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	Human rights norms must give new direction to globalization by Olivier De Schutter United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food   26 January 2012   The UN expert on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, has urged ministers gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum to acknowledge the relationship between globalization and human rights, saying that “globalization should serve human rights and sustainable development, rather than being a process blind to its impacts on the individuals affected.”   “Human rights norms must give new direction to globalization as strategies are being sought to re-launch and expand the global economy,” urged De Schutter.   Referring to the theme of this year’s meeting in Davos, “The Great Transformation,” De Schutter said that the real great transformation must go beyond rectifying the imbalances in developed world debt to GDP ratios.   “We must finally pay attention to the wider imbalances that are the symptoms of unfettered globalization. All around the world people have fallen foul of economic processes that consign whole regions to abandonment or degradation and trap whole population groups in perpetual poverty,” he said.   “Bilateral trade and investment agreements are the gateway through which globalization passes on its way to redefining the economic landscape of a country. These agreements often set in motion a process of restructuring that shakes up the existing foundations of an economy.” These bilateral deals are rapidly increasing, and as many as 6,000 investment agreements are currently in place.   Governments of sovereign States must submit any deal on the table to a ‘human rights-proofing,’ in the form of a human rights impact assessment, in order to discharge their obligations to their citizens,” the independent expert stressed.   “A Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) is not merely a question of gauging environmental sustainability or the impact of a deal on progress towards specific development goals. It is about protecting the inalienable rights of each and every person in the face of changing economic conditions,” De Schutter said.   “States are duty-bound to respect human rights, such as the right to food, and to regulate private actors to ensure that they do not infringe upon such rights. States must, therefore, not allow themselves to be locked into deals that impair their ability to comply with their human rights commitments; nor should they force such deals on other States, whatever concessions the other party appears ready to make, for the sake of securing access to export markets or attracting investors.”   States must ensure that human rights are genuinely protected in the remit of trade and investment agreements, setting out conditions to ensure the integrity and transparency of the agreements, and to ensure that they take into account the situation of the most vulnerable segments of the population. They also must identify how to deal with trade-offs, when certain groups gain from the agreement, while others lose out.   To support such efforts, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food will present to the UN Human Rights Council, at its session in March 2012, a set of guiding principles for conducting human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements.   Carrying out a human rights impact assessment, for instance, should serve to support the assessment by the European Parliament of the Free Trade Agreement that is currently being finalized in negotiations between the Government of India and the European Commission. Some estimates suggest that the tariff liberalization encouraged by the draft agreement in the dairy and poultry sectors could threaten the livelihoods of 14 million very poor households in India, half of them landless, who depend on milk production, and that marginal farmers supplementing their livelihoods by keeping backyard poultry could also be severely affected by the rise in imports of fresh poultry meat from the EU.   Small street vendors -- 10 million people in total -- could be affected by the liberalization of investment in the retail sector, also as a result of the agreement under preparation.   “Such social consequences of trade and investment liberalization have direct impacts on the right to food," De Schutter noted. “The methodology I will propose in the guiding principles is a way to ensure that governments do not disregard their human rights obligations in negotiating such agreements.”   November 2011   Upcoming trade talks must focus on right to adequate food, UN expert stresses.   “The world is in the midst of a food crisis which requires a rapid policy response. But the World Trade Organization agenda has failed to adapt, and developing countries are rightly concerned that their hands will be tied by trade rules.” This is the warning from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, as he issued recommendations to put the human right to adequate food at the top of the WTO agenda, one month before a key summit.   “Food security is the elephant in the room which the WTO must address. Trade did not feed the hungry when food was cheap and abundant, and is even less able to do so now that prices are sky-high. Global food imports shall be worth 1.3 trillion USD in 2011, and the food import bills of the least developed countries have soared by over a third over the last year. The G20 has acknowledged that excessive reliance on food imports has left people in developing countries increasingly vulnerable to price shocks and food shortages,” Mr. De Schutter said, adding: “The WTO must now do the same”.   