Natalie Brook is a Climate Change Campaigner for Oxfam.
Those of us calling for world leaders to take climate change seriously were heartened to hear that the Canadian government bowed to pressure from environmentalists, Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and more progressive countries early last week to include climate change on the G8 and G20 agendas .
At a street stunt in Toronto, Oxfam campaigners call on G8 leaders to"Invest in the future. Now." Photo credit: Oxfam Canada.
Tipape Cenoble has earned a profit from his fields for the last two years. Photo by Ami Vitale/Oxfam America
Author and activist Michael Pollan says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
In my life of plenty, I think about that advice a lot.
But I often wonder how such admonitions to an over-fed nation must play in other parts of the world. The thought makes me cringe. In the poorest countries, people don’t worry about eating too much or too much of the wrong thing. They worry about eating at all.
Families in the Honduran community of Copan used to survive on two or three small meals a day, but with support from Oxfam and a local partner organization, they now grow a wide variety of nutritious vegetables. Photo: Gilvan Barreto / Oxfam
Gawain Kripke is Oxfam America’s policy director focusing on hunger and food issues. At the G8 summit he’s lobbying government officials and talking to journalists to keep the pressure for action.
Newsflash: G8 and other countries commit to $20 billion over three years for agriculture development. This is $5 billion more than expected and came from “arm twisting” in the last few hours.
We still don’t have details, but this probably means more money – new money – for agriculture development.
This is a victory for President Obama who said, in his press conference today, “There’s no reason Africa can’t feed itself. They have lots of arable land.”
Although this is still a fraction of the annual additional $25 billion to $40 billion needed, it’s a down payment on the goal of ending hunger.
Gawain Kripke is Oxfam America’s policy director focusing on hunger and food issues. At the G8 summit he’s lobbying government officials and talking to journalists to keep the pressure on for action.
Intrigue is building on what, exactly, will be promised on hunger at the G8 summit. For weeks the rumors have floated that President Obama wanted to make a major announcement at the G8 on the issue of hunger. His staff said that he wanted to focus on aid to small farmers to help them grow their way out of poverty and feed themselves. It’s exciting and very welcome coming on the news that the world faces a sad milestone in 2009: This year more than 1 billion people will face hunger. That’s more hungry people than ever in human history. Read the rest of this entry »
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