Governing transition towards post-carbon resilient food systems

Governing transition towards postcarbon resilient food systems: Legal, ethical and governance challenges RESEARCH PROPOSAL by JOSE LUIS VIVERO POL PhD Candidate, Catholic University of Louvain, BELGIUM

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RESEARCH PROJECT: PhD Thesis by Jose Luis Vivero Pol CO-DIRECTORS: Philippe Baret, Earth & Life Institute, UCL Olivier de Schutter, Centre of Philosophy of Law, Faculty of Law, UCL

MEMBERS OF REVIEWING COMMITTEE: Philippe Baret, Earth & Life Institute, UCL Olivier de Schutter, Faculty of Law and Centre for Philosophy of Law, UCL Tom Dedeurwaerdere, Faculty of Philosophy and Centre for Philosophy of Law, UCL Pierre Defourny, Earth & Life Institute, UCL

THE BACKGROUND Hunger now Today, our planet is hungry and angry. Hungry because in a world of plenty, capable of producing enough food to feed appropriately everybody, there are 1 billion food insecure people, with absolute figures growing steadily since early 2000 despite mounting global harvests, economic growth and general progress in reducing poverty. And angry because that situation could have easily be avoided and averted, should the political will and necessary funds be made available. If our present is terrible, our future seems to be even gloomier, as recent prospects for food production in 2050 are all but promising with current data and scientific development1. Hunger is now arguably the gravest single threat to the world’s public health, as hunger and malnutrition have far greater impacts upon child health and growth than was previously thought2. With 1.02 billion people undernourished and as many as two billion suffering from micronutrient and vitamin deficiencies, the state of the world’s nutrition is woeful.

Climate Change tomorrow The situation will certainly get worse as long as the climate change predictions become a striking reality.

Nowadays, there is a growing consensus that climate change is the biggest global challenge of the 21st century, with the greatest threat coming from effects on water and food security, human settlements, and resultant population migration3.Climate change will also present a threat to collective security and global governance4.Starvation, diarrhea, and infectious diseases will become more common, and neonatal and adult mortality will rise, as a result of weather-related conflicts. Several reports state that, by 2100, with unmitigated climate change, global warming will reach 4—5°C and up to 3 billion people will face increased water stress; there will be an accelerated biodiversity extinction; the production of all cereal crops will fall; there will be an increasing burden of malnutrition and infectious diseases; deaths from heat waves, floods, and droughts will increase; and a major reconfiguration of coastlines worldwide and inundation of low lying areas5.

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As emphasised in the IAASTD report (www.agassessment.org).

PLoS Medicine Editors (2008). Scaling up international food aid: Food delivery alone cannot solve the malnutrition crisis. PLoS Med 5(11): e235.http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/5/11/pdf/10.1371_journal.pmed.0050235-L.pdf The Economist (2008). The starvelings. January 24. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10566634 3 Costello A. et al. Managing the health effects of climate change. Lancet 2009;373:16934 European Commission. The IISS transatlantic dialogue on climate change and security. 2011.www.iiss.org/programmes/transatlanticdialogue-on-climate-change-and-security/.

5 ParryM. et al. (2008). Squaring up to reality. http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0806/full/climate.2008.50.html.

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Meanwhile, the world’s population continues to expand. Estimated at 6 billion in 2000, now we are 7 billion and it is expected to rise to 9 billion by 20506. The most widely cited estimates state that an overall increase in agricultural production should reach 70 per cent by 2050 to be able to feed such population7. Climate change, which translates in more frequent and extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods and less predictable rainfall, is already having a severe impact on the ability of certain regions and communities to feed themselves. The change in average temperatures is threatening the ability of entire regions, particularly those living from rain-fed agriculture, to maintain actual levels of agricultural production8. By 2080, 600 million additional people could be at risk of hunger, as a direct result of climate change9. Losses in agricultural production in developing countries could be partially compensated by gains in other regions, but the overall result would be a decrease of at least 3 per cent in productive capacity by the 2080s10.

