Read at : Global Change

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html

Global Deforestation

In this lecture period, we wish to learn:

• What do we mean by “deforestation”?
• How have the old-growth forests been affected by humans?
• What are the consequences of loss of forest habitats and ecosystems?
• What management strategies are in place to preserve, manage and restore forests?

1. Introduction

It is impossible to overstate the importance of humankind’s clearing of the forests. The transformation of forested lands by human actions represents one of the great forces in global environmental change and one of the great drivers of biodiversity loss. The impact of people has been and continues to be profound. Forests are cleared, degraded and fragmented by timber harvest, conversion to agriculture, road-building, human-caused fire, and in myriad other ways. The effort to use and subdue the forest has been a constant theme in the transformation of the earth, in many societies, in many lands, and at most times.  Deforestation has important implications for life on this planet.

Just think, originally, almost half of the United States, three-quarters of Canada, almost all of Europe, the plains of the Levant, and much of the rest of the world were forested. The forests have been mostly removed for fuel, building materials and to clear land for farming. The clearing of the forests has been one of the most historic and prodigious feats of humanity.

About one half of the forests that covered the Earth are gone. Each year, another 16 million hectares disappear. The World Resources Institute estimates that only about 22% of the world’s (old growth) original forest cover remains “intact” - most of this is in three large areas: the Canadian and Alaskan boreal forest, the boreal forest of Russia, and the tropical forest of the northwestern Amazon Basin and the Guyana Shield (Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Columbia, etc.)

Today, forests cover more than one quarter of the world’s total land area, excluding polar regions. Slightly more than 50% of the forests are found in the tropics and the rest are temperate and boreal (coniferous northern forest) zones.

Seven countries (Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) account for more than 60% of the total.

For millennia, humankind has influenced the forests, although much of the impact has been relatively minor. Today, the impact is enormous. Deforestation is expanding and accelerating into the remaining areas of undisturbed forest, and the quality of the remaining forests is declining.  Today we examine global patterns in deforestation, assess the human and ecological costs of forest loss, and discuss some of the steps that can help to rectify this alarming situation.

Read at : allAfrica

http://allafrica.com/stories/200805120718.html

Africa: Increasing Africa’s Food Security

The New Times (Kigali)

11 May 2008

Kelvin Odoobo
Kigali

The most worrying scenario in Africa today, as the hike in food prices ravage the world’s poor, is not in the price of the food, especially the imported kind per say, but is the underlying fact that Africa’s population which is largely agrarian is still a net food importer, even after decades of attempts to kick start some sort of green revolution. This situation is a unique one in the world, and as much as we look to other examples, it demands a unique solution for sub-Saharan Africa. How do we move from a net food importer to a net food exporter like many Asiancountries which a few decades ago were at the same development level like us?

Read at : allAfrica

http://allafrica.com/stories/200805120081.html

Africa: A Green Revolution for Africa - Can It Be Made in Austria?

The East African (Nairobi)

12 May 2008

John Mbaria
Nairobi

A grand initiative to give food production and agricultural development in Africa a shot in the arm got underway last week with experts drawn from all over the world making suggestions on what needs to be given priority to achieve a Green Revolution in Africa. Held in the city of Salzburg in Austria, the conference dubbed Towards a ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa, was part of a series of events meant to help millions of African smallholder farmers liberate themselves from extreme poverty. The participants focused on what African countries and emerging continent-wide initiatives like the Kofi Annan-led Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) need to do to make the “revolution” irreversible.

Read at : NRI (Natural Resources Institute)

http://www.nri.org/projects/streetfoods/index.htm

Street foods and informally vended food in Africa

The dramatic growth of urban populations in developing countries provides both opportunities and risks for resource-poor groups in urban and peri-urban environments. By 2020, the global population is predicted to reach 7.6 billion and 98% of the projected growth will take place in developing countries. In particular, the developing world’s urban populations will double, reaching 3.4 billion. This increase in the urban population poses great challenges to food systems and how they are managed. Rapid urbanization has led urban services to be stretched beyond their limits, resulting in inadequate supplies of potable water, sewage disposal and other necessary services. Food legislation, regulation and enforcement are constantly striving to reflect changing circumstances.

A feature of the urbanization process has been the development of informal food supply systems. Resource-poor groups have developed livelihood strategies with limited capital assets to meet opportunities in urban areas. This is typified by the increase in ready-to-eat food prepared and sold by street food vendors. However, while street food vending can be an effective way of providing low cost nutrition to urban populations, it can also pose risks to health, in particular for the young, the elderly and those with HIV/AIDS.

See also former posting on Europe’s CAP

Read at : Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/04/ccliam104.xml

It is immoral to suggest the CAP is a solution to the food crisis

By Liam Halligan

Every now and then, I read something in a newspaper that is so ridiculous - the product of such sloppy thinking - that I visibly grimace. Regular readers of this column no doubt feel the same way. One such occasion was last week when I saw the words of Michel Barnier, the French farms minister, on the Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP is “a good model,” he said. So good, in fact, that Asia, Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of it.

Barnier is no back-water politician. A former foreign minister, he is close to President Sarkozy. So we can only assume the French government is proposing that the very system of EU trade barriers which has done so much to undermine global food production, contributing mightily to the current relentless price rises, should be adopted by the rest of the world. This isn’t just a bad idea. It’s an idea so self-serving - and dangerous - that political leaders everywhere should publicly rip it to pieces. Barnier - and Sarkozy too - should hang their heads in shame. Why? Well, as everyone knows, we’re in the midst of a nasty food crisis. Having risen steadily for two years, the cost of many basic foodstuffs - including rice, maize and soya - has lately spiked. With indices of real food prices now twice as high as 2005, you have to go back to the 1970s to find anything remotely similar.

