20110601 oxfam growing a better future 010611 summ en

8/3/2019 20110601 Oxfam Growing a Better Future 010611 Summ En

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www.oxfam.org/grow

Growing aBetter Future

SUMMARY



Oxfam was created in 1942 in response to a food crisis.Seventy years on, the world faces another – this timeone that threatens us all. The emergency of 1942 wascaused by the Second World War; today’s crisis is theproduct of a grotesque global injustice. Nearly onebillion people face hunger every day, while theunsustainable patterns of consumption and productionfrom which they are excluded have placed us all on a

collision course with our planet’s ecological limits.

The warning signs are clear. We have entered an ageof crisis: of food price spikes and oil price hikes; ofscrambles for land and water; of creeping, insidiousclimate change. The 2008 spike in food prices pushedsome 100 million people into poverty. Price rises so farin 2011 have done the same to 44 million more.1 Thesestatistics mask millions of individual stories of sufferingand heartbreak as families struggle to cope withdeepening poverty. Households falling into debt.Mothers going without meals and healthcare.Elderly people abandoned.

Hunger is the bellwether of a deeper malaise. Despitehuge increases in productivity and incomes over recentdecades, global hunger is on the rise. Despite anoverwhelming scientic consensus on climate changeand a robust economic basis for swift and decisiveaction, we continue pumping out more and moregreenhouse gases. Despite advances in women’srights and widespread acknowledgement of their keyrole in ensuring that families eat, women are routinelydenied resources, their talents and leadershipdisallowed.

Paralysis is imposed upon us by a powerful minorityof vested interests that prot from the status quo.Self-serving elites who amass wealth at the expense of impoverished rural populations. Bloated biofuel lobbies,hooked on subsidies that divert food from mouths tocars. Dirty industries that block action on emissions.Shipping companies that overcharge for freightingemergency food aid, robbing both taxpayers and thevery people for whom the aid is intended. Enormousagribusiness companies hidden from public view thatfunction as global oligopolies, governing value chains,ruling markets, accountable to no one.

1 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-16/zoellick-says-world-economy-one-shock-away-from-food-crisis-1-.html

This is a summary of the Oxfamreport ‘Growing a Better Future:Food justice in a resource-constrained world’, which outlines thebasis for Oxfam’s Grow campaign.The report and supporting research,

case studies, and information aboutthe Grow campaign are available atwww.oxfam.org/grow

Governments have largely failed to resist these interests – to prevent the capture of policy making, to stop theplunder of public resources, or to regulate powerfulcompanies. And governments have neglected the needsof poor and vulnerable populations, especially those ofwomen, demonstrating an alarming lack of will to addressthe drivers of hunger, inequality and ecological collapse.

We now risk a wholesale reversal in human development.New research commissioned by Oxfam for the report

‘Growing a Better Future: Food justice in a resource-constrained world’ forecasts real price rises for staplegrains in the range of 120 to 180 per cent within the nexttwo decades, as resource pressures mount and climatechange takes hold.

The CGIAR – world-leading group of agricultural research centres for developingcountries – has an annual budget of $500m,less than half the $1.2bn spent on R&Dby the multinational company Monsanto.

Worldwide support for biofuels costs$20bn a year.

It is estimated that three agribusiness rms – Cargill, Bunge and ADM – control nearly90% of grain trading between them.

Only 40 cents of every US taxpayer dollar spent on food aid actually goes to buyingfood. Procuring freighting of US food aidon the open market could help feed anadditional 3.2 million people in emergencies.

Between 1983 and 2006, the share of agriculture in aid fell from 20.4% to 3.7%.During this time rich country governments’support to their own agricultural sectorsspiraled to over $250bn a year – 79 timestheir agricultural aid.

Worldwide subsidies forrenewable energy are$57bn compared with

$312bn for fossil fuels.



Oxfam’s Grow Campaign has a simple message: anotherfuture is possible, and we can build it together. Over thecoming years, decisive action across the globe couldenable hundreds of millions more people to feed their

families and prevent catastrophic climate change fromdestroying their (and our) futures. But only if wecollectively stop our sleepwalk towards ecologicaldisaster. This campaign is Oxfam’s wakeup call.

We must bring hope and opportunity to the nearly onebillion people living in hunger today. Simultaneously,we must confront the looming disaster threatened byspiraling demand for food and an impending collisionbetween the ecological systems that sustain life and theeconomic systems that sustain wealth. And we mustremake an international regime that is unable to protectthe most vulnerable. There are three challenges we

must meet.

The sustainable production challenge

The food system must be transformed. By 2050, therewill be 9 billion people on the planet and demand for food

will have increased by 70 per cent. This demand must bemet despite atlining yields, increasing water scarcity,and growing competition over land. And agriculture mustrapidly adapt to a changing climate and slash itscarbon footprint.

The amount of arable land per head hasalmost halved since 1960.

Agriculture accounts for up to 30% of

worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Figure 1: Real food price changes predicted over the next 20 years

I n c r e a s e i n w o r l d m a r k e t e x p o r t p r i c e s r e l a t i v e t o 2 0 1 0 ( % )

Other processedfood

Processed meatproducts

Processed rice Livestock Wheat Other crops Paddy rice Maize

140

160

180

2030 climate change2030 baseline

Source: D. Willenbockel (2011) ‘Exploring Food Price Scenarios Towards 2030’, Oxfam and IDS

Demand for water willincrease by 30%by 2030.



The equity challenge

We must also address the appalling inequities whichplague the food system from farm to fork. We producemore food than we need. In the rich world, we throwmuch of it away. In the developing world, nearly onebillion of us go without.

Hunger and poverty are concentrated in rural areas.Unlocking the potential of smallholder agriculture – thebackbone of the food system – represents our singlebiggest opportunity to increase food production, boostfood security, and reduce vulnerability. Yet women andmen food producers are routinely deprived of theresources they need to thrive: of water, technology,investment and credit, among others. Huge swathes ofland in Africa and elsewhere are being handed over toinvestors at rock bottom prices, in deals that offer little tolocal communities.

Consumers in rich countries may waste asmuch as a quarter of the food they buy.

In more than half of industrialized countries,50% or more of the population is overweight.

80% of recent land investments remainundeveloped.

Providing women farmers with the sameaccess to resources as men could increasetheir yields by 20–30%.

The resilience challenge

The food system is increasingly fragile. Oil price shocksare transmitted to food prices through fertilizer andtransport costs. Weather events are disrupting supply.Speculative capital is blowing bubbles in commoditymarkets. Perhaps most shocking is the role ofgovernments in triggering, rather than averting, food

price crises. Policies of narrow self-interest and zero-sumcompetition such as grain-based biofuel programmesand export bans make a bad situation much, much worse.

We must dramatically scale up our ability to collectivelymanage risks and build resilience to shocks and volatility.But the institutions needed to protect the most vulnerableare often inadequate or missing.

40% of the US corn crop ends up in gastanks instead of stomachs.

4 people in every 5 lack access to socialprotection of any kind.

In 2010, only 63%of UN emergencyappeals were funded.



A new prosperityThankfully, the vast transformation needed is alreadyunderway – led by individuals, organizations andmovements who have taken the future into their ownhands. In Brazil, 20 years of activism from civil society

and social movements challenged elites, expandedpolitical horizons, and helped to elect politicians withvision and moral purpose. The result was a raft of policiesto tackle hunger that delivered remarkable results.Viet Nam has achieved comparable results through landreform and an ambitious programme of investment insmallholder agriculture. In Canada, a concerted publiccampaign including Oxfam succeeded in untying foodaid. Consumers increasingly demand products that aresourced ethically and sustainably. Campaigns on climatechange in developed and developing countries havehelped galvanize politicians and responsible businesses,upping the pressure on companies that would block

ambitious action.

These victories, and others like them, point the way to anew prosperity beyond the age of crisis. An era in whichwe properly value the environment and share the world’sresources fairly. Where governments resist vestedinterests and instead direct public resources towardpublic goods, regulating markets in the interests of themany. Where businesses cannot prot from plunderingour resource base, but instead nd healthy returns fromdeveloping solutions to the challenges we face. Whereeveryone has access to the resources they need to feedthemselves and their families.

The scale of the challenge is great. A step change isneeded if we are to build the new prosperity before theplanet is wrecked beyond repair. We need three big shifts:in dealing with crises, in remaking agriculture, and incoming to terms with our environment.

Viet Nam achieved the rst MillenniumGoal – to halve hunger – ve years aheadof schedule.

In 2009 global investments in renewablesovertook fossil fuel spending for the rst time.

In 2009 Apple and Nike publicly left the USChamber of Commerce in protest against itsrefusal to back US climate legislation.

Build a new global governanceto avert food crises

Governments’ top priority must be to tackle hunger andreduce vulnerability. They must build resilience bycreating jobs, adapting to climate change, investing indisaster risk reduction, and extending social protection.We must manage trade to manage risk by building a

system of food reserves; increasing transparency incommodities markets; setting rules on export restrictions;and nally putting an end to trade-distorting agriculturalsubsidies. Financial speculation must be regulated, andsupport dismantled for biofuels that displace food.

And we must reform the international institutions we needto respond to shocks. Food aid must be untied, and theinternational community must move to a system of 100per cent funding for emergencies via upfront ‘assessedcontributions’. A new global climate fund to nanceadaptation in developing countries must be establishedand funded.

Build a new agricultural future

The vast imbalance in public investment in agriculturemust be righted, redirecting the billions now beingploughed into unsustainable industrial farming in richcountries towards meeting the needs of small-scale foodproducers in developing countries. For that is where themajor gains in productivity, sustainable intensication,poverty reduction, and resilience can be achieved. Donorsand international organizations must continue to raisespending on agriculture within overall developmentassistance and invest in agricultural adaptation. New

global regulations are needed to govern investment inland to ensure it delivers social and environmental returns.And national governments must provide public support forsmall-scale sustainable agriculture, while carefullyregulating private investment in land and water to ensuresecure access for women and men living in poverty.

Companies too must embrace the opportunities offeredby smallholder agriculture: to diversify and secure supply;to meet growing demand from consumers concernedwith sustainable development; to develop newtechnologies. And active states must intervene wherecompanies fear to tread: to direct R&D towards the righttechnologies for poor women and men producers; to helpthem sell their produce on decent terms; to support themwith training; and to provide access to nance.

Hunger fell by one-thirdin Brazil between 2000and 2007.



How we get thereThe scale of the challenge is unprecedented, but so is theprize: a sustainable future in which everyone has enoughto eat. Reaching the new prosperity in time will take allthe energy, ingenuity and political will that humankind

can muster. To build new governance institutions, investin smallholder agriculture and reduce global greenhousegas emissions, we must rst overcome the vestedinterests that have paralysed the political processuntil now.

The new prosperity will have to be built simultaneouslyfrom the top down and from the bottom up. From the top,ambitious leaders will drive success. Political leaders willresist special interests, inspire their citizens and mobilisesupport across government to regulate, correct, protectand invest in the interests of the many. Corporate leaderswill break ranks with damaging industry lobbies,

strengthening the will of politicians and governmentsgenuinely committed to change. They will embraceprogressive regulation rather than seek to undermine it orwater it down. They will cease to impose their social andenvironmental costs on others and will ourish by ndingways to make the most of scarce resources, respondingto consumer demands and public pressure.

From the bottom, networks of citizens, consumers,producers, communities, social movements and civilsociety organizations will demand change fromgovernments and companies – shifting political andbusiness incentives through the decisions they take and

the choices they make. Whether through leading low-carbon lifestyles, buying Fair Trade goods, or demandingchange in the streets or through the ballot box. Oxfam’scampaign will work with these groups, and many otherslike them, to amass irresistible momentum for change.Together we will challenge the current order and set apath towards a new prosperity.

www.oxfam.org/grow

© Oxfam International June 2011

Published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under

ISBN 978-1-84814-856-7 in June 2011. Oxfam GB, Oxfam House,

John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK. Oxfam GB isregistered as a charity in England and Wales (no. 202918) and in

Scotland (SCO 039042) and is a member of Oxfam International.

Action for 2011

There is no time to waste, and 2011 provides crucial

opportunities.When the G20 leaders meet in November, they willdecide whether and how to manage food prices andgovern markets in order to protect against future foodcrises. They must increase transparency incommodities and futures markets, scale up foodreserves, regulate nancial speculators, and agreeinnovative market-based mechanisms to raise climatenance, such as a nancial transactions tax or levieson international aviation and shipping fuels.

When the world’s climate negotiators reconvene inDurban at the end of 2011, they must get the globalclimate fund that was agreed in 2010 up and running,put women on its board, and ensure it has enoughcash to spend, either from new forms of nance or as direct contributions from governments.

When the Committee on World Food Security meetsin October, it must agree to regulate large-scale landacquisitions to ensure that people living in povertyhave secure access to natural resources.

As donor governments renegotiate the Food AidConvention, they must agree to untie food aid, prisingit from the clutches of vested interests and at a stroke

increasing its efciency, timeliness, effectivenessand reach.

And there are actions that all governments must taketoday to build resilience at home and beginthe transition towards a new agricultural future.In particular, governments should reduce hunger byproviding women with equal access to resources, bypromoting sustainable agricultural development, jobcreation and inclusive growth, and by tacklingvulnerability via climate adaptation, social protectionand disaster risk reduction.

Build a new ecological future

The race to a sustainable future is on, and there will behuge opportunities for those who get there rst. Nationalgovernments must intervene to speed up and direct thetransition. They must invest in public goods such as R&Din clean energy. They must create incentives throughsubsidies and tax breaks to guide private capital to where

it is needed. They must tax undesirables – such asgreenhouse gas emissions – to direct economic activitytowards desirable alternatives. And they must regulate tostop companies polluting and to encourage them toprovide goods and services they otherwise would not.

Ultimately our success or failure in building a newecological future will depend on political leaders agreeinga fair and ambitious global deal on climate change.

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