Fuel-based Agriculture yesterday During the past century world agricultural production has more than tripled whereas population has only doubled, therefore enabling us to produce enough food to feed well to all human beings. Central to this superb agricultural production boom were fossil fuels, specially oil and natural gas, where most fertilizers and pesticides come from. During the XX century, the application of fossil fuels to the food system has sustained this growth. Oil and gas are not only sources of agro-chemicals, but enabled mechanization of production, processing, transport and out-of-the season availability far away from the production areas. The globalized farming system is capital intensive and largely based on unsustainable mono-cropping schemes.

The food system has become more articulated, industrialized, mechanized, regulated and centralized and, what is more worrying, highly dominated by a few transnational agri-business corporations that have interests all along the food chain. Additionally, the industrialization of the food system has lowered food quality and diversity. Diets are poorer and less tasty and obesity induced by high-calorie processed foodstuff is mounting to become a big global health issue.

But it didn´t use to be like that, as food production was more sustainable, diverse and resilient to climate shocks, highly labor-force demanding and multi-functional, providing different food products and byproducts to farmers not so many decades ago. From an energy perspective, the pre-industrial farming was a net producer of energy, but the current one is a net-consuming system11.

JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS RESEARCH The crisis of the food production system is evident The oil-dependent globalized food production system has come at a cost. Agriculture is heavily impacting the environment, with actions such as degrading soils, fertilizer runoff, deforestation, chemical pollution, water wasting, and biodiversity reduction. In recent years it has been determined that agricultural and animal production contribute to one third of the total greenhouse emissions worldwide, affecting negatively to climate change. Climate change in turn adversely impacts agriculture, especially in developing tropical countries, through extreme weather events, altered seasons and changing rainfall patterns.

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United Nations (2004).World population to 2300. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York. www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf 7 Burney, J.A. et al. (2010). Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc., 107: 26, pp. 12052-12057.

FAO (2010). How to feed the world in 2050. Conference paper, Rome. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf 8 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.2007. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK. 9 UNDP (2007). Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world, United Nations Development Programme New York, p. 90.

10 Cline,W.R. (2007).Global warming and agriculture. impact estimates by country. Center for Global Development/Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C., p. 96.

11 Heinberg, R. & M. Bomford (2009).The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a post-carbon food system. The Post Carbon Institute, California, USA

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Multiple threats are converging on the food system, including changes in the climate, competition for resources such as water supply and energy, and changing consumption patterns provide considerable challenges to sustaining the world’s food supply. The food system is already failing in at least two ways.

Firstly, it is unsustainable, with resources being used faster than they can be naturally replenished. Secondly, a billion people are hungry for more food with another billion people suffering from ‘hidden hunger’ (nutrient-deficit food), whilst a billion people are over-consuming. In this transition for higher and more sustainable food production, genetically-modified crops are unlikely to be of much help as they heavily depend on oil-based fertilizers and pesticides to be functional.

Major driving forces for transition to a post-carbon food system More and more, it seems evident the dominant fuel-based industrial food system must be reinvented as it has failed to fulfill its goal. The three major driving forces to justify that rationale are presented as follows: (a) its failure to sustainably produce and fairly distribute enough and accessible food for all, leaving 1 billion people food insecure12; (b) the Depletion Dilemma, the declining of fuel stocks whereas the growing population do not cease to demand more energy, thus exacerbating the depletion of the natural resources; and (c) the impact of climate change in food production and livelihoods. a.-The failure of the global food system to feed the world.

We have the knowledge, resources and funds to produce food in excess to feed the whole world population.

Actually, 4600 kilocalories per day of food are harvested for every person on the planet. Out of those, only around 2000 on average are eaten, because more than half of the total is lost on the way13. It is believed that hunger will likely increase in the future14. Despite years of international anti-hunger efforts and rising per caput food availability, the number of hungry people has continued to rise. This trend has been boosted by the recent 2008 and 2011 food price crises, yielding a gloomy figure of 115 million of additional undernourished people15. And recent World Bank estimates suggest the spreading global economic crisis will push 200 million more people into poverty. While there has been some progress since 1990, an estimated 148 million under five children in the developing world remain undernourished16. Moreover, preliminary estimates for 2009 to 2015 forecast that an average of between 200,000 and 400,000 more children a year, a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million, may die if the crisis persists17. b.-The Depletion Dilemma: The decadence of fossil fuels.

