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Call for Nominations: Justus von Liebig Award for World Nutrition

Call for nominations for the Justus von Liebig Award for World Nutrition

The Justus von Liebig Award, endowed by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. in Hamburg, was awarded regularly between 1949 and 2006. During that period, the prize was awarded to 76 distinguished individuals who had made outstanding contributions to the science and practice of agriculture. On the basis of an agreement with the Toepfer Foundation the Eiselen Foundation continued the award with a slightly modified aspiration in 2009.

Please find more details in: http://www.stiftung-fiat-panis.de/pdf/Justus%20von%20Liebig%20Award.pdf

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Protest March for the Defense of the Commons and against the Commercialization of Nature, June 20, 2025 (II).

Video coming too, processing right now.

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June 20, 2012, Global Day of Action: The March for the Defense of Common Goods and Against the Commercialization of Nature in Downtown Rio de Janeiro (I)

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UN Water Day @ RIO+20

Water is life. Photo: Jose Carlos Norte

Among the events presented at Rio+20, the UN Water Day is of noteworthy importance. The event is organized by UN Water with participation of other UN agencies who are working on water and water-related areas. The main function of the program is to launch the UN-Water Status Report on the Application of Integrated Approaches to the Development, Management and Use of Water Resources. UN Water chair Michel Jarraud handed over the report to Brice Lalonde, who is the executive coordinator of Rio+20. The UN-Water status report focuses on the most critical areas for integrated water management in almost 143 countries. Peter Koefoed Bjornsen, who is the director of UNEP-DHI Centre for Water and Environment, pointed out that the study was based on three structures. They are

  1. Policies, laws and plans

  2. Instruments of governance and management

  3. Infrastructure development

According to the report, some of key findings are

  • Water-related risks and the competition for water resources are perceived by a majority of countries to have increased over the past 20 years;

  • Domestic water supply is ranked by most countries as the highest priority for water resources management;

  • The majority of countries reported an increasing trend in financing for water resources development, although obstacles to implementing reforms remain;

  • Progress on water efficiency is lagging behind other water management reforms, with less than 50 percent of national reforms addressing water efficiency. (UN-Water report 2012)

Ibrahim Thiaw, who is the director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI), in his keynote speech explained that sewage water discharge and untreated waste-water produce methane, nitrogen oxide and other detrimental bacteria. As a result of that, one child dies every 28 seconds. H. E. Rashad bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, United Arab Emirates, affirmed the UAE’s committment to protecting water resource and water for all in countries under vulnerable climate situations.

UAE depends on three means of water sources.

  1. Mainly groundwater

  2. Artificial sea water treatments

  3. Waste water treatment

H.E. acknowledges that water scarcity leads to a way of thinking about efficient water usage with better water management. Peter Kovacs, State Secretary for Water of the Ministry of Rural Development in Hungary, reconfirmed the EU’s great commitment to ensure strong public participation in river basin management. Dr. Alexander Müller, the assistant director-general for Natural Resources, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) illustrates four factors to describe the importance of the extended and intensive discussion with regards to water in the Rio+20 meeting:

  1. Growing competition of utilization of water

  2. Climate change scenarios

  3. How to manage water

  4. What are the institutional setup or governance mechanism

The second part of the program stands under the title “A push toward global commitments on universal access to water and sanitation”.Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN HABITAT, shared the insight that growing unplanned urbanization is a major issue in the mismanagement of water and the main cause of water-related diseases. Due to the growing number of slums or Favelas in the megacities of developing countries, waterborn diseases spread and lack of access to clean water easily leads to epidemics.

Maria Neira, who is the director of Public Health and Environment of World Health Organization (WHO), points out that WHO recognized four pillars to ensure better and sustainable world for all people.

  1. Food security

  2. Health Security

  3. Safe energy

  4. Water security

H.E Fatim Badjie, Minister of Health and Social Welfare in Gambia, emphasizes that the failure of IWRM in some countries may arise as the result of miscommunication among ministries in said countries. In particular the ministries of finance tend to pay little attention to water-related or environmental questions.

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IWRM for better water management: Sustainable Development Learning program

Photo: Rafael Diógenes Marques

In the past, water management was a chaotic story, because governmental institutions, corporations, local-level users managed water without coordination among them. This is called as sectoral water management. However, there is a new social paradigm has shifted towards integrated system, called integrated water resource management. This SD learning program and workshop has been organized by the UNDP Cap-Net institution. Post graduate students, researchers and program officers were taken part this course.

