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	How can we make food security fairer and more sustainable? by Camilla Toulmin International Institute for Environment and Development   Two years’ work has culminated in the launch of the UK government’s Foresight report on the Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability.   I was part of a group of ‘lead experts’, chaired by zoologist Charles Godfray, that was formed to advise the Foresight team throughout.   The project asked the question: How can the world feed itself in 2050 sustainably and equitably? It commissioned more than 100 peer-reviewed papers - from analyses of population projections to economic models of future food prices to regional studies of climate impacts.   Our task as the lead expert group has been to sift through this mass of documents and derive clear messages about what needs to be done, by whom, when and how.   One thing is clear - feeding the world sustainably and more fairly requires us to overcome several substantial hurdles. The world’s population is expected to grow by nearly a third by 2050, when there will be nine billion people.   Economies are also growing, and as incomes rise, diets will likely shift towards more energy-intensive foods, especially meat and dairy products. And climate change will impact rainfall patterns and temperatures, bringing harsher growing conditions to many parts of the tropics while more northerly areas will see longer growing seasons.   Agriculture and the broader food system produce a lot of greenhouse gases - nitrous oxide from chemical fertilisers, methane from livestock and rice paddies, and carbon dioxide from land clearance and ploughing.   We urgently need to find ways of reducing these emissions; for example, by better managing soil organic matter, minimising soil disturbance, and bringing nitrogen-fixing crops back into farming cycles.   At the same time, we must protect forests and watersheds from agricultural expansion, so that we can reap the valuable ‘ecosystem services’ they provide, such as sequestering carbon, harbouring biodiversity and regulating water supplies.   In essence, we need to grow more food, on the same land, with fewer impacts. It’s not an impossible task - but we need to combine knowledge systems, policy, science and market forces to do it.   We must both boost yields in the many areas where performance still lags behind potential, and invest in new science to address the ever-changing constraints in agriculture.   Evidence shows that it takes an awfully long time for innovation systems to deliver new ways of farming. Two decades or more can pass before research on new crop varieties finds its way onto farmers’ fields.   If we want to engineer major changes in both seeds and breeds, as well as agronomy and soil-water management, we must start now, building bridges between farmers and research systems.   The Foresight report clearly shows that today’s food system is failing. Nearly one billion people in the world are ‘hungry’, another billion are poorly nourished and a further billion are overfed.   But we don’t have to live in a world where more than a quarter of people have inadequate food supplies. These are political choices - governments can choose to address the needs of the poor, or ignore them.   Politics doesn’t usually work in favour of poor people, but some leaders have shown that it can. Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, made poverty reduction and feeding the poor one of his top priorities. We need to make global food security fairer and more sustainable.   * Camilla Toulmin is director of the International Institute for Environment and Development.
	Privatisation is a new kind of apartheid by Claire Provost, Rick Rowden Poverty Matters / Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation   Nov. 2010   Is the stage being set for new water wars in Africa, by Claire Provost.   The African Development Bank insists that the only way to tackle the water and sanitation crisis on the continent is through privatisation and making people pay. But putting a price on water has a contentious history in Africa.   With diarrhoea the biggest killer of children in Africa, the urgency of the water and sanitation crisis on the continent is hard to question. But while   some NGOs are calling on African governments to make water and sanitation integral parts of their national public health strategies, and fund them accordingly, the African Development Bank (AfDB) announced this week that closing the continent''s multi-billion dollar infrastructure gap requires new investors and paying customers.   Leading a special session on "financing instruments in water for growth and development" at this year''s Africa Water Week summit, the bank said that an estimated annual $45bn-$60bn (£28bn-38bn) is needed to improve Africa''s water infrastructure – of which $11bn (£7bn) is flagged for the continent''s drinking-water supply and sanitation needs.   "Financing from official development assistance [ODA] and national budgets is clearly not sufficient to close the financing gap in the water and sanitation sector," said the bank, which is urging governments and water sector professionals to make their countries and their programmes more attractive to other investors.   In the run up to the UN summit on the millennium development goals in New York in September, the UN estimated that the total amount of overseas aid to developing countries will fall to around $108bn (£68.5bn) in 2010.   