There is a growing consensus that we are entering a twilight period where fossil fuels will no longer move the world´s economy by the end of this century. The world is approaching the sunset of the oil era in the first half of the 21st century18. The oil peak has arguably been reached, unless oil reserves not yet accessible can be open up for commercial purposes, and it is forecasted that before 2050 oil will no longer be a commercial source of energy for the world. On top of that, the global food system is living outside its means, consuming

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In 2008, more tan 30 nations saw alreay food riots due to the high food peak. Numerous projections determine that food prices will remain high for the next decades, at least much higher that last 30 decades in the XX century.

13 Stuart, T. (2009). Waste: uncovering the global food scandal. Penguin Books, London.

14 UK Government (2011).The future of food and farming: challenges and choices for global sustainability. Final project report.Foresight, Department for Business Innovation and Skills.The Government Office for Science, London. http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/bispartners/foresight/docs/food-and-farming/11-546-future-of-food-and-farming-report 15 FAO Newsroom (15/12/2008): http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/8836/icode/ 16 Reena Borwankar et al. (2007). What is the extent of vitamin and mineral deficiencies? Magnitude of the problem.Food and Nutrition Bulletin 28, no. 1 supplement (2007): 174-81.

17 World Bank (2009). The global economic crisis: assessing vulnerability with a poverty lens. Policy note prepared for the G-7 Group meeting. 12 February 2009.

18 Rifkin, J. (2002). The hydrogen economy. Tarcher/Putnam.

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resources faster than are naturally replenished19.Substantial changes will be required throughout the food system and related areas, such as water use, energy use and addressing climate change, if food security is to be provided for a predicted nine billion or more people out to 2050. By improving the knowledge of agroecological practices, we can delink the production of food from its current dependency on fossil energy, which has become unsustainable c.-The threats of Climate change.

The dramatic rise in carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is raising the earth's temperature and threatening human beings´ livelihoods as the climate seems to be changing at unprecedented rates. Climate change is already changing weather and precipitation patterns and it will continue to drive extreme weather events and changes in water resources (through flood, drought, and rising sea levels). Those phenomena will adversely affect global food and energy production. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, poverty, and it will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration and the further weakening of fragile states�20 which in turn may increase the likelihood of instability and risk to national security. Human civilization and ecosystems will surely change to adapt to the rapidly changing global climate, and that transition will be the matter of research for this dissertation.

No quick fix is possible and transition will be mandatory Unfortunately, there is no quick fix and it will be hard and rather long. The only way to avert a massive food crisis in the next decades resulting from high food staple prices, growing meat-demanding population, stagnant yields per area, industry biofuel appetite and harmful contribution to climate change will be to proactively and steadily remove fossil fuels from the food system. We need a radical transformation of the global food system with more accountability. Moving towards sustainability is vital for future food security and an essential component of the right to food.

The potential threats converging on the global food system are so great that action is needed across many fronts, from changing diets to eliminating food waste. Moreover, there is an urgent need to link food and agriculture policy to wider global governance agendas such as climate change mitigation, biodiversity, education, economy, transport, energy and international development. Without this link a decision in one area could compromise important objectives in another. The acceleration of climate change will exacerbate the pressures of poverty on natural resource management and unleash a suite of complex social, economic and political risks21.The urgency of avoiding not only past policy failures but also the failures of global governance will be ever greater. Reinforcing the consistency between the international agendas in the areas of climate change, rural development and food security will be hence mandatory22. This transition will be inevitable, as maintaining the status quo in food production in simply not an option over the longer term.

Once accepted, we need to agree upon the timeframe, the strategies, policies, legal enforcements and economic and social incentives23.

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IAASTD (2009). Agriculture at a crossraods: the global report. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Island Press, 20 US Department of Defense (2010). Quadrennial review report.www.defense.gov/QDR/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf.

Blair D.C. (2010). Annual threat assessment of the US intelligence community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.www.dni.gov/testimonies/20100203_testimony.pdf.

21 O'Brien, K. et al.(2010). Climate change, ethics and human rights.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

22 CEHAP (2009). A call from the Cordoba Group for coherence and action on food security and climate change. Chair of Studies on Hunger and Poverty, Cordoba, Spain.

