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	The global food system is dysfunctional both from a health and sustainability perspective by Johan Rockström, Frank Rijsberman EAT Stockholm Food Forum, CGIAR Consortium   Many of the Earth’s ecosystems are nearing critical tipping points of depletion or irreversible change, pushed by high population growth and economic development. By 2050, if current consumption and production patterns remain the same and with a rising population expected to reach 9.6 billion, we will need three planets to sustain our ways of living and consumption. - United Nations Environment Prgramme   Scientists, policymakers and business people must collaborate to improve the health of people and the planet, writes Johan Rockström.   The global food system is dysfunctional both from a health and sustainability perspective. It is time that science, policy and business address these issues collectively.   Last year a report from the World Health Organisation revealed that antibiotic resistance, the result of excessive use primarily in animal feed for livestock, is no longer a prediction for the future, but rather something that is happening right now and can affect "anyone, of any age, in any country". Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill, the report warned.   A few weeks later, scientists in two independent studies published observations indicating that the collapse of part of the Western Antarctic ice sheet may have passed a tipping point of irreversible melting. The latter may put humanity at a trajectory of not one, but two metres sea level rise by the end of this century, threatening not only cities but health and food systems for hundreds of millions of coastal inhabitants.   At the same time, we read almost daily about unhealthy food habits, increasingly obese populations, the rising occurrence of food-related non-communicable diseases and chronic malnourishment in poor nations. For researchers in sustainability, health and food production all these gloomy warnings come as no particular surprise. The problem is that they are mostly dealt with separately. This has to change.   In a world committed to feeding a population of 9 billion people by 2050, we face unprecedented risks and challenges. We are putting extreme pressure on the Earth''s climate, natural resources and ecosystems.   In fact, we have entered what scientists call the Anthropocene, a geological epoch where humans influence every aspect of the planet. There are now so many of us, using so many resources that we are disrupting the whole planet''s nutrient and energy flows leaving almost all the planet''s ecosystems with marks of our presence.   Given our systemic impact on the planet, issues such as health, nutrition and sustainability must now be dealt with together. But where to start? Food production is central to risks related to human health and environmental sustainability. Agriculture alone occupies more than 35% of Earth''s terrestrial surface, the largest use of land on the planet, yet an estimated 33% of global food production is wasted. That is a depressing consequence of how unsustainable our current production and consumption pathways are. The picture becomes even more worrying when considering that globally, one out of four children under the age of five is so malnourished that they will never reach their full physical and cognitive potential.   The good news, however, is that it is increasingly recognised that significant gains in public health cannot be achieved without ensuring sustainable food production. Emerging evidence suggests that agriculture can turn from foe to friend through ecosystem based landscape management practices where land, water, biodiversity and inputs of energy and nutrients are used in sustainable ways. In fact, farming systems can go from carbon source to carbon sink, which in turn builds organic matter in soils, raising productivity and resilience to droughts.   There are win-win strategies at hand if we start producing our food healthier and on existing rather than new land. We also seem to be more inclined to support environmental protection if it helps protect our own health.   A more sustainable food production can also create new business opportunities and remove significant socio-economic burdens. Business shoulders a large portion of responsibility, from sustainable production systems to supply of food stuffs that contribute to healthy and sustainable diets. Non-communicable diseases such as cancers and diabetes are expected to cost the global economy $47tn (£28tn) over the next two decades. The direct and indirect global costs of cardiovascular diseases is estimated to rise from $863bn (£513bn) in 2010 to $1044bn (£620bn) within the next two decades.   Such predictions, along with increased knowledge about the environmental state of our planet, represent real business opportunities and should drive demand for healthier and more sustainable business models and consumption patterns.   But integrating knowledge on food, health and sustainability is admittedly a major scientific endeavour. There are significant knowledge gaps that need to be filled.   Together with the Norwegian Stordalen Foundation, the Stockholm Resilience Centre has initiated a global initiative linking these fields across academia, business and politics. An important part of the initiative is an annual high-level forum, the EAT Stockholm Food Forum.   The forum is among the first to take on the issues of food, health and sustainability as one combined challenge. EAT is created in collaboration with academic partners such as The Lancet, Harvard School of Public Health, Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, Berkeley Food Institute, CGIAR Consortium and the UCL Institute of Global Health. The EAT Food Forum objective is to find guidelines and solutions that are not only scientifically robust, but also politically viable and profitable.   It is time to acknowledge the fact that what we eat determines our health, and also accept that what we eat determines the health of our planet.   * Johan Rockström is the executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and chairman of the EAT Advisory Board.   http://www.eatforum.org/eat-outcome/   June 2015   Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems for 9 Billion People, by Frank Rijsberman. (CEO, CGIAR Consortium)   Last week in Stockholm I joined Prime Ministers, CEOs and top scientists at the EAT Forum to debate how the food we produce and eat can become healthier without wrecking the planet. The EAT Food Forum is a unique initiative focusing on the intertwined agenda of food, health and sustainability through the lenses of government, business and science.   