The future of the Doha Round and the global trading system will be under discussion at the December 15-17 WTO ministerial conference in Geneva. “We must avoid face-saving, short-term solutions aimed at hauling Doha over the line,” the independent expert said. “Instead, we should grasp the opportunity to ask what kind of trade rules will allow us to combat food insecurity and realize the human right to food.”   Higher tariffs, temporary import restrictions, state purchase from small-holders, active marketing boards, safety net insurance schemes, and targeted farm subsidies are increasingly acknowledged as vital measures to rehabilitate local food production capacity in developing countries.   But WTO rules leave little space for developing countries to put these measures in place. “Even if certain policies are not disallowed, they are certainly discouraged by the complexity of the rules and the threat of legal action,” Mr. De Schutter said. “Current efforts to build humanitarian food reserves in Africa must tip-toe around the WTO rulebook. This is the world turned upside down. WTO rules should revolve around the human right to adequate food, not the other way around.”   “It is a problem of principle: the WTO continues to pursue the outdated goal of increasing trade for its own sake rather than encouraging more trade only insofar as it increases human wellbeing. It therefore treats food security policies as an unwelcome deviation from this path. Instead we need an environment that encourages bold policies to improve food security.”   “If the Doha Round is to move forward, it must lift any possible constraints on policies aimed at securing the right to food: such measures should include food stock-holding that aims to reduce price volatility and ensure access to adequate food at the local level.” The Special Rapporteur called for an expert panel to be convened to reconcile food security and trade concerns; for a protocol to be established to monitor the impacts of trade on food prices; and for a general waiver to exempt food security-related measures from the WTO disciplines without penalty. Visit the related web page
	Climate change may shrink wheat crops by AP, Standford Center on Food Security   Jan 2012   More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.   Current projections based on computer models underestimate the extent to which hotter weather in the future will accelerate this process, the researchers warned.   Wheat is harvested in temperate zones on more than 220 million hectares, making it the most widely grown crop on Earth.   In some nations, the grain accounts for up to 50 per cent of calorie intake and 20 per cent of protein nutrition, according to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.   In 2010, drought and wildfires in wheat-exporting Russia pushed world prices of the grain to two-year highs, underscoring the vulnerability of global supplies to weather- and climate-related disruptions.   Greenhouse experiments have shown that unseasonably warm temperatures - especially at the end of the growing season - can cause senescence, the scientific term for accelerated ageing.   Excess heat beyond the plant"s tolerance zone damages photosynthetic cells.   Fluctuations in wheat yields in India have also been attributed by farmers to temperature, most recently a heat wave in 2010 blamed for stunting plant productivity.   To further test these experiments and first-hand observations, a trio of researchers led by David Lobell of Stanford University sifted through nine years of satellite data for the Indo-Ganges Plains in northern India and then used statistical methods to isolate the effects of extreme heat on wheat.   They found that a 2C increase above long-term averages shortened the growing season by a critical nine days, reducing total yield by up to 20 per cent.   "These results imply that warming presents an even greater challenge to wheat than implied by previous modelling studies, and that the effectiveness of adaptations will depend on how well they reduce crop sensitivity to very hot days," the researchers concluded.   The world"s nations, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have said that Earth"s average temperature should not exceed the pre-industrial benchmark by more than 2C if dangerous warming impacts are to be avoided.   On current trends - if there is no major reduction in the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases - the global thermometer could rise by twice as much, according to scientists. "Even changes that were once considered rather extreme scenarios, such as a 4C in global mean temperature, ... could happen as soon as the early 2060s," the study notes.   Wheat also faces another possibly climate-related threat: aggressive new strains of wheat rust disease have decimated up to 40 per cent of harvests in some regions of north Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.   Wheat rust is a fungal disease that attacks the stems, grains and especially the leaves of grains including wheat, barley and rye.   Global warming and increased variability of rainfall have weakened the plants even as these emerging rust strains have adapted to extreme temperatures not seen before, scientists say. Visit the related web page
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