23 Heinberg, R. & M. Bomford (2009).The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a post-carbon food system. The Post Carbon Institute, California, USA.

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The daunting challenge ahead In the face of a widespread recognition that the status quois unacceptable and unsustainable, agricultural and food governance regimes need to be extensively reformed if the prospects for food security are to improve rather than deteriorate. Feeding a global population of 9 billion people in 2050 with a diminishing supply of fossil fuels to fertilize, crop, irrigate, harvest and transport of food as we do it at present will require a drastic approach to food production, distribution and consumption.

There is an unavoidable need to shift from our current unsustainable food system to food systems that are more ecological and climate-smart, less input an energy dependent, more labor-demanding and more resilient to weather-related shocks, as well as economic shocks. The 2050 food system will require more farmers, smaller and more diversified farms, less processed and packaged food, less food wastage and less food-miles.

Global long-run food security requires the accelerated transition to a low-carbon growth path not only in the OECD but also in the rising powers24.Climate change will be the major driving force pushing us to adopt a more binding global governance to produce more food and more ecologically. And, to do so, national policies and institutional frameworks, based on the right to food, shall be put in place in all countries, with enough funds to support them. Transition will not happen by chance, but it will only happen by design, through strategies, policies and programmes backed by scientific research, strong political will, accompanied by public accountability and supervision based on the right to food approach25.

THE PhD THESIS QUESTION: What political and economic incentives, as well as enabling legal frameworks based on the right to food and ethical principles, shall be put in place to steer a transition from an oil-dependent climate-damaging food production system to a post-carbon, resilient and socially fair food system?

The transition theory Using the conceptual framework developed by Geels & Schot (2007)26 and the scaling up theoretical pathways initially proposed by Uvin (1995)27 and then further developed by the World Bank (2003)28 and Hartmann & Linn (2008)29, the thesis will examine the political incentives, the enabling legal frameworks and the ethical mandates that shall be put in place to steer the transition between a dominant high oildependent environment-damaging food production system to a low-carbon, resilient and climate-smart system. The thesis will also drink from the concept of food regimes analyzed by McMichael (2009)30 and the different steps for transition to a low carbon agriculture proposed by Heinberg & Bomford (2009)31.

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Reilly, M. & D. Willenbockel (2010) Managing Uncertainty: A Review of Food System Scenario Analysis and Modelling.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, 3049-63.

25 UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2011). Agroecology and the Right to Food. Report presented at the 16th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council [A/HRC/16/49] 26 Geels, F. & J. Schot (2007). Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways. Research policy, 36: 399-417.

27 Uvin, P. (1995). Fighting hunger at the grassroots : path to scaling up. World Development vol 23 -6 : 927-939.

28 World Bank (2003). Scaling-Up the Impact of Good Practices in Rural Development. A working paper to support implementation of the World Bank’s Rural Development Strategy. Report number 26031. Washington DC. 29 Hartmann, A. & J.F. Linn (2008). Scaling up. A framework and lessons for development effectiveness from literature and practice.

Wolfensohn Centre for Development Working Paper n°5. Brookings Institution, Washington DC 30 McMichael, P. (2009). A food regime genealogy. Journal of Peasant Studies 36-1 : 139 - 169 31 Heinberg, R. & M. Bomford (2009).The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a post-carbon food system. The Post Carbon Institute, California, USA.

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Objective and guiding questions The PhD thesis will analyze the current oil-dependency for food production, the prospective scenarios for food security and agricultural production under a highly-variable global climate, the population growth, the changing food demand and the inequality to access money, land and water. After those considerations, the PhD thesis will draw three sets of recommendations to govern the transition towards a more sustainable and less-oil dependent food production system: (a) the first group will encompass the conducive public policies, at international and national level, that organize transition towards more localized food systems and methods of farming that are more ecologically sound, de-linking food and fossil fuels (b) the second group will deal with economic incentives for private sector, citizens and states, and (c) the third group will elaborate on the enabling legal framework, based on the right to food and international agreements, that can facilitate this transition.