Diet is a pressing health risk around the world. With 2 billion people chronically undernourished and another two billion overweight, 4 out of 7 billion people on the planet are suffering poor health from lack of access to food and poor diets.   As Johan Rockstrom explains, agriculture is also the critical driver threatening to push the world over its planetary boundaries.   Agri-food systems cause 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, have degraded hundreds of millions of hectares of arable land, and are by far the largest user of the world’s fresh water. This is such a critical year to come together on the Sustainable Development Goals; on addressing Climate Change at COP21, in December in Paris, our last chance to avert a climate disaster – that is to stay within a 2 degree world guard rail, and avoid the tremendously dangerous territory of the 4+ degree world scenario.   EAT is an excellent opportunity for CGIAR, as Academic Partner, to expand and deepen our engagement with the health and nutrition communities that are very strongly represented in EAT. Communities for whom healthy food is more an agenda of diet guidelines, food processing, food additives and food waste – rather than an agenda dominated by increased productivity and reduced poverty, as it has been in CGIAR. Bridging this divide could be immensely valuable to both sides, I believe, both for us to bring the perspective of agriculture for development into the food and health debate – and for us to integrate the health and nutrition perspective into our agenda.   I believe the EAT agenda is well focused: healthy diets from sustainable agri-food systems will certainly require bringing together food, health and sustainability, as well as government, business and science.   Can research on agriculture for development, can we in CGIAR, deliver evidence-based solutions to: make agri-food systems carbon neutral; reverse the degraded lands, the dead zones in the oceans and mainatain the ecosystem services of the remaining tropical forests and wetlands; maintain or restore healthy, multi-functional landscapes that produces healthy, accessible and affordable food for all; produce healthier food, a diversified, sustainable diet, to invest in prevention, not health care?   Can governments deliver on: the UN SDGs, and the COP21 climate agreement? On pricing carbon; reducing subsidies promoting unhealthy processed foods or regulating food safety? On introducing healthy and sustainable diet guidelines? At EAT, Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway, argued that sustainable food production is critical to eradicating extreme poverty, thus directly addressing the SDGs.   Can business help: Reverse the shift towards ultra-processed foods that have added sugar to 74% of all food products? Deliver low carbon food or carbon neutral food value chains? Close nutrient cycles and produce fertilizer from waste streams rather than fossil resources? Can big food companies empower smallholder farmers? Can agri-food business be stewards of the landscape with farmers? At EAT, Paul Bulcke, CEO of Nestle, alongside other CEOs of large companies, argued they can be part of the solution, not just the problem.   Can government, business and science collaboratively achieve progress with farmers and other stakeholders? Is progress best achieved voluntarily, through regulation, or through court battles? These are the questions debated at the Forum, and which are central to CGIAR’s new strategy.   In our new strategy we embrace agri-food systems, and our system goals are to eliminate poverty, achieve nutrition and food security for health, and sustainability – an agenda that is very close to that of the EAT Forum. The EAT community, however, is very different. It has pediatricians, nutritionists and chefs. It has health ministers and food companies. Very few people in EAT come from agriculture, let alone agriculture for development. That is at the heart of what EAT has to offer CGIAR, and what the CGIAR has to offer EAT. I see many opportunities for an effective and exciting partnership, and from the positive responses I received from the CGIAR community to earlier EAT updates I shared, I know many of you agree with me.   CGIAR is the only worldwide partnership addressing agricultural research for development, whose work contributes to the global effort to tackle poverty, hunger and major nutrition imbalances, and environmental degradation.   It is carried out by 15 Centers, that are members of the CGIAR Consortium, in close collaboration with hundreds of partners, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, development organizations and the private sector.   The 15 Research Centers generate and disseminate knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development through the CGIAR Research Programs. We have almost 10,000 scientists and staff in 96 countries, unparalleled research infrastructure and dynamic networks across the globe.   http://www.eatforum.org/eat-outcome/ http://www.cgiar.org/consortium-news/world-environment-day-2015/ Visit the related web page
	Zero tolerance for severe forms of labour exploitation needed by EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), agencies European Union   June 2015   Qatar 2022: World Cup stadium workers living in slum conditions behind glitz of oil-rich country, by Greg Wilesmith, Eric Campbell. (Foreign Correspondent)   The corruption scandal engulfing world football''s governing body FIFA has cast a renewed spotlight on the conditions endured by hundreds of thousands of workers labouring on stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.   Qatar — the world''s richest country per capita — is spending $260 billion building the stadiums, public transport systems, freeways, hotels and apartments to stage the tournament.   Yet foreign workers, mostly from South Asia, are being paid as little as $50 a week as the labour to build the infrastructure.   Forced to live in squalid and unsanitary conditions, they work under a controversial system called kafala, which requires them to surrender their passports to their employers.   Sharan Burrow, head of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said the kafala system was tantamount to slavery.   Ms Burrow, Mustafa Qadri — a researcher for Amnesty International — and Jaimie Fuller — the businessman behind the Skins sportswear brand — have all visited Qatar to investigate the working and living conditions of labourers employed on World Cup projects.   Ms Burrow was Foreign Correspondent''s guide on an exclusive tour of the grim underbelly of the Qatar capital Doha.   