Source material and useful links

13/5/2022: One billion hectares of land, additional to the 6.1 billion hectares of official drylands, are under threat from unsustainable use. These areas are home to a large number of people who rely on the land for their livelihoods, as well as containing significant biodiversity.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

No country can afford to ignore desertification

12/5/2022: The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, whose latest conference is under way in Abidjan, has long been the poor relation of environmental conventions. The issue of land degradation needs far more attention if we are to avoid a hungrier, more unstable world.

Source: The Third Pole

2022 Global report on food crisis

4/5/2022: The 2022 annual report of the Global Network Against Food Crises indicates alarming increases in the number of people in the most severe phases of acute food insecurity, recording unprecedented levels of hunger worldwide.

Source: Global Network Against Food Crises

Mixed reaction to Indonesia’s ban on palm oil exports

25/4/2022: The world’s biggest producer of palm oil will ban exports of the commodity from April 28 to address a domestic cooking oil shortage. Economists have criticized the action, noting that similar export bans of other commodities have aggravated global scarcity and rising prices.

Source: Mongabay

Alarm but little action as East Africa faces unprecedented drought

13/4/2022: Farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa are facing an unprecedented fourth drought – a catastrophe that may tip more than 20 million people into extreme hunger. The current level of donor funding is woeful, well below the same stage in the drought years of 2016 and 2017, when famine was narrowly averted.

Source: The New Humanitarian

Spring Meetings will call for urgent action on food security

13/4/2022: Ahead of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, leaders call on the international community to support vulnerable countries with emergency food supplies and grants to cover urgent financing needs. Sharply higher prices for staples and supply shortages are increasing pressure on households worldwide and pushing millions more into poverty.

Source: World Food Programme

Drought is driving up acute hunger in Somalia

12/4/2022: The latest food security assessment in Somalia indicates that the number of people experiencing the most serious levels of hunger is poised to surpass 38 percent of the country’s population. Aid to keep agriculture-dependent families on their feet is needed at massive scale to stave off catastrophe.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Human rights abuse in China’s fishing fleet revealed

5/4/2022: China’s distant water fleet – by far the world’s largest – is rife with human rights abuses and illegal fishing, according to a new report. China’s state subsidies have allowed the fleet to exploit the waters of developing nations that rely on marine resources for livelihoods and food security.

Source: Environmental Justice Foundation

Kenyan farmers turn to indigenous seed banks

4/4/2022: The Kenyan government has introduced a law restricting the use of traditional seed systems, reliant on open pollination. Instead, the law compels the purchase of costly hybrid seeds, a hardship for small-scale farmers.

Source: Devex

Aboard trawlers fishing illegally in West Africa

31/3/2022: Authorities in West Africa seem unable or unwilling to tackle the mostly Chinese trawlers depleting stocks and undermining the local fishing industry. This undermines food security in a country like Ghana in which fish accounts for 60% of animal protein in diets.

Source: African Arguments

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