This PhD thesis will explore the specific governance mechanisms that can allow such transitions to take place and how they fit (or not) with classic mechanisms of parliamentary democracies and the one country-one vote system at UN, a very important topic in the context of attempts to combat climate change. Alternative global governance systems, based on sharing sovereignty, shall also be explored and developed, as the current distribution of roles and responsibilities by nation-states does not seem to be the most appropriate to tackle global issues32.

During the PhD thesis, the PhD candidate will be following and analyzing ongoing debates at international level on schemes, ideas, institutions and mandates to improve global governance of food security, agriculture and related issues such as climate change and sustainable development. In that sense, the PhD candidate will closely monitor proposals and discussions stemmed from the Climate Conferences of the Parties, Millenium Development Goals events, Sustainable Development meetings (such as Rio+20 Summit in 2012) and food security and agricultural developments. For instance, a very recent working paper prepared by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs33, meant to feed the debate for the Rio+20 Conference, is using the “transition� paradigm to point out the need to abandon the previous way of developing our human society and to move towards a completely new and sustainable one (UNDESA, 2012).

Based on a review of emerging literature on transition34, the following guiding questions will help us to elaborate the rationale for final conclusions and recommendations: a.-Why we need to undertake that transition?

As explained above, the failure of the global food system to feed the world, the decadence of fossil fuels that will no longer will be the main energy source to move the world, and the threats of climate change will be extensively explained and documented. b.-What such a transition should achieve?

Amongst other things, a positive balance of energy and food produced at farm level, shorter food chains (reduced food miles), re-localized food systems (producing more food closer to consumption areas), increasing seasonal, fresh (less processed) and healthy products, providing economic incentives to small 32

McClintock, J. (2010). The Uniting of Nations. An Essay on Global Governance. Peter Lang Academic Publishers, Brussels.http://www.the-uniting-of-nations.com/end-world-hunger.asp 33 UNDESA (2012). Transition to a Green Economy: Benefits, Challenges and Risks from a Sustainable Development Perspective.

34 A couple of examples: Hopkins, R. (2008). The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience. Green Books, UK. Heinberg, R. & M. Bomford (2009).The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a post-carbon food system. The Post Carbon Institute, California, USA.

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farmers closer to consumers, more ecological and less oil-dependent cultivation, more varied and biodiversity rich crops, less uniformity, less food waste, higher demand for laborforce, farming methods more climate-smart, and higher control by producers and consumers of the food chain.

The transition process will aim at creating more resilience into the food system. And that will imply (a) redundancy, which is often at odds with short-term economic efficiency; (b) diversity (as opposed to the uniformity so hardly sought after by the market-based food system); and (c) dispersion and de-localization, rather than centralization and oligopolistic practices. Climate change adaptation and mitigation practices will have to be promoted within the agricultural sector to reduce climate change impact (i.e. carbon sequestration) and increase resilience and agro-biodiversity. c.-How we can get there?

There will be an urgent need of public policies and state-driven incentives and market forces alone will not be able to steer the transition and it will be far more harmful. Political and economical constraints will be identified, and how those constraints could be overcome by measures at national and international level will be developed, plus legal measures based on right to food and international legal system, political and economic incentives that can be put into practice. The proposals to foster and facilitate the transition shall be developed at four levels: government, community, business and individuals. The public policies and economic incentives need to link the human rights principles of transparency, participation, accountability and non-discrimination, with the idea of learning-based public policies that are permanently tested and revised in the light of their impact on the poorest and most vulnerable.

SPECIFIC TOPICS THAT WILL BE INVESTIGATED FOR THE PhD Amongst the issues that will be analyzed to sustain the transition governance, we can mention the following: a.- Increased sharing of sovereignty to address global problems Globalization and the role of the state are issues at the forefront of contemporary debates. The world is not doing well with hunger reduction, the closing of the inequality gap and environment protection, amongst others, and thus unconventional and radical perspectives need to be placed on the debating table35. Sharing of sovereignty to a supranational institution seems to be one of those36. The goal would be to address global problems with worldwide implications with real global governance, problems such as the forecasted events triggered by climate change, hunger, growing inequality and the compulsory transition to non-oil based food production.

