UN Report Warns Ecological Foundations that Support Food Security, Including Biodiversity, Are Being Undermined
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Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundationsthat support food production, including biodiversity will be central ifthe world is to feed seven billion inhabitants, climbing to over nine billionby 2050 argues the study Avoiding Future Famines: Strengthening the EcologicalBasis of Food Security through Sustainable Food System.
Inefficiencies along the food delivery chainfurther complicate the challenge, and the report highlights that an estimatedone-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, amountingto 1.3 billion tonnes per year.
The debate on food security so far has largelyrevolved around availability, access, utilization and stability as thefour pillars of food security, barely touching on the resource base andecosystem services that prop up the whole food system.
The report aims to increase the focus onthese crucial aspects, which are being undermined by overfishing, unsustainablewater use, environmentally degrading agricultural practices and other humanactivities. It also frames the debate in the context of the green economy,calling for food production and consumption practices that ensure productivitywithout undermining ecosystem services.
“The environment has been more of an afterthoughtin the debate about food security,” said UNEP Chief Scientist Joseph Alcamo.“This is the first time that the scientific community has given us a completepicture of how the ecological basis of the food system is not only shakybut being really undermined.”
While pointing out the current challenges,the report also offers a clear way forward to shore up the ecological foundationsand improve food security. It issues recommendations on the redesign ofsustainable agriculture systems, dietary changes and storage systems andnew food standards to reduce waste.
“The era of seemingly ever-lasting productionbased upon maximizing inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, miningsupplies of freshwater and fertile arable land and advancements linkedto mechanization are hitting their limits, if indeed they have not alreadyhit them,” said UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive DirectorAchim Steiner. “The world needs a green revolution but with a capitalG: one that better understands how food is actually grown and producedin terms of the nature-based inputs provided by forests, freshwaters andbiodiversity.”
The report, produced in collaboration withother international organizations including the International Fund forAgricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World ResourcesInstitute (WRI), took a holistic approach to analyzing the food system.Twelve scientists and experts authored the report, covering many differentareas of expertise including food consumption patterns, agricultural production,marine fisheries and inland fisheries.
They found that while agriculture provides90 per cent of the world's total caloric intake, and world fisheries providethe other 10 per cent, these life-supporting industries face many threats,all of which are exacerbated by underlying driving forces such as populationgrowth, income growth and changing lifestyles/diets linked to urbanization.
The report identified the following specificthreats to these systems:
Agriculture
· Competitionfor water. Some experts believe that future food demands need to bemet by additional irrigated land, but there is already strong competitionfrom rapidly growing domestic and industrial water withdrawals.
· Conventionalagricultural practices have a variety of ecosystem impacts, such asa reduction of on-farm biodiversity and attendant increase in pests anddisease, soil loss, eutrophication and contamination of ground water.
· Traditionalagricultural practices, if practiced inappropriately, can lead to severeland degradation.
· Climatechange and its impacts will compound the preceding threats to agricultureby shifting crop-growing zones and bringing an eventual decrease in cropproductivity.
Marine Fisheries
· Overfishingis the foremost force in undermining the ecological basis of fisheries.The FAO estimated that as of 2008, 53 per cent of global marine stocksare fully exploited, 15 per cent are either underexploited (3 per cent)or moderately exploited (12 per cent), while 32 per cent are either overexploited(28 per cent), depleted (3 per cent) or are recovering from depletion (1per cent).
· Lossof coastal habitat such as coral reefs and mangrove forests. At least35 per cent of mangrove forests and 40 per cent of coral reefs have beendestroyed or degraded over the last decades.
· Bottomtrawling, dredging and destructive fishing practices such as the useof dynamite and cyanide, which lead to habitat loss or modification.
· Degradationof coastal water quality. Nutrient runoff causes coastal eutrophication,zones of severely reduced dissolved oxygen and depleted aquatic life. Overfour hundred dead zones have been identified in coastal areas.
· Climatechange will lead to warmer water and a more acidified ocean, with manyimpacts on marine fisheries. The IPCC projects a global loss of 18 percent of the world's coral reefs in the next three decades, shrinking acrucial fish habitat.
Inland Fisheries
· Infrastructuredevelopments such as dam construction in river catchments are destroyingor modifying inland fishery habitats. More than 50 per cent of the world’slarge rivers have been fragmented by dams on their main channel and 59per cent on their tributaries.
· Land-usechange and removal of vegetation cover leads to increased runoff, erosionand sediment pollution of water. Human activities have increased sedimentflow into rivers by about 20 per cent worldwide.