Arriving at a workers hostel, Ms Burrow said: "You can see that on the outside this looks almost human. And then you walk in here and you see there are about 300 men here in about 20 rooms."   Meals are cooked on filthy gas burners in a room where the floor was caked in grime.   "Imagine 40 or 50 men trying to prepare meals in what are totally unsafe conditions. And it''s filthy, just filthy. The squalor is unbelievable," Ms Burrow said.   The labourers told Ms Burrow they had to work six days a week, eight hours a day, most often with two to four extra hours of obligatory overtime. Most men said they were paid about 600 Qatari riyals ($215) a month plus about 200 riyals for food.   "Six hundred riyals is very, very low, even with food on top of it," Ms Burrows said, adding that the ITUC had asked the Qatar government to set a basic minimum wage.   Ms Burrow left the men with a promise: "We''ll keep coming back to Qatar until they change the laws. Until you have proper rights, you get a fair salary and you can live with dignity."   Over several days, Foreign Correspondent went with Mr Qadri to the industrial areas on the capital''s outskirts. Mr Qadri, like Ms Burrow, stuck to the back streets, concerned about police seeing him talking to workers; he had been detained for six hours on a previous evening.   "Compare it to Doha, which is this amazing big city, and here it feels like you''re in the third world," he said. "In one of the richest countries in the world there''s no proper sewerage system here, or electricity, and often there are issues with very basic accommodation.   "What really strikes me is that these are the workers building stadiums, building hospitals that in the years ahead will be the showcase for developing this country, yet this is the way they''re living."   "What they''re saying mostly is that they''re not paid on time and they''re not paid enough," he said. "And if they''re not paid on time and if they complain, there''s a risk of their employer going to the authorities saying, ''this worker has absconded''.   "They don''t have their ID and they can get kicked out of the country or stuck in detention for a long time."   Mr Qadri felt the football tournament provided unique leverage. "We say that the World Cup is an opportunity for Qatar to really demonstrate that it is genuinely trying to improve conditions for labour," he said.   Ms Burrow said statistics compiled by the Indian and Nepalese governments showed more than 200 citizens from each of their countries had died each year working in Qatar. There are fears many more will die unless there is urgent reform.   http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2015/s4247392.htm http://business-humanrights.org/en/construction-in-qatar-outreach-to-companies-on-working-conditions   June 2015   Zero tolerance for severe forms of labour exploitation needed, FRA study says.   Consumers are often unaware that the food they eat or the clothes they buy may have been produced by people working under conditions of severe labour exploitation. A new report by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) shows that while the EU has legislation prohibiting certain forms of severe labour exploitation, workers moving within or migrating to the EU are at risk of becoming victims.   Despite this, the offence of employing a migrant worker under particularly exploitative working conditions is punishable in some EU Member States with a maximum sentence of less than two years,a penalty that does not reflect the gravity of the fundamental rights violations involved.   "The exploitation of workers who have been forced by their economic and social circumstances to agree to substandard working conditions is unacceptable," said FRA interim Director Constantinos Manolopoulos.   "We are talking here about an endemic problem that we must take urgent action to end. EU Member States need to make a greater effort to promote a climate of zero tolerance for severe forms of labour exploitation and take steps to monitor the situation more effectively and sanction perpetrators."   FRA’s new report is the first of its kind to comprehensively explore all criminal forms of labour exploitation in the EU affecting workers moving within or into the EU. The findings show that criminal labour exploitation is extensive in a number of industries, particularly agriculture, construction, hotel and catering, domestic work, and manufacturing, and also that perpetrators are at little risk of prosecution or of having to compensate victims. This situation does not only harm the victims themselves, but also undermines labour standards more broadly.   While exploited workers are spread across different geographical locations and sectors of the economy, they often have much in common, such as very low wages – sometimes of €1 per hour or less – and working days of 12 hours or more for six or even seven days a week. One important factor contributing to the present situation of widespread impunity is a lack of reporting by victims, who are either prevented from doing so or do not wish to come forward for fear of losing their job.   Among proposals FRA makes in the report to improve the situation are the following:   EU Member States must ensure a comprehensive, effective and well-resourced system of workplace inspections.   To improve the effectiveness of investigations into cases of severe labour exploitation, close links should be established between the police, public prosecutors and monitoring authorities such as labour inspectorates, support services, and employers’ associations, also in cross-border contexts.   Victims’ access to justice needs to be strengthened, e.g. through greater efforts to make victims aware of their rights, both before and after their arrival in the EU country in which they are working.   National authorities need to establish trust and provide a sense of safety, security and protection to encourage exploited workers to report their experiences, while labour inspectorates and police should cooperate more closely to ensure they identify cases of severe labour exploitation wherever they occur.   Both private companies and national authorities are called on to ensure they avoid supporting labour exploitation by contracting or subcontracting companies involved in the exploitation of workers.   Consumers must be informed of the risks that a product or service offered was created involving severe labour exploitation by such means as a system of certification and branding of products of companies that respect workers’ rights.   http://fra.europa.eu/en/press-release/2015/zero-tolerance-severe-forms-labour-exploitation-needed-fra-study-says
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