In a world whose food production is threatened by climate change, with current energy, environment and economic crises, and not being to feed us all, sharing sovereignty for the sake of human survival in this planet seems to be a debatable option to safeguard our existence. Climate change and its consequences for food security and nutrition, health and economic development will likely be the external agent that may trigger a re-conceptualization of our nation-state approach to global problems as well as to global public goods, opening up the debate on the leading role of the states vis a vis the transnational agri-food corporations and the unregulated markets.

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Krasner, S.D. (1999). Globalization and sovereignty. In: States and sovereignty in the global economyEdited byD. A. Smith, D.J. Solinger&S. C. Topik.. Routledge. P 34-53.

36 Corner, M. (2008). Towards a Global Sharing of Sovereignty.European Essay n째44.The Federal Trust for Education and Research.

London, UK.

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b.- Legal considerations and the political development of the concept of Public Goods.

Hunger eradication and guaranteeing food production to all human beings can be considered as public goods, such as access to clean air and safe water. Therefore, the international legal agreements protecting those goods and their links to transition will be further analyzed within this PhD research. Other public goods that play a pivotal role in facilitating the transition will be extension services, storage facilities, rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, information and communication technologies), access to credit and insurance against weather-related risks, agricultural research and development, education, and support to farmer's organizations and cooperatives. The ESCR can provide the minimum regulatory standards for decent livelihoods and human development and their binding agreements shall be lived up, with sanctioning mechanisms and peer-to-peer supervisions. Agro-biodiversity with its direct productive benefits and the collateral externalities shall also be seen as public goods37. c.-Fraternity as the neglected ethical principle of development Fraternity shall be understood as solidarity between states, societies and human beings, a concept that stemmed from the French Revolution triad but it was quickly surpassed by their companions, liberty and equality38, both of them considered as the political, philosophical and ethical foundations of the neoliberal economy and democratic societies. Fraternity implies a sense of civic friendship, reciprocity and social solidarity that are so much needed in those times of growing self-interest, isolationism and private rights. d.- Innovative international binding agreements to govern that transition The existing flaws in global governance of the world’s food production are well-acknowledged. From energy, forests and fish to food security, water and desertification, global governance has repeatedly fallen short when it comes to proactive and swift responses to risk, even in the face of worst case scenarios39.In that sense, exploring the international human rights framework so as to pulse the timing for a binding international Food Agreement to regulate specific considerations on food security, hunger policies and climate-smart agriculture may sound foolish today although rather necessary in the near future. The agreements on food productions could incorporate provisions whereby countries should share part of its sovereignty to a higher international institution so as to improve governance and accountability during the transition towards a post-carbon food production system. e.- Means to involve the reluctant private sector that dominates the oil-dependent food system.

The transition from an oil-intensive food production system to a low-carbon one will certainly have to consider the private stakeholders that hold a strong hand, even a monopoly-like situation, on chemical and biological inputs to agriculture, such as trademarked seeds, fertilizers, pesticides. Moreover, those huge transnational agri-food companies have also economic interests in harvesting, processing, packaging, distributing and selling food to customers. A few companies control over 70% of the total food chain, from the land to the plate, and they have strong interest in maintaining the current status quo where they get massive benefits. An analysis of its dominant position within the global food system and political and economic incentives to shift them towards a post-carbon, resilient food system will be also included within the research.

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De Schutter, O. (2011). The right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and the right to food: from conflict to complementarity. Human Rights Quarterly - Volume 33, Number 2, pp. 304-350 38 Rawls, J. (1999) A theory of justice. Revised edition. Harvard University Press.

39 P. Oosterveer (2007). Global governance of food production and consumption: issues and challenges. Edward Elgar, Oxford.

MacMillan, A. & J.L. Vivero (2011).The governance of hunger. Innovative proposals to make the right to be free from hunger a reality. In: Martín-López, M.A. & J.L. Vivero, eds. New challenges to the Right to Food. CEHAP Cordoba & Ed Huygens, Barcelona.

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f.- The development and massive investment in small scale farming and agro-ecology.

Of the developing world’s 5.5 billion people, 3 billion live in rural areas. Of these rural inhabitants an estimated 2.5 billion are in households involved in agriculture, and 1.5 billion are in smallholder households40. The smallholder households are working on 380 million farms, with 410 million gathering food from the forests, 190 million pastoralists and well over 100 million peasant fishers. They grow at least 70% of the world’s food41 but, surprisingly, make up half of the world’s hungry people42.

