Global Challenges: a selection Duncan Green, Oxfam DEA 2 November 2010

Hunger and the global food price crisis The widely known story of the global food price crisis and hunger is that hunger was gradually declining for decades, then a ‘perfect storm’ of coinciding events in 2008 pushed global hunger over 1 billion people for the first time ever. Source: WFP

From an Age of Development To an Age of Scarcity ? The bigger picture is that we may be moving for a ‘golden era’ of development (in which there was enough food for all, and the challenge of food security was primarily about ensuring everyone’s access to it) to an age of scarcity, with the added major challenge of ensuring that we can produce enough food for all in a just and sustainable way – and that calls for a transformation of agriculture. The scale of the challenge is summed up in the next slide.

By 2030 – less than a generation away – the growth in population and in incomes will mean 50% higher demand for food 30% higher demand for water (for household, industrial and agricultural use) 50% higher demand for energy. The great challenge of our time is how the world can provide all these in the context of climate change, and in a way that it just. It calls for a new kind of agriculture, as well as a new low carbon approach to development. At the moment, the debate around this challenge is being led by scientists, with technology-oriented solutions, and the scale of the challenge is being used by some to assert that there is no alternative but to use GM crops and nanotech solutions. Oxfam’s role in this debate is to bring the issues of justice and equity to the table – just as we have worked to change the climate change debate from being about polar bears and ice caps to being about justice for poor communities hit by floods and drought.

Climate change requires rapid action on emissions © Crown copyright Met Office

3 options (and only three) Step change in technology (20 Manhattan projects) Accept less global growth Runaway climate change

Financial chaos: what 5,000 kwacha buys you in Zambia

So what needs to change? Tackle hunger today and hunger tomorrow Rein in finance sector Live within planetary boundaries Tackle inequality within and between countries

How do we do that? Power and politics > Policy Change what we measure (growth v prosperity) Active Citizens Effective States One planet living (politics and environment)

Thankyou! And for more information… From Poverty to Power blog on oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/