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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Mozambique’s food riots- the true face of global warming

     

    The immediate causes of the protests in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, and Chimoio about 500 miles north, are a 30% price increase for bread, compounding a recent double-digit increase for water and energy. When nearly three-quarters of the household budget is spent on food, that’s a hike few Mozambicans can afford.

    Deeper reasons for Mozambique’s price hike can be found a continent away. Wheat prices have soared on global markets over the summer in large part because Russia, the world’s third largest exporter, has suffered catastrophic fires in its main production areas. These blazes, in turn, find their origin both in poor firefighting infrastructure and Russia’s worst heatwave in over a century. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin extended an export ban in response to a new wave of wildfires in its grain belt, sending further signals to the markets that Russian wheat wouldn’t be available outside the country. With Mozambique importing over 60% of the wheat its people needs, the country has been held hostage by international markets.

    This may sound familiar. In 2008, the prices of oil, wheat, corn and rice peaked on international markets – corn prices almost tripled between 2005-2008. In the process, dozens of food-importing countries experienced food riots.

    Behind the 2008 protests were, first, natural events that looked like an excerpt from the meteorological section of the Book of Revelation – drought in Australia, crop disease in central Asia, floods in south-east Asia. These were compounded by the social systems through which their effects were felt. Oil prices were sky-high, which meant higher transport costs and fossil fuel-based fertiliser prices. Biofuel policy, particularly in the US, shifted land and crops from food into ethanol production, diverting food from stomachs to fuel tanks. Longer term trends in population growth and meat consumption in developing countries also added to the stress. Financial speculators piled into food commodities, driving prices yet further beyond the reach of the poor. Finally, some retailers used the opportunity to raise prices still further, and while commodity prices have fallen back to pre-crisis levels, most of us have yet to see the savings.

    Is this 2008 all over again? The weather has gone wild, meat prices have hit a 20-year high, groceries are being looted and heads of state are urging calm. The view from commodities desks, however, is that we’re not in quite as dire straits as two years ago. Fuel is relatively cheap and grain stores well stocked. We’re on track for the third-highest wheat crop ever, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). While all this is true, it misses the point: for most hungry people, 2008 isn’t over. The events of 2007-2008 tipped more than 100 million into hunger and the global recession has meant that they have stayed there. In 2006, the number of  undernourished people was 854 million. In 2009, it was 1.02 billion – the highest level since records began. The hardest hit by these price rises, in the US and around the world, were female-headed households.

    Not only are the hungry still around, but food riots have continued. In India, double-digit food price inflation was met by violent street protests at the end of 2009. The price rises were, again, the result of both extreme and unpredictable monsoons in 2009 and an increasingly faulty social safety net to prevent hunger. There have been frequent public protests about the price of wheat in Egypt this year, and Serbia and Pakistan have seen protests too.

    Although commodity prices fell after 2008, the food system’s architecture has remained largely the same over the past two decades. Bill Clinton has offered several mea culpas for the international trade and development policies that spawned the food crisis. Earlier this year, he blamed himself for Haiti‘s vulnerability to price fluctuations. “I did that,” he said in testimony to the US Senate. “I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.” More generally, Clinton suggested in 2008 that “food is not a commodity like others… it is crazy for us to think we can develop a lot of these countries [by] treating food like it was a colour television set.”

    Yet global commodity speculators continue to treat food as if it were the same as television sets, with little end in sight to what the World Development Movement has called “gambling on hunger in financial markets”. The recent US Wall Street Reform Act contained some measures that might curb these speculative activities, but their full scope has yet to be clarified. Europe doesn’t have a mechanism to regulate these kinds of speculative trades at all. Agriculture in the global south is still subject to the “Washington consensus” model, driven by markets and with governments taking a back seat to the private sector. And the only reason biofuels aren’t more prominent is that the oil they’re designed to replace is currently cheap.

    Clearly, neither grain speculation, nor forcing countries to rely on international markets for food, nor encouraging the use of agricultural resources for fuel instead of nourishment are natural phenomena. These are political decisions, taken and enforced not only by Bill Clinton, but legions of largely unaccountable international development professionals. The consequences of these decisions are ones with which people in the global south live everyday. Which brings us back to Mozambique.