· Agriculturalexpansion disrupts connectivity between floodplains and rivers – floodplainsprovide some of the most productive habitat for inland fisheries.
· Agriculturalrunoff and domestic and industrial wastewater discharges are degradingthe quality of many inland waters. Wastewater loadings to inland watersin Africa may increase by a factor of four to eight between the 1990s and2050.
Biodiversity
The variety and variability of animals, plantsand micro-organisms at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels are necessaryto sustain key functions of the ecosystem. For example, a diverse rangeof soil organisms interact with the roots of plants and trees and ensuresnutrient cycling.
Many food production activities negativelyimpact on this supporting biodiversity, such as:
· Fertilizerrun-off, which causes eutrophication, poses a threat to the diverse lifeof lakes and coastal areas.
· Excessivetillage – tilling to greater depths and more frequent cultivations –has an increased negative impact on all soil organisms, in particular organismsliving in surface areas, such as earthworms.
· Deforestationand pesticide contamination of lands adjacent to farmland degrade "off-farmbiodiversity", impacting pollinators and natural pest control of crops.
· Overfishingmay result in the removal of important components of the ecosystem, suchas algal-feeding fish in coral reef systems, with a consequence of alteredbiodiversity and ecological states that may be impossible to restore.
· Aquacultureactivities are also a source of pollution and biodiversity concerns asthey may lead to the introduction of pathogens, strains and/or speciesthat can alter marine habitats and diversity.
· Thedestructive fishing methods mentioned above can disrupt marine ecosystems,and it may take hundreds of years for vulnerable habitats such as coldwater corals and seamounts to recover from such practices.
While the problems are many and varied, thereport issues a raft of recommendations that can shore up the ecologicalfoundations and create the conditions for sustainable food production.
“The solutions are to be found along thewhole food value chain - from the farms that need to grow food more sustainability,through the large companies that need to ensure that their products arefrom sustainable fisheries and farms, up to the consumer who needs to thinkseriously about switching to a sustainable diet and reduce food wastage,”said Prof. Alcamo.
“Of course, we have to deal first and foremostwith all the socio-economic issues having to do with food security - questionsof access and affordability of food, and so on,” he added. “But ultimatelywe won't have enough food to distribute unless we find out a way to produceit sustainably without destroying its ecological foundation.”
Recommendations
Among the key recommendations for usheringin more sustainable agriculture and fisheries are the following:
· Buildcentralized storage and cooling facilities for small-scale farmers to helpget their produce to market faster, thus avoiding food loss.
· Promotesustainable diets so as to avoid unhealthy eating habits and the associatedhealth effects, and reduce impact on natural resources. In particular,lower consumption of meat and dairy products in developed countries shouldbe promoted.
· Re-considerfood quality standards that lead to unnecessary wastage.
· Designsustainable agriculture, not only on individual farms, but scaling up tothe landscape and national level. Examples include improving soil management,making agricultural water use more efficient and promoting integrated nutrientmanagement.
· Sustainableagriculture can be scaled up by supporting farmers, extending land tenurerights to farmers to encourage stewardship and rewarding farmers and farmingcommunities for ecosystem stewardship.
· Economicstrategies consistent with green economy thinking are also fundamentalto scaling up sustainable agriculture, such as:
o Eliminatingsubsidies that contribute to overfishing (the global fishery sector receivesup to US$25-30 billion) and habitat destruction, and redirecting fundsinto investment for sustainable fishery management and capacity building.
o Providingincentives for sustainable fisheries such as beneficial subsidies for conversionof fishing gears to less-damaging alternatives.
o Introducingfiscal measures such as taxation and levies on harvest volume and increasedfines on illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing.
o Drawsmall shareholders into the global food economy and make them part of thesystem of sustainable practices in agriculture and fisheries.
· Wheretechnically feasible, maximum sustained yields" of marine fisheriesshould be calculated and adhered to with enforcement arrangements and economicincentives. In poorer countries and for small-scale marine fisheries, a"co-management" approach can work in which fishers might agreeto fish size or species limitations, seasonal closures of fisheries.
· Establishnetworks of Aquatic Protected Areas.
· Protectmarine fisheries by reducing land-based pollution sources that lead to"dead zones" in coastal areas.
In summary, the scientists pointed out thatto neglect the ecological aspects of food security would hamper effortsin its other four pillars. While we can’t avoid famine simply by makingthe food system environmentally friendly, neither can we go on producingfood by wearing away its ecological foundation. In the end we’ll find– no foundation, no food, says UNEP Chief Scientist.
Additional information
The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/avoidingfamines/