Writing on the Wall

Food is something we can no longer take for granted. The recent forth IPPC report on climate change, as well as pressure on land use from Bio-fuels, increased meat consumption and a growing freshwater crisis all point towards ongoing problems with food supply to the poor. Add to this the rising cost of oil, and the pressure on the price of oil-based inputs to agriculture, like most pesticides and fertilizers, and you can see that we need to think carefully about how to stabilize food supply, as well as protect farmers from price shocks.

One of the key issues impacting on the poor is that their right to food is being compromised by market mechanisms. The enormous purchasing power of the rich, for meat, bio-fuels as well as luxuries like sugar is being pitted against the pitiful purchasing power of the poor, who are being priced out of food markets, and thus out of existence. Thus there is a need to try and provide the poor with affordable food. One way to do this is for countries to subsidize food on a national level. But this does nothing for global justice…

Why climate change implies the need for global redistribution

Climate change contains an enormous injustice. The IPCC reports make it clear that food production will be hit hardest in the tropics, with some temperate zones actually growing more food due to warming (at least at first, and without taking account of extreme weather events.) So why should tropical countries, who are most often poor, who have thus contributed little to climate change, and who can scarcely afford to subsidize food imports, even as prices rise, why should they of all countries be expected to carry the costs?

This suggests that in the name of both social justice, but also in the name of global social stability, that a global system of food stability needs to be set up, and one that is based on progressive principles. This link between the food shortage issue and climate change also helps to suggest a solution. We are currently looking at a set of new systems to deal with climate change.

But the focus in international negotiations has mainly been on mitigation - reducing the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere. There has not been enough thought put to how we might integrate this with a system of adaptation, particularly to help poor countries deal with the impacts of climate change. And a system to regulate food supply fit the bill, since starvation is the most obvious implication of climate change for the poor.

Contraction and Convergence (C&C): The most popular scheme

Contraction and Convergence (C&C) is the most widely accepted of all the mitigation proposals, backed by the majority of the world’s governments. It is popular because it is based on a principle of fairness. Each person on the planet is allocated the same amount of carbon emissions, based on an overall target for emissions year on year, and then this share is allocated to countries based on how many heads of population they have. These allocations are then trade-able, meaning that rich countries will need to but credits from low emitting countries, to pay them off for using more than their fair share of the global pool.

How to modify C&C so that it addresses food supply

Now if we are in the process of setting up one global regime to regulate carbon, why not extend that to give another global regime to regulate food supply? That way you are dealing with both mitigation and adaptation within the same framework. You can also use the redistributive aspects of C&C a basis for preventing starvation.

One mechanism that could be used to do this is to create a relationship between emissions rights and food production. It is critical that this arrangement only affects the distribution of emissions rights, and not their overall amount, or it would break C&C. The way to do this is to set up an exchange rate between food exports and extra heads of population, only for the purposes of sharing out the carbon allocation to each country.
The FAO could administer this. They could define a basket of staple foods that one person needs for a year, based on a portfolio of various sources of nutrition. They could then define exchange rates, food for extra heads of population in the carbon share regime, geared around the staples that the poor are not able to afford. In this way a relationship between food production and the ability to emit and to trade internationally is formed. Since this is defined as a variable exchange rate that the FAO can manipulate based on its food forecasts, then this creates an incentive of variable strength that can be used to regulate food supply, in the same way as central banks attempt to regulate money supply.

These measures would also create a symbolic link between having some claim on the global commons, and looking after human life, thus creating the kind of social contract needed for a stable global polity. Just such stability is needed for the kind of long term planning and co-operation required to tackle climate change.