Global Food Security Governance

Civil society engagement in the reformed Committee on World Food Security

Jessica Duncan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138802520
• eBook ISBN: 9781317623199
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

In 2007/8 world food prices spiked and global economic crisis set in, leaving hundreds of millions of people unable to access adequate food. The international reaction was swift. In a bid for leadership, the 123 member countries of the United Nations' Committee on World Food Security (CFS) adopted a series of reforms with the aim of becoming the foremost international, inclusive and intergovernmental platform for food security. Central to the reform was the inclusion of participants (including civil society and the private sector) across all activities of the Committee.

Drawing on data collected from policy documents, interviews and participant observation, this book examines the re-organization and functioning of a UN Committee that is coming to be known as a best practice in global governance. Framed by key challenges that plague global governance, the impact and implication of increased civil society engagement are examined by tracing policy negotiations within the CFS, in particular, policy roundtables on smallholder sensitive investment and food price volatility and negotiations on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, and the Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition.

The author shows that through their participation in the Committee, civil society actors are influencing policy outcomes. Yet analysis also reveals that the CFS is being undermined by other actors seeking to gain and maintain influence at the global level. By way of this analysis, this book provides empirically-informed insights into increased participation in global governance processes.

1 Introduction and overview The world food price spikes

DOI: 10.4324/9781315754130-1

Introduction

From 2007–2008 world food prices spiked and global economic crisis set in. The United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (2008c) declared that more than 1 billion people were going hungry. The rise of food prices heightened awareness of food insecurity and gave fresh political momentum to addressing the problem. The international community responded with a swell of activity. One important resulting initiative was the reform of the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

At the height of the crisis, the Committee’s 123 member countries adopted a series of reforms with the aim of becoming the foremost international, inclusive and intergovernmental platform for food security. Central to the reform was the opening up the Committee to the participation of non-governmental actors. The mandate of the reformed CFS is ambitious; understanding how the Committee is achieving its reform objectives and the position it occupies in the changing architecture of global food security governance is the focus of this research.

The state of hunger in the world

Between 2006 and 2008 international food prices soared and an additional 200 million people were estimated to have gone hungry (DEFRA 2010:2).¹ When prices peaked, one-sixth of humanity (around 1 billion people) were estimated to be undernourished (Demeke et al. 2009; FAO 2009b, 2011a, 2012a).² In