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	Peoples Nutrition is Not a Business by Right to Food & Nutrition Watch 2015   Commonly referred to as ‘corporate capture’, the increasing control of businesses over food systems and resources, institutions, policy spaces and governance structures, is putting human rights at great risk.   The world is witnessing this reality from the Americas to Asia, particularly since the 2008 world food crisis that shook societies across the globe. It is clear that the present economic model cannot guarantee the conditions for national governments to fulfill their human rights obligations, including the right to adequate food and nutrition.   Corporate-based approaches have led to an artificial separation of nutrition and sustainable food systems, resulting invertical, technical and product-based solutions that ignore social, economic, political, environmental, health and cultural determinants. In a world where hundreds of millions go undernourished while half a billion suffer from obesity, communities worldwide see the prevention of corporate capture as a critical issue.   Peoples’ nutritional sovereignty and core human rights principles are unalienable pillars in tackling inequity, oppression and discrimination and democratizing national and global societies.   The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2015 places nutrition under the spotlight and exposes the impact of business operations on peoples’ livelihoods. The concept of nutrition is assessed from a human rights perspective, going beyond the mere measurement of nutrients in food and human bodies to considering the socio-economic and cultural context in which human beings feed themselves.   “Peoples Nutrition Is Not a Business” explores the competing visions of nutrition, the causes of malnutrition and the policy responses, which often affect women disproportionately, both behind the scenes and in the public sphere.   It uncovers pervasive corporate abuse and impunity, and puts forward recommendations for states to prevent and punish initiatives that hamper the enjoyment of the right to adequate food and nutrition.   “As the authors of this enlightening volume of the Watch make clear, nutritional adequacy and well-being are integral dimensions of the right to adequate food—and must be dealt with as such. Peoples’ nutrition and food sovereignty risk being undermined by predatory agri-business practices that relentlessly pursue maximum profit at all costs.” - Hilal Elver, current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food   http://www.rtfn-watch.org/ Visit the related web page
	Expert taskforce reports on extreme weather and food supplies by Professor Tim Benton Biological Sciences Research Council, UK United Kingdom   August 2015   An independent expert taskforce from the UK and USA has outlined key recommendations to safeguard against threats to food supplies in a new report for the Global Food Security programme. The report highlights an increasing risk to global food supply disruptions and price spikes that could result from extreme weather events – such as heatwaves, droughts and floods – and offers new recommendations for mitigation.   The UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience report, which included physical scientists, social scientists and industry experts, calls for co-ordinated action around the world to mitigate the impacts on people.   Recommendations include; creating international contingency plans, developing better modelling methods to accurately predict the effects of production shocks, and identifying international trading ‘pinch points’ in order to minimise them.   The report identifies a need for agriculture to adapt to a changing climate and become more resilient in the face of extreme weather, while at the same time increasing productivity to meet an increasing global demand for food.   Professor Tim Benton, the Global Food Security programme Champion, said: “It is likely that the effects of climate change will be felt most strongly through the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves and floods and their impact on the production and distribution of food – something we almost take for granted.   “This study presents a plausible scenario for how the food system might be impacted by extreme weather, alongside a series of recommendations that should help policy and business plan for the future. Action is urgently needed to understand risks better, improve the resilience of the global food system to weather-related shocks and to mitigate their impact on people.”   Although further work is needed to reduce uncertainty and better understand the way extreme weather may change, there is good evidence that extreme weather events, from intense storms to droughts and heatwaves, are increasing in frequency and severity.   The report shows that severe ‘production shocks’ caused by extreme weather – whereby global food production is seriously disrupted – of a scale likely to occur once in a century under past conditions, may occur as frequently as once every 30 years as the world’s climate and global food supply systems change in the coming decades.   Food production of the globally most important commodity crops; maize, soybean, wheat and rice, comes from a small number of major producing countries and so extreme weather events in these regions have the largest impact on global food production.   Greater interconnectedness reduces countries’ vulnerability to local production shocks, but may perversely increase vulnerability to large shocks in distant “breadbasket” regions.   This independent report was brought together by the UK’s Global Food Security programme and was jointly commissioned by the UK Science and Innovation Network and Foreign and Commonwealth Office.   http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/news-events/news/2015/150814-pr-taskforce-reports-weather-food-supplies.html http://www.aaas.org/news/threat-weather-driven-food-shock-looms-large-scientists-warn   * As the Director of the Universal Rights Network for the last 18 years, I have repeatedly raised concerns with a number of agencies with regards to water and food security concerns, most particularly after the 2008 food crisis. I remain deeply concerned at the impacts of a changing climate on the well being of many hundreds of millions of people around the world and do not believe disturbing scenarios are in the distant future but could occur in the next 10-20 years. Governments and private sector actors must act now to address these unacceptable risks. - Kim Gleeson
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