By
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General
and Executive Director, UN Environment Programme
For two centuries, Australians have coped
with the challenge of producing food on
a continent where 70 per cent of its surface
is at best semi-arid.
The legendary Australian
ingenuity has met this challenge through
a combination of innovation, determination
and world-class science. By harnessing the
country's river systems and deploying a
range of fertilizers and chemicals, Australians
have enjoyed bountiful supplies of meat,
grains, vegetables and dairy products that
in many developing countries with similar
climates and conditions are so often in
short, life-threatening supply.
Australia's governments
and citizens however know that this bounty
has come at an increasing environmental
cost. Even with innovative schemes such
as LandCare, Australia's farmers, politicians
and citizens are facing new and confronting
challenges, not the least of which is climate
change that may decrease rainfall in critical
food growing regions such as the already
stressed Murray-Darling Basin.
Australians are not alone.
The world's newspapers
are currently heavy with grim headlines
of food riots, food shortages, and the escalating
prices facing families across the globe.
Various causes have been cited, including
food stockpiling, commodity speculation,
and the current theory that production of
energy crops for conversion to biofuels
is linked to the decline in food production
in some parts of the world.
These are simplistic
and perhaps short-sighted scapegoats - convenient
distractions for what is so often in reality
poor management at national and international
levels. They do, however, point to the inescapable
fact that food security is intimately linked
to national and international security.
A point recognized by
Prime Minister Rudd in putting world food
security on the 2020 Summit along with climate
change and his call to "shake some
new ideas loose from the tree".
Eventually this current
food shock will fade from the front pages
like the oil shocks of the 1970s. Just like
those shocks, however, this will be only
a temporary respite unless we tackle the
fundamental issues of food production and
supply, ranging from a distorted trade regime
to feeding a population that is set to mushroom
from over 7 to over 9 billion by mid-century.
The business-as-usual
temptation might be to clear more forests,
drain more wetlands, and dam or divert more
river systems, while pouring even greater
quantities of fertilizer and pesticides
on already chemically saturated soils. This
approach is likely to prove an environmental
dead end, and a market failure of enormous
and far reaching consequences.
We are now pushing—if
not pushing past-the very limits for many
of our economically important ecosystems
that support pollinating insects, keep soils
fertile, and replenish the water supplies
that make agriculture possible. That's the
conclusion of scientists from the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, the UNEP Global
Environment Outlook-4 published last year,
and the UN and World Bank International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology
released last week.
Add to this environmental
stress the likely impacts of climate change,
and the future is sobering indeed. With
more than six years of persistent drought
in many regions, Australia has already experienced
the bitter taste of likely future impacts
from climate change.
We need to do business
on planet Earth differently – a 'business
un-usual' approach that unleashes a wave
of creativity and intelligent management
reflecting the realities and knowledge of
the 21st century.
Australia has an extraordinary opportunity.
If the country can accelerate investment
in its world-class scientific research base,
including sustainable dry-land farming,
it could not only contribute to solving
current and future food crises, but also
become a global agriculture leader prospering
in a carbon constrained world.
Innovation and a 'greening'
of the global economy are emerging on several
fronts including a multi-billion dollar
boom in renewable energy development; the
growing carbon markets and the trillions
now under responsible investment policies
Australia can and must
be part of this transformation so urgently
needed to achieve greater resource efficiency,
cut greenhouse gas emissions and realize
a post 2012 climate convention deal.
However, somewhere some
country is also going to rise to the opportunity
of developing true 21st century agriculture—agriculture
that fully reflects the need to conserve
rather than run down the natural life-support
systems of the planet; that will feed three
billion extra mouths and that is adapted
to a globally warmed world.
In doing so that country
will lead the way in generating sustainable
and profitable farming that generates food
security at home and new export markets
in agricultural science and skills abroad.
That country will also
be a beacon of hope and help to the less
well off in the even more vulnerable arid
economies of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Why not Australia?