Water resource management and governance are quickly becoming a central theme of environmental governance. Frank G.W. Jaspers (2003) points out that traditional isolated or sectoral-based management and governance in natural resources does not lead to invoke efficient and sustainable water management (Jaspers 2003:77). Water is interpreted as a natural resource with complex social, political and economical assemblages, socio-ecological metabolism and socio-spatial relations engagement on several scales (Swyngedouw 2010:13). Therefore, multi-level government agencies and other governance actors such as community groups, industries, business communities, environmental civil organizations and other NGOs are involved in governing and managing water resource in several capacities and various levels. Currently, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is predominantly applied in surface water management. Under the auspicious Global Water Partnership (GWP), the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 proposed the IWRM Plan with the intention of gaining “water efficiency” (Jønch-Clausen 2004).

“Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) refers to the process and proposed model for enhancing the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources to capture the economic development and social welfare in an equitable way while protecting the sustainability of ecosystems (GWP TAC 4 2000:68).”

The program was taught by Lilliana Arrieta Quesada (REDICA) from the organization Management for Sustainable Development, INCAE, Costa Rica and Damian Indij (LA-WETnet). The tools of IWRM, the paradigm shift and legal framework development in water governance sector were the themes of the course. Afterward, there was group work among participants. Participants have introduced some case studies in several regions where IWRM application failed or succeeded. Some points of the group are

  1. Bad governance leads to fail the IWRM programs

  2. Accountability and transparence are main elements of IWRM

  3. Village-based IWRM units

  4. Lack of political and administrative willingness

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Organic Agriculture as a mainstream agricultural policy: Sustainability in a post-Rio+20 era

All around the world, there are 80 million people depend on organic agriculture. It is converting from a pattern of agriculture into a life style of green consumption. According to IFOAM statistic, from the one billion people that are suffering from hunger, 80% are small-scale farmers or landless rural laborers. Therefore, organic agriculture is not only focusing on crop rotation and organic fertilizing farming, but also empowering small-scale farmers. These goals lead to a realist approach on sustainable development. The side event was organized by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). It addressed the importance of organic agriculture to implementing sustainable agricultural policy and creating food security. This is meant to ensure the alleviation of world hunger in a sustainable manner in the framework of a post-Rio+20 policy implementation. The IFOAM mission is

“leading, uniting and assisting the organic movement in its full diversity. Our goal is the worldwide adoption of ecologically, socially and economically sound systems that are based on the principles of Organic Agriculture”

The theme of the event was “The Future We Want is organic mainstream agriculture”.

The event was divided into two sections. The first section was represented by regional experts in organic agricultural field. Loretta Dormal-Marino, who is the deputy director general of Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Commission, stated that the EU is a leader in implementing organic agriculture since 1991. In 2004, EU introduced the Action Plan for organic agriculture with 21 key functions. The action plan attempts to empower small scale farmers and protect bio-diversity in organic farming industry. Dormal-Marino pointed out that EU already identified organic farming as main means of poverty alleviation and eliminating hunger in Africa. For that, the transcontinental cooperation between EU and African governance bodies has to be established. She finally expressed her believe that strong political will and full participation of stakeholders were needed to achieve all targets in EU organic farming.

Mr. Gray, the representation of USDA, noted that they already provided 276 $ million for strengthening the organic farmers in the USA. Furthermore, the establishment of organic market for selling farmers products turns out to be an important factor. Andre Leu, who is the chair of Organic Federation of Australia, argued that there would be a clear institutional and individual commitment to work on organic farming after Rio+ 20.

In the panel discussion, several points were raised by the audience.

  1. Lack of youth participation in agriculture generally rather than moving industrial or service sector jobs (Greek youth representation)

  2. Lack of political willingness and powerful lobbying power of inorganic fertilizer companies within government policies (Sri Lankan youth representation)

  3. With appropriate technology, creating awareness among farmers who are still in traditional non-organic farming, and adressing the lack of media attention (Iran representation)

Dr Sergio Zelaya-Bonilla, UNCCD, pointed out that women, who already play the biggest role in agriculture, are to be considered as a vital factor in organic agriculture, and the same goes for youth.

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#EndFossilFuelSubsidies

A trillion (dirty) dollar bill @Copacabana Beach. Photo: 350.org

One of the more concrete demands environmentalists put forward in the RIO+20 process is to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, ASAP. Climate change activists are using the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in order to put CO² reduction back on the agenda. This is understandable, given the spectacular failure of the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen and the meager outcomes of the successive Durban conference. Getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies is a very head-on approach to reducing emissions, and it seems to gather remarkable support.

Under guidance from climate change action group 350.org, June 18 experiences a “twitterstorm” of climate activists with the demand to #EndFossilFuelSubsidies.

The campaign took on speed on Sunday June 17, when young activist unfolded a giant one trillion dollar note at Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro. One trillion dollars, this is the amount of taxpayers money that is handed out for oil, gas and coal worldwide, according to estimates of Oil Change International. Of these, 630 billion Dollars are consumption subsidies in developing countries, 45 billion consumption subsidies in developed countries and a further 100 billion are production subsidies worldwide. This adds up to 775 billion; the missing amount to a trillion is said to exist in funding military to secure the carbon business, a hidden subsidy that occurs whereever military is protecting “strategically important resources”. We see: The trillion dollar sum is a political number, but without arguing over details, the amount that is spend on climate-killing practices is enormous, making public investment in renewables shrink in comparison. More transparent numbers would make for better accounting, Oilchange International argues.

Who benefits the most from this massive financial hand-outs?

With soaring energy prices in a highly concentrated market, energy oligopolists – giant corporations – profit on top of their already breathtaking revenues.

However, looking at the numbers, one can discern that a large degree of the benefits also go to consumers – also in the Global South. The campaigners have a clear answers: Other means must be found to support the global poor.

For it is the less well-to-do citizens of Asian, African, South American and Small Island countries that are likely to suffer the most from the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Kjell Kuehne, who works for an organization teaching climate justice to children, puts it drastically:”We just can’t continue to live our exaggerated lifestyles – we’re killing these people!”.

Going back to Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal, who do make a killing from subsidies. Cameron from the Canadian Youth Coalition on Climate Change (CYCC) is convinced that the multi-billion dollar carbon industry is responsible for the above-mentioned failure of concerted action on global warming. A study by Greenpeace entitled “Who’s holding us back” supports his view.

So, now a twitterstorm is blowing against them. Will this be enough? In 2009 global leaders already agreed on phasing out the subsidies – with precious little progress on the issue so far, thank you very much. So maybe the movement to #EndFossilFuelSubsidies is storming open doors, and implementation of the cuts will be arriving soon?

The lobbying power of the biggest business on the planet is not to be underestimated. Nevertheless it’s strategically clever for civil society to concentrate on concrete policy goals amongst all the hot air of the RIO+20 summit. In the end, the fossils will have to go.

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Video

Once in a while there is the pleasant feeling that the proposed solutions at UNSCD are more than empty words, that there is a real effort behind them and not just another shallow attempt of greenwashing.

Today we encountered a Side Event sponsored by Biovision and the Millennium Institute on “From Production To Consumption –Towards A Sustainable Food System”.

In this case, people who talk about “sustainable agriculture” actually seem to mean “organic” and not a GMO-intensification agro-industrial business plan.

The tone was set by the opening words by Ambassador Martin Dahinden, Director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. He scolded conventional agricultural methods for their contribution to climate change, high use of nonrenewable inputs, depletion of soils and deforestation through monoculture.

Many of these practices are not sustainable at all, he added, but hope persists in alternative agricultural methods that help to rise people out of poverty.

Dutch filmmaker Hans van den Berg presented first parts of his documentary “No Fight, no Victory” (Trailer above). The film shows the effective praxis of the third-biggest Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, which managed to combat hunger through free food programs in school and the implementation of low-cost “popular restaurants”, selling 3.000 meals a day at reasonable prices. Small organic farms from the regions grow the food for these facilities, and the city also provides free spaces for them to sell produce. By cutting out the middlemen, farmers keep prices low and still make a living.

H.E. Patrus Ananias, Former Minister for Social Development and the Fight against Hunger, praised the achievement and explained that the Brazilian government had tried to bring the Belo Horizonte experience to the whole country through a concerted program.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), expressed his concern with the fate and well-being of small farmers: “It’s an irony that so many small farmers are so poor and suffering from hunger, because without them the world cannot be fed.” The current business model of the smallholder in Africa is to have food in his stomach, he explained. To improve lives, Nwanze says, they need access to finance, to land, and linkage to markets in order to move beyond subsistence. His premier call was for empowerment and buildung of organizational structures, stressing: “development is not something we do to people, its what they do for themselves”.

Swiss Agrarian Scientist Hans Herren agreed that small farmers needed support, which he believes should come in the form of knowledge transfer and capacity-building. Both Herren and Ananias stressed the role of state and public sector to take responsibility, while Nwanze put more emphasis on civil society and access to markets.

The presented example show that real improvements can be made by reconciling environmental and social concerns when the principal of profit maximization is pushed to the backseat.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)