FoodSecurityandtheEnvironment.docVIP

Food Security and the Environment Colin Sage 1. Introduction The 1994 Human Development Report lists seven main threats to human security: economic, health, environmental, personal, community, political and food security (UNDP 1994). Food security touches on all the dimensions of human security: economics, social relations, health, community development and structures of political power, and the environment. Consequently, food security has to be approached in a holistic way that recognises the complexity of intersecting multidimensional processes operating at all spatial scales (from the global to the individual), and in ways which are temporally discontinuous. Almost 800 million people in the developing world do not have enough to eat, and a further 34 million people in the industrialized countries and economies in transition also suffer from chronic food insecurity (FAO 1999). Food insecurity is used here to mean a dietary intake of insufficient and appropriate food to meet the needs of growth, activity and the maintenance of good health. In addition to those suffering from chronic hunger many millions more experience food insecurity on a seasonal or transitory basis. Prolonged protein-energy malnutrition results in undernourishment with loss of body weight, reduced capacity to work and susceptibility to infectious, nutrient-depleting illnesses, such as gastro-intestinal infections, measles and malaria (Kates 1996). Even mild undernourishment in children can lead to delayed or permanently stunted growth (DeRose and Millman 1998). There are almost 200 million children in the world displaying low height-for-age with almost half of the children of South Asia failing to reach the weights and heights considered to represent healthy growth (FAO 1999). Although we should keep in mind the victims of food insecurity, the purpose of this Chapter is not to map the extent and regional incidence of hunger and malnutrition, or to describe the occurrence, structural causes