Read at : Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jg0eFXwpz-B24Y6CDOT1SCsOc5GQD90K82800

Liberia bans food exports to protect rice supply
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberia banned all food exports Monday, saying profiteers have been taking advantage of its cheap rice prices to truck the grain — already in short supply in Liberia — to neighboring countries to sell at higher prices. It was the latest attempt by some of the region’s poorest countries to fight a looming food crisis sparked by a worldwide surge in prices. The high cost of rice has hit particularly hard in West Africa, where many countries count the grain as a staple even though much of it is imported. In war-recovering Liberia, the price surge has added yet another obstacle to resurrecting a devastated economy. Liberia, which officials say imports about 70 percent of the rice it consumes annually, does not officially export any rice. But dealers from neighboring countries have been buying up sacks of rice on Liberia’s market to resell in countries like Guinea where it is more expensive, Commerce Minister Frances Johnson Morris said.

FoodAfrica

Read at : Food Africa

http://foodafrica.nri.org/

Improving food systems in sub-Saharan Africa: responding to a changing environment

Contact:
FoodAfrica Secretariat
Natural Resources Institute
The University of Greenwich at Medway
Central Avenue
Chatham Maritime
Kent ME4 4TB
United Kingdom

Email: Keith Tomlins
Tel: +44 (0)1634 883360
Fax: +44 (0)1634 883567
Web: www.nri.org

Internet-based forum and International Working Meeting, Yaounde, Cameroon

Food systems in sub-Saharan Africa will have to respond to a changing environment. New challenges are arising that food research and development scientists will have to tackle to ensure food security, economic growth and ‘quality of life’ of the population.

The objectives of FoodAfrica:
• Review the current research and development activities that affect food systems in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Identify gaps in current food and health research strategies;
• Recommend future research strategies; and
• Improve the links between researchers, in particular young scientists, in Africa and Europe.

FoodAfrica Summary

Use the theme bar at the top of this page to read the summaries or click below:
Summary on Food, nutrition and health
Summary on Food Safety
Summary on Urbanisation
Summary on Agro Enterprises and Processing
Summary on Food Security

Several cross-cutting issues arose that were considered important for each of the main themes of FoodAfrica. Cross cutting issues included:
• need for documentation and information;
• adopting new technologies;
• need for education – technology transfer;
• use of market-orientated/end-user participatory approaches; and
• importance of an enabling environment i.e. policies.

Documentation and Information
The lack of information on specific subjects was common across the FoodAfrica themes. This included identifying the gaps information, improving the quality of information and improved documentation. Several of the discussions suggested establishing databases. The topics suggested included, for example:
- A database on food processing technologies. This should include existing African or indigenous techniques as well as potential new ones.
- A human resources database, a web-based database to improve communication between researchers
- An African food consumption patterns database
- A database with laboratory and human capacities for analysis, eg of nutritional value, food safety hazards.
- A food-database with nutritional value and composition
It was recognised that it is important to improve information sharing and networking and to provide support and encourage collaboration among various stakeholders. It was suggested that there was a need for an African Food Journal to make information on African food and African Food systems more widely available.

Read at : FT. com (Financial Times)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/939ee094-148d-11dd-a741-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

The rising cost of food

Europe’s CAP the ‘answer’ to food crisis

By Ben Hall in Paris

Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy as a response to rising demand for food, according to Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister. While critics of the CAP prepare to use surging food prices and threats of shortages to seek freer trade in agriculture, Mr Barnier told the Financial Times that, on the contrary, the developing world should draw inspiration from Europe and form self-sufficient regional agricultural blocs funded with a redirection of development aid. Mr Barnier, a former French foreign minister, ex-EU commissioner and member of the governing centre-right UMP party, said he would not allow Europe’s system of subsidies and barriers to trade to take the blame for “disorder” surrounding the commodities spike in prices and associated unrest in some countries.

The shame of food in Africa

Read at : Nation Media - The East African

http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/Opinion/oped120520084.htm

By OSCAR KIMANUKA
oscar_kim2000@yahoo.co.uk

Food security is about people having economic and physical access to basic food. However, across Africa, there is an outcry over the high prices of foodstuffs, which have soared beyond the reach of the ordinary man. The food crisis has brought unprecedented levels of anxiety and hunger. Food riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Madagascar are a grim harbinger of gloomy days ahead if nothing is done to arrest the situation. What is unfortunate is that the gains that Africa had made in recent years could easily be wiped out by the current food crisis. Some attribute the current problem to the impact of climate change, which has lowered yields in major grain exporting countries such as Vietnam and Australia. Indeed, it is reported that global grain reserves are at their lowest in a decade. This state of affairs has limited the supply to the global market. Add higher fuel prices and transport costs to the equation and it all gets complicated.

Read at : Sign On San Diego

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060514-1251-britain-climatechange.html

Climate change threatens development of billions of world’s poorest people, charity says

LONDON – Millions of people around the world face death and devastation due to floods, famine, drought and violence caused by global warming, according to a report by a charity group. A report to be released Monday by Christian Aid said 162 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to global warming by the end of the century. It urged the British government to lead the world’s richer countries in taking urgent action to curb global warming. Poorer regions, the charity added, should be encouraged to use renewable energy sources.