What''s more, the optimism that once accompanied ODA (the official term for aid) has faded fast in the years since the 2005 Gleneagles summit, when G8 members projected that aid to Africa would double by 2010.   "Africa will receive only about $11bn out of the $25bn increase envisaged at Gleneagles," said the UN.   To fill the shortfall, the AfDB believes money can be tapped from greater user contributions, savings from utility reforms, private sector investments and contributions from private foundations.   They also point to micro-finance as a possible mechanism for funding water services at a local level, along with climate adaptation funds.   Commercial finance, says the bank, can help to fill the gap between demand and the resources available from government budgets and aid, and is "perhaps the largest untapped source of finance for water".   Meeting with African governments, civil society organisations and representatives from the private sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week, the bank released two new reports on water and sanitation on the continent.   The first – a hefty, two-volume, 178-page report on "Water sector governance in Africa" – signals weak governance as a main reason for poor water and sanitation services on the continent.   Its second report focuses on how to finance the water sector in both urban and rural areas, promoting user fees as the primary mechanism for recovering costs.   "Over 25 years have passed since the water decade and the truth remains that adequate cost recovery is still one of the major obstacles to maintenance and expansion of drinking water supply in developing countries," says the bank, adding that charging for water was the only way to make infrastructure and services financially sustainable.   Human right issue   In July this year, the UN general assembly declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a human right.   But the bank argues that it is a "misconception that rights entitle people to free water; instead, water and sanitation should be clean, accessible and affordable for all. People are expected to contribute financially or otherwise to the extent that they can do so".   The issue is getting the prices right, not about whether or not a price should be charged, it seems. Instead of subsidising water for the poor, service providers should offer cheaper options, such as public toilets and bathing houses.   The bank states that subsidising water supplies and services distorts a customer''s understanding of the value of water and leads to waste.   But placing a price on water has a contentious history in Africa, as it has across the developing world.   Ten years ago, the World Bank-sponsored privatisation of the municipal water supply in Cochabamba, Bolivia''s third largest city, prompted a series of mass demonstrations, later labelled the "Cochabamba water wars". After months of protests, the government declared a "state of siege" before promising the repeal of water privatisation legislation, while the then World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, insisted that the public subsidy of water services only leads to the waste of resources.   In her book, Earth Democracy, Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva argues that it is a myth that people only value water once it is priced on the market.   "Women who walk 10 miles for water do not waste a drop, even though their water is not provided through market transactions."   Meanwhile, South Africa''s experience with the privatisation of water services sparked widespread protests over the human cost of placing a price on clean water.   In 2000, a cholera epidemic broke out in South Africa''s KwaZulu-Natal province, infecting some 120,000 people and claiming the lives of 265. Local authorities in the province had previously set up a system of prepaid water meters to collect user fees. But the institution of the meters and the fees meant that many went elsewhere in search of water, with tragic results.   "Those who cannot afford to pay for water in advance from communal meters or have been cut off from services for not paying rising water bills are forced to seek sources in polluted puddles, rivers and canals that carry disease," reported the New York Times in 2003.   "Privatisation is a new kind of apartheid," added Richard Maholo, leader of the South African Crisis Water Committee.   "Apartheid separated whites from blacks. Privatisation separates the rich from the poor."   According to WaterAid, 80% of African countries are off-track for the MDG target on sanitation. Half of the African continent is set to miss the target on drinking water. And every day 2,000 African children die from diarrhoea. It would be hard to deny that something needs to be done.   However, there will inevitably be concerns that the AfDB is using the urgency of the water and sanitation crisis in Africa to push through an agenda for the commodification of water and the privatisation of services. Is the stage being set for new water wars in Africa?   Nov 2010   IMF & World Bank loan conditions still a cause for ongoing concern, argues Rick Rowden.   If the Washington consensus policies are truly dead, then in addition to calling for more overseas aid to meet the millennium development goals (MDGs), readers of this blog should also tell their governments to stop having their representatives on the executive boards of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank regularly approve loans with conditions that keep the consensus alive.   Over the last few years, we have heard various claims about the state of Washington consensus policies (fiscal discipline, cutting tax rates, interest rate liberalisation, competitive exchange rates, trade liberalisation, liberalisation of capital flows, privatisation and deregulation of prices and markets). We''ve been told that the policies have been "damaged", but are still essentially sound, and discredited, and that now we are living in post-Washington consensus world. Others, however, have rightly questioned if a real break with the past is truly at hand.   The best way to know is to actually look at recent IMF and World Bank loans to see what we find. Sadly, as Degol Hailu, writing for the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, concludes: "Washington consensus polices and the associated conditionalities are alive and well."   This is also the opinion of the many who monitor the international financial institutions and have examined recent loan conditions. Although the IMF supported more expansionary policies - for the rich countries - during the recent economic crisis, several studies, including those by Unicef, UNCTAD, Third World Network, CEPR and Eurodad, have shown that, in fact, the IMF is still prescribing its traditional, pro-cyclical policies that constrain public spending and investment in many developing countries. Although some recent IMF programmes did allow for marginally higher deficits during the height of the crisis, the relaxation of deficit targets (fiscal policy) and interest rates (monetary policy) has not only been marginal in size, but it has also proved to be short lived. The IMF has already begun programming tighter fiscal policies starting in 2010, despite lacking any systematic justification for such restrictive policies in the peer-reviewed economics literature.   One notable exception, however, where the IMF does deserve credit, is regarding capital controls on inflows, where it seems to have modified its long-standing opposition. But apart from this, the Washington consensus lives on.   According to a Development Finance International survey, produced for the UK''s Department for International Development earlier this year, leading policymakers in developing countries are still critical of the World Bank''s "excessive ''one size fits all'' conditionalities".   Despite recent high-profile claims by the World Bank that it has reduced the number of conditions on its loans, a number of studies have shown that the reduction is not as significant as the bank claims, particularly on sensitive issues such as trade liberalisation, and that new, non-transparent forms of conditionality are being applied, contrary to responsible financing principles. The World Bank''s country policy and institutional assessments, which largely determine allocations of credits and grants to countries, also continue to be heavily criticised for not effectively reflecting actual country ownership.   For example, three World Bank loans to Ghana in 2009 had 57 conditions attached, including both binding conditions and benchmarks, in which 11 applied to the energy and extractive sectors, 10 focused on fiscal policy demanding deficit reduction, and nine on public sector reform, calling for a hiring freeze in the public sector and for the divestiture and commercialisation of state owned enterprises. A 2010 IMF loan for Haiti required central bank independence, and a 2008 IMF loan for the Kyrgyz Republic imposed a reduction of inflation to single digits, a reduction of debt levels, a partial reversal of planned reduction in VAT, which had been conceded in the wake of the devastating food and fuel crisis, as well called for increasing energy utility tariffs.   Whether calling for further opening up for foreign direct investment (FDI), trade liberalisation, or promoting foreign investor land-grabs of the best agricultural land, the World Bank is still at it today. When it comes to pushing large dams and water privatisation in places such as Peru, the Philippines, India or eastern Europe, the bank has not at all changed course.   But it is not just our government representatives keeping the Washington consensus alive by still approving such IMF and World Bank loan conditions. It is also our governments trade ministries, which are actively pushing for Washington consensus-type policies to be codified into legal arrangements within the WTO negotiations. Similar, and often more aggressive policies, are regularly included into the many regional and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) that are currently being negotiated by our governments with several developing countries.   So while calling on donors to give more aid to meet the MDGs is absolutely crucial, more aid alone will not address the failures of the current development model. Aid advocates must also take steps to get their governments to cease and desist with pushing the failed policies of the Washington consensus. The time to act is now.   * Rick Rowden is the author of The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism: How the IMF has undermined public health and the fight against Aids. He is currently doing a PhD in economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. 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