    Recall that Mozambique’s street protests coincided not only with a rise in the price of bread, but with electricity and water price hikes too. In an interview with Portugal’s Lusa news agency, Alice Mabota of the Mozambican League of Human Rights didn’t use the term “food riots”. In her words: “The government… can’t understand or doesn’t want to understand that this is a protest against the higher cost of living.” The action on the streets isn’t simply a protest about food, but a wider act of rebellion. Half of Mozambique’s poor already suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the FAO. The extreme weather behind the grain fires in Russia transformed a political context in which citizens were increasingly angry and frustrated with their own governments.

    Yesterday, I reached Diamantino Nhampossa, the co-ordinator of Mozambique’s União Nacional de Camponeses (National Peasants Union of Mozambique). “These protests are going to end,” he told me. “But they will always come back. This is the gift that the development model we are following has to offer.” Like many Mozambicans, he knows full well which way the wind blows.

  • A climate warning from the deep

    Bryozoans make unlikely prophets of doom. Nevertheless, scientists believe these tiny marine creatures, which live glued to the side of boulders, rocks and other surfaces, reveal a disturbing aspect about Antarctica that has critical implications for understanding the impact of climate change.

    British Antarctic Survey researchers have found the dispersal of these minute animals suggests a sea passage once divided Antarctica 125,000 years ago. The discovery was made for the ongoing Census of Antarctic Marine Life project and involved comparing bryozoans from the Ross and Weddell seas. These two seas are separated by the west Antarctic ice sheet, one of the planet’s largest masses of ice. Bryozoans found in the Ross and Weddell seas should have been fairly different in structure if the sheet had been stable and ancient. The two populations would have slowly evolved in different manners, if the sheet was millions of years old.

    But Dr David Barnes and his team discovered that the two populations were almost identical, indicating the two seas must have been connected by a major sea passage in the recent past, around 125,000 years ago. “What we’ve got is this group of animals that don’t disperse very well because the adults don’t move at all and the larvae are short-lived and sink, so they find it difficult to get around,” says Barnes. “So you’re left with this nice signal of where things used to be connected and, in this case, it appears to be a connection between what is now an ice sheet.”

    The impact of the west Antarctica ice sheet melting sufficiently to let a major sea passage extend through it would have been considerable. A complete collapse of the sheet today would lead to a sea-level rise of between 11ft and 16ft, for example, though the event uncovered by Barnes may only have been a partial one. Nevertheless, the research indicates that the great ice sheet, once thought to be impregnable, is really highly vulnerable.

  • UN calls special meeting to address food shortages amid predictions of riots.

     

    Last week, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) called an emergency meeting for 24 September to discuss the food crisis. In Mozambique, riots broke out following the government’s decision to raise bread prices by 30%, leaving seven people dead and hundreds injured. At the same time the Russian government extended its export ban on wheat by another 12 months as it battles drought, shortages and inflation at home, which threatens to push up prices further. European wheat prices hit more than €231 (£192) a tonne last week, just below last month’s two-year high of €236 but still 60% higher than a year ago in sterling terms. Corn prices are at their highest level since June 2009 while sugar has been on a rollercoaster ride after hitting a 29-year peak in February.

    FAO economist Abdolreza Abbassian raises the prospect of further civil unrest in less developed countries if the price of basic food continues to rise: “Russia’s move is another unfortunate development that will prolong upward pressure on grain prices and contribute to higher price instability in world markets. Rioting may reappear in poor districts around the world if prices of basic foodstuff commodities continue to rise further. “

    Surging wheat prices, along with higher sugar and oil-seed costs, drove the FAO’s international food price index up 5% last month, the biggest rise since last November. The organisation estimates this year’s wheat crop at 646m tonnes – down 5% from last year – while world barley production, also hit by bad weather in the former Soviet Union and the EU, is forecast to drop by 22% to a 30-year low of 129m tonnes. Last month global meat prices hit a 20-year high.

    In the UK, Premier Foods, owner of the Hovis brand, has warned the global shortage of wheat could push up the cost of bread by at least 5p a loaf, while other food brands such as McDougalls flour and Mr Kipling cakes will also cost more.

    A leading UK supplier of flour, Rank Hovis, is to increase its prices from 6 September. Soaring barley prices mean that the pub price of a pint of beer could top £4 this time next year.

    Experts fear that UK food price inflation, which was running at an annual rate of 3.4% in July, could now rise to 10% – depending on whether costs continue to climb and to what extent food manufacturers absorb the increases.

    The Grocer‘s food and drink editor Alex Beckett reckons that if prices for commodities such as wheat, sugar, cocoa and palm oil remain at current levels, by January the weekly shop could cost 10% more than 12 months previously.

    Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec, said: “If the current rise in prices is sustained, food price inflation might climb to 7-8% by mid-2011.” And Philip Rush, at Nomura, sees food prices going higher over the next year, tipping back up to above 5% year-on-year growth.

    Meat

    Global meat prices have risen sharply as a drop in production from exporters such as Argentina and the US has coincided with rising demand from China, where consumers are eating more meat than they used to. The FAO’s index of meat prices in August climbed to its highest level since it started compiling the index in 1990, up 16% over the past year. Lamb prices are at a 37-year high, beef prices are at their highest level in two years and pork and poultry have also become dearer.

    Mark Topliff at Eblex, which represents the English beef and sheep industry, explains that in recent years, falling cattle prices have led to fewer farmers keeping cows in major exporting nations like Argentina, Brazil and the US, the world’s biggest beef producer. The removal of EU subsidies under the common agricultural policy for British and European sheep farmers has also led to a decline in sheep numbers.

    Wheat

    The European flour milling association has highlighted the role of speculators in driving up wheat prices, although the global shortage appears to be the main factor. The main culprit is the weather – wheat prices have been going up since the summer when crops were hit by a drought and wildfires in Russia and dry weather in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, compounded by unusually wet weather in Canada and the floods in Pakistan.

    Russia, the world’s fourth-biggest wheat producer, has imposed an export ban on grain amid its worst drought in at least 50 years, and prime minister Vladimir Putin warned last Thursday that the ban could stay in place until after the 2011 harvest, forcing importers in the Middle East and North Africa to turn to Europe and the US for supplies.

    “This has completely changed the complexion of the market,” said Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, a commodities analyst at Barclays Capital. “We see further upside for corn and wheat prices. Consuming countries are scrambling to gain access to supplies,” she warns.

    Britain’s wheat crop is expected to be close to average this year, but Germany, which had more rain in August, could become reliant on wheat imports for the first time in 10 years. The winter wheat harvest will be 9% lower this year than last, according to the German farmers’ association, forcing Germany to import grain from France and the US.Bad weather has also affected the quality of the wheat, which suffers when it stands too long in the rain. Lower-quality wheat is used as animal feed.

    The premium for high-quality milling wheat used in bread, cereals and biscuits, which now costs about £195 a tonne, has climbed to £30-£40 from the typical £10-£15.

    “If we don’t get a bumper harvest from the southern hemisphere, namely Argentina and Australia [due at Christmas], the wheat price could continue to stay where it is,” said Guy Gagen, chief arable adviser at the National Farmers’ Union. The Northern hemisphere – the US, Canada, Russia and northern Europe – produces 80% of the world’s wheat supply.

    Experts note, however, that the market is not in the same position as it was in 2007/08, when global wheat stocks were very low, as there have been two seasons of replenishment. The problem is that many countries will not release their surplus stocks to the market but are hoarding them, says Alexander Waugh, director general of the National Association of British and Irish Millers.

    On a brighter note, he adds: “High prices tend to encourage farmers to plant more crops. The situation may be uncomfortable but it’s not out of control or unmanageable.”

    Cocoa

    In mid-July, a US commodities trading company, Armajaro, attempted to corner the market in cocoa by taking delivery of 7% of the world’s supply at a time when prices were at a 32-year high of $3,200 per tonne (£2,077) – a $1bn bet. The fear was Armajaro would squeeze the market, forcing prices even higher. In the event prices have gone into reverse, falling by more than 25% as fears have receded that supplies from Ivory Coast, which produces 40% of the world’s cocoa, would be hit by bad weather.

    However, last week Barry Callebaut – the world’s biggest chocolate company, which supplies confectioners such as Nestlé – said prices would stay high.

    “Retailers do not want to accept higher prices at the moment in spite of higher raw material costs,” said the company’s chief executive. “But pressures will rise, prices will just have to increase.”

    Sugar

    Sugar prices hit a 29-year high in February, but then fell back sharply. However, last week Brazil – the world’s biggest sugar producer – warned crops may be lower than expected as a result of dry weather and the price climbed back to its highest level since March.

    Coffee

    Coffee prices are at a 12-year high and global stocks at their lowest level for a decade. Several coffee bars have started to push through price rises, although Starbucks said last week that it would not raise prices.

  • Too fearful to publicise peak oil reality

     

    What made this little graph so devastating was that it estimated energy resources by 2030 that were woefully inadequate for the energy-hungry economies of India and China. Business as usual in oil production threatens massive conflict over sharing it.

    Now, this all seemed pretty gigantic news to me but guess where the World Energy Outlook chose to put this graph? Was it in the front, was it prominently discussed in the foreword? Did it cause headlines around the world. No, no, no. It was buried deep into the report and no reference was made to it in the press conference a year ago.

    The fear is that panicky markets can cause enormous damage – panic-buying that prompts fights over resources, which in turn could lead to power cuts in some places and other such mayhem. But so far in facing this huge challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don’t even need to be talking or thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous.

    So in reply to the Queen’s question of a few years hence, we did see it coming but we chose to ignore it.

  • Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks

     

    Experts say they have received a letter from David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the DECC, asking for information and advice on peak oil amid a growing campaign from industrialists such as Sir Richard Branson for the government to put contingency plans in place to deal with any future crisis.

    A spokeswoman for the department insisted the request from Mackay was “routine” and said there was no change of policy other than to keep the issue under review. The peak oil argument was effectively dismissed as alarmist by former energy minister Malcolm Wicks in a report to government last summer, while oil companies such as BP, which have major influence in Whitehall, take a similar line.

    But documents obtained under the FoI Act seen by the Observer show that a “peak oil workshop” brought together staff from the DECC, the Bank of England and Ministry of Defence among others to discuss the issue.

    A ministry note of that summit warned that “[Government] public lines on peak oil are ‘not quite right’. They need to take account of climate change and put more emphasis on reducing demand and also the fact that peak oil may increase volatility in the market.”

    Those comments were written 12 months ago, but a letter in response to the FoI request written by DECC officials and dated 31 July 2010 says it can only release some information on what is currently under policy discussion because they are “ongoing” and “high profile” in nature.

    The letter adds: “We recognise the public interest arguments in favour of disclosing this information. In particular we recognise that greater transparency makes government more open and accountable and could help provide an insight into peak oil.

    “However any public interest in the disclosure of such information must be balanced with the need to ensure that ministers and advisers can discuss policy in a manner which allows for frank exchanges of views and opinions about important and sensitive issues.”

    Yet the note of the workshop distributed last year talks about secrecy around the topic being “probably not good”, although it also suggests officials stick to the line that the “International Energy Agency is an authoritative source in this field” and stresses how the IEA believes there is sufficient reserves to meet demand till 2030 as long as investment in new reserves is maintained.

    But the Paris-based organisation has come under increasing scrutiny from a growing group of critics who believe the IEA’s optimism is misplaced. Last year the Guardian revealed that the IEA was also riven with dissent over the issue with senior staff members privately telling newspaper they thought the official numbers on future global oil supply were over-optimistic.

    The IEA predicted in the 2009 World Energy Outlook published last November that oil demand would grow from 85m barrels a day today to 88m in 2015 and reach 105m in 2030. The organisation presumes the challenge of meeting that demand can equally be met by a mixture of higher Opec production and considerably more output from unconventional sources.

    But an internal IEA source said: “Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.”

    The IEA has denied the claims of internal dissent and sticks by its figures. But Kjell Aleklett, a professor of physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and author of a report The Peak of the Oil Age, claims crude production is more likely to be 75m barrels a day by 2030 than the “unrealistic” 105m projected by the IEA.

  • Tibetan nomads struggle as grasslands disappear from the roof of the world

     

    Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow.

    Phuntsok Dorje (name has been changed) is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. “There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us,” he says. “It’s getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year.”

    Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands.

    “This all used to be a lake. There wasn’t a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn’t have made it through,” said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert.

    “Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living,” said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. “The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment.”

    Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial “ecological migration” scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards.

    The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled.

    Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung.

    Some feel cheated. “If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It’s hopeless,” said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. “We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free.”

    Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle.

    In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian’s questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile.

    “The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines,” said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. “This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude.”

    The programme’s effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. “Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven’t improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact.”

    Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau.

    Infestation

    Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. “The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved.”

    A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots.

    Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees.

    There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study.

    “People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research,” said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. “The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It’s a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere.”

    Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he’s seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. “The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It’s getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do.”

    Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

    • To order Jonathan Watts’ book, When a Billion Chinese Jump, for £9.99 (rrp £14.99) call 0845 606 4232 or visit guardianbooks.co.uk.