The Global Environment

Food security and promoting modern uses of biomass as a source of energy in developing countries: Conflicting interests impossible to reconcile or two ends of a common strategy?

Biomass is the most important source of energy in many developing countries, most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There is no doubt that a global climate regime on the basis of international co-operation is needed to prevent some of the disastrous consequences of climate change.

Partially replacing gasoline and diesel with biofuels requires agricultural products that compete with food production for the world’s scarce fertile land resources. The sharp rise in agricultural prices over the past few years has been driven not only by the growing world population and rising incomes in emerging economies, but also by the expansion of biofuels.

Three quarters of the global marine fish stock are deemed fully exploited or overfished.

Consequently, fish stocks are declining worldwide and several fish stocks haven even already collapsed, further stocks will do the same in the near future.

The recent surge in food prices is causing acute hardship and social unrest around the world.

The poor, who spend large shares of their income on food, are most adversely affected.

2008 began with rapidly rising food prices that threatened lives in poor countries and created massive pressures in rich economies; the year ended with a financial crisis that send food prices downwards and pushed poor countries’ food problems down the policy agendas of the rich countries.

Ensuring secure, affordable supplies of energy is a matter of growing global importance. The challenges ahead include: the depletion of oil and other fossil fuels; the reliance of most countries on foreign energy sources; global distributional conflicts arising from the rapidly growing demand for exhaustible fossil fuels;

Water shortages are cropping up around the world – from Australia to South Africa, from Brazil to the Sahel. Many of the world’s mightiest rivers run dry before reaching the sea. Perhaps half the world’s wetlands have been damaged or destroyed in the past century as salt water has displaced fresh water. These facts are striking, in view of the fact that the world’s population withdraws less than a tenth of the water that falls to the ground and that – unlike our fossil fuels – the world’s water supplies cannot be used up.

The future global economy is likely to consume ever more energy, especially due to the rising energy demand of developing countries such as China and India. At the same time, the tremendous risk of climate change associated with the use of fossil fuels makes supplying this energy increasingly difficult.