From FAO

Number of hungry people, 1969-2010 Increasing Hunger Source: FAO

Food Security The term ‘Food Security’ is often used to denote a solution for hunger. A definition from the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome suggests that food security is achieved "when all people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life". How and where such food comes from is not embodied in the concept of food security. For example, the food could be purchased from multinationals; could be dumped at cheap rates by countries/companies with excess production thereby ‘marketing out’ or dismantling local production which might be higher priced; or it could come as food aid.

Ecological Footprints

Ecological Debt Do rich nations “owe” poor ones for eco-damage? Considering climate change, ozone depletion, agricultural intensification and expansion, deforestation, over fishing and mangrove conversion, environmental damage caused by rich nations disproportionately harms poor ones— and costs them more than their total foreign debt of $1.8 trillion, concludes a study billed as the first global accounting in dollar terms of nations’ toll on the environment. The calculations were for the 40 year period, 1961-2000 (University of Berkeley, Jan 2008) At least to some extent, “rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor... in effect, there is a debt to the poor,” said Richard B. Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University of California-Berkeley, one of the researchers. “That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor.”

Eco Debt

Food Sovereignty "the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, pastoral, labour, fishing, food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies." (Food Sovereignty: A Right For All, Political Statement of the NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty. Rome, June 2002).