Why access to adequate food is human rights but not charity?

Transparency, accountability, indiscrimination, adjudication, participation

Legal Structure

Right to Food

UDHR Art.25

ICESCR

Art.11

CEDAW

Convention on Child Rights

Voluntary Guidelines

2004

General Comment 12 UNHRC

General Comment

12

1999

Availability

Accessibility Affordable?

Adequacy: nutrition

Sustainability

Covenant ESCR Art. 11State Duty

Right to Food

Respect

fulfillprotect

Challenges to Right to Adequate Food

Economic: Poverty

Social: Inequalities (Gender, ethnic, religious, regional , political, economic)

Environmental: Resource scarcity & degradation, climate change

What relationship?

Right to adequate food

Climate Change

Gender perspective

UNFCCCParticipation into decision making

Timetable of acknowledgment• UNFCCC(1992) ( Art. 2 Food Production) • Beijing Declaration & Platform for Action 1995• Social aspects to climate change 2007

– Human Rights: 2010 COP 16 Cancun– Food security aspects: 2007 ( Post food prices crises)– Gender aspects: 2007

• COP13 Bali: “No climate justice without Gender Justice”

• COP20 Lima: Work Program on Gender• IPCC 2014 ( Human aspect) • COP21 Paris (2015): Preamble

• 2030 SDGs (2015)

Was Paris Revolutionary? Certainly NOT

Vulnerability: Who are the food insecure?

• Hunger: Approximately 1 billion (795 mil.) people is chronically hungry;

• Poverty: 3 Billion people live less than $ 2 a day;

• 1 Billion children in poverty;

• Not eating everyday: In Nigeria, 28 %, India 24%, Peru 14 %

95 % of them live sub-tropic regions, climate insecure places in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Small Island States;

Most of them small holder or landless farmers in remote villages, and indigenous people;(500 million)

They produce %70 of the local food with % 30 of the land.

Why women are special category?

If women access to resources…

Projected impacts of climate change

1°C 2°C 5°C4°C3°C

Sea level rise

threatens major cities

Falling crop yields in many areas, particularly

developing regions

FoodFood

WaterWater

EcosystemsEcosystems

Risk of Abrupt and Risk of Abrupt and

Major Irreversible Major Irreversible

ChangesChanges

Global temperature change (relative to pre-industrial)0°C

Falling yields in many

developed regions

Rising number of species face extinction

Increasing risk of dangerous feedbacks and

abrupt, large-scale shifts in the climate system

Significant decreases in water

availability in many areas, including

Mediterranean and Southern Africa

Small mountain glaciers

disappear – water

supplies threatened in

several areas

Extensive Damage

to Coral Reefs

Extreme Extreme

Weather Weather

EventsEvents

Rising intensity of storms, forest fires, droughts, flooding and heat waves

Possible rising yields in

some high latitude regions

Clim

ate

ch

an

ge

Climate Change & Food Systems:Uneasy Relationship

• Melting water reserves: (mountain glaciers).It shrinks the irrigation and harvest.

• Rising temperature: It may reduce crop yields by 2 % per decade over the next 100 years.

• Flattening yields: (Global grain shortfalls) No more raising cropland (rise, wheat, corn) productivity in China, Japan, Europe, the US all are plateauing. Home of the 40 % of corn

• Extreme-weather events: Floods, droughts• Bio-Fuels (mitigation+ adaptation policies):

Replacing food to ethanol

Who impacts most? Industrial Agriculture

Falling water tables, slowing irrigation:In 20th century, it expanded from 250 m. acres in 1950 to 700 m. in 2000. Between 2000-2010 only 10 % increased.

How Climate Change effects women?

Gender sensitive climate change

policies (Mitigation& Adaptation)

• Human rights and gender perspective to climate change policies: – Accountability, monitoring, – policy coherence, – Participation into decision

making. • Access to:

– Land tenure,– Credit and financial aid, – Technology & Information, – Market.

• Gender disaggregated data & gender perspective research;

• Respect to local knowledge and sustainable food systems;

• Gender sensitive disaster management;

Biofuel?Food v. fuel

Clean Development mechanisms?Commodification of Environment

Hope for the future

Legal: Gender sensitive Human Rights Approach

• Human Rights Impact assessment;

• Indivisibility of human rights;

• Access to Justice and Justiciability;

• Extraterritorial obligations (TNI and IFI)

Social: Global Movement (from food security to food sovereignty and democracy)

Food system change: Agro-ecology