"Governments should consider establishing a new, multilateral, United Nations-led Food Systems Stability Board," says Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome and the former CPO of UN Sustainable Development.

Madagascar is on the brink of experiencing the world's first "climate change famine", according to the United Nations, which says tens of thousands of people are already suffering "catastrophic" levels of hunger and food insecurity after four years without rain.

The food price spikes demonstrate how extreme weather, much of it caused by the climate crisis, is having a real-world impact on Americans. And climate scientists warn the fallout will only intensify from here.
Climate change is coming right into our dining room tables, Cynthia Rosenzweig, adjunct senior research scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute, told CNN Business.

A dietary shift from rice to potatoes could “notably reduce” the climate and environmental impacts of staple crop agriculture in China, according to a new study.

The research, published in Nature Food, examines the land use, water use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with growing four staple crops: rice, wheat, maize and potatoes. It finds that a large-scale dietary shift towards potatoes, combined with better growing methods, could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of these staples by up to 25%.

Once-unthinkable water crises are becoming commonplace. New data from WRI’s Aqueduct tools reveal that 17 countries—home to one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year. Forty-four countries, home to one-third of the world, face “high” levels of stress, where on average more than 40% of available supply is withdrawn every year.

Water Stress is not your destiny. Like any challenge, its outlook depends on management. Even countries with relatively high water stress have effectively secured their water supplies through proper management.

In any geography, water stress can be reduced by measures ranging from common sense to cutting-edge. There are countless solutions, but here are three of the most straightforward.

A new report by WWF reveals that 39 million jobs worldwide could be created if governments reallocated just one year’s worth of subsidies that harm biodiversity to a nature-positive stimulus instead. The biggest opportunity comes from the sustainable agriculture / food sector, accounting for nearly 30% of the total number of jobs created.

Interesting...

Sustainable Agriculture Meets Sanitation Technology

"According to research directed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign civil and environmental engineering professor Jeremy Guest, countries could be moving closer to using human waste as fertilizer, closing the loop to more circular, sustainable economies."

Photo by Loren King on Unsplash

"Many rural counties in the United States face the dual challenges of lagging economic growth and increasingly severe effects of climate change.

These challenges have been intensified by economic losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated existing inequalities and highlighted urgent infrastructure needs. At the same time, catastrophic wildfires, record heatwaves, drought and other severe weather events linked to climate change threaten rural communities and livelihoods."

The world faces a growing food systems crisis. The number of people who go to sleep hungry around the world grew by over 100 million in 2020. At the same time, the human quest for food is responsible for about a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions. That quest consumes more than 70% of all freshwater, is a major polluter of water and the leading driver of forest and biodiversity loss.

These crises are the reason for the UN Food Systems Summit, scheduled for September 2021 with a Pre-Summit happening at the end of July. It’s the first-of-its-kind opportunity for nations around the globe to tackle the question: How can we nutritiously feed a growing population amid worsening climate change while holding the line on further conversion of natural ecosystems, meeting the Paris Climate Agreement and lifting millions of farmers out of poverty?