelligence Assessment on the security implications of climate change by the National Intelligence Council. ...

Overall, the assessment found that while the United States "is better equipped than most nations to deal with climate change," the impact on other countries has the "potential to seriously affect U.S. national security interests." Humanitarian disasters, economic migration, food and water shortages -- all caused by climate change -- will pressure other countries to respond. Such demands "may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture," the assessment found.

Fingar said Africa is most vulnerable "because of multiple environmental, economic, political and social stresses." While no country will avoid climate change, the report said, "most of the struggling and poor states that will suffer adverse impacts to their potential and economic security," are in the Middle East, central and southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The report is available at website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

For the full article, please visit CSM at http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0628/p99s01-duts.html