Recent reports show that if we take into account not only its own growth performance but also its indirect impact on growth in other sectors, agriculture is 3.2 times more effective at reducing the number of very poor people (defined as those living below a USD one-per-day PPP poverty line) in low-income and resourcerich countries, at least in the absence of strong inequality43.

We need to increase production where it needs most to be raised (marginal areas, food deficit countries and with those farmers, pastoralists and gatherers) while at the same time improving the livelihoods of small farmers, preserving the ecosystem and mitigating harmful climate change practices. The transition towards a low-carbon, resource-preserving, climate-smart type of agriculture must bring immediate benefits the poorest farmers, so as make them early winners of the long-lasting transition road map. Scaling up agroecological practices can simultaneously increase farm productivity and food security, improve incomes and rural livelihoods, and reverse the trend towards species loss and genetic erosion44. The incentive structures which such policies create to encourage the shift towards sustainable farming should be regularly tested and re-evaluated with the participation of the beneficiaries, transforming policy into a mode of social learning rather than an exercise of political authority.

JUSTIFICATION OF THE CO-DIRECTION The very nature of the research will incorporate different aspects related to food production, namely agronomy, food access constraints, climate change threats, agro-biodiversity and agro-ecology challenges, human rights and binding treaties, current UN mandate, limitations of nation-states to tackle global problems and ethical considerations to encompass the political, economic and legal decisions. Those intertwined aspects fall under different areas of knowledge at the UCL, namely the Earth and Life Institute and the Faculty of Law (Centre for Philosophy of Law), and that explains why there is a need to have to co-directors. The need to have an appropriate guidance on those issues explains the proposal of two co-directors.

PROPOSED PROGRAMME First Year:  Extensive reading of literature and attending courses, lectures and seminars related to the topic. The PhD candidate is more than willing to broaden his knowledge on subjects related to the main topic of the PhD. As an example, he would like to attend the Lovanium Seminar in Ethics and Public Policy (http://www.uclouvain.be/en-25585.html). He could also take subjects of the following Masters: Master

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World Bank (2008). World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC ETC Group (2009). Who Will Feed Us? Questions for the Food and Climate Crises.ETC Communique no. 102, Ottawa.http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/4921 42 U.N. Millennium Project (2005). Halving Hunger: It Can be Done. Summary report of the Task Force on Hunger 6, available at http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/HTF-SumVers_FINAL.pdf.

43 Christiaensen, L. et al. (in press). The (evolving) role of agriculture in poverty reduction - An empirical perspective, J. Dev. Econ.

44 UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2011). Agroecology and the Right to Food. Report presented at the 16th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council [A/HRC/16/49] 41

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

Complementaire en Droits de L´Homme (http://www.fusl.ac.be/fr/251.html) and Master complémentaire en économie internationale et développement (http://www.uclouvain.be/prog-2011-ltcecon2mc.html).

Attending to international seminars, conferences and workshops on food security, agriculture and rural development will also be part of the PhD research, as the candidate would like to keep an eye (and a hand) in real life and operational issues.

Second Year:  A publication in an well-recognized International Journal will be accepted (or submitted and in progress), based on a specific issue addressed by the research for the PhD.  A short-term pre-doctoral stay could also be envisaged during this second year, so as to visit and learn other researchers and departments that are presently working on agricultural transitions and food security governance.  Poster presentations in International and National Seminars and Conferences will be prepared.

Third Year:  A second publication in an International Journal will be accepted.  Oral presentations in International Seminars will be delivered, based on preliminary results of the research.

45  Another pre-doctoral stay will enrich the approach, ideas or preliminary results achieved by the candidate.

Fourth Year:  Finalisation of the thesis document : reviewing and edition  Public defense of the PhD thesis  Compilation and edition of appropriate materials for a book in english and possibly in french

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As an example, it could be done in the University of Waterloo (Canada) with Dr. Jennifer Clapp, researcher on the governance of the global food system http://www.environment.uwaterloo.ca/ers/faculty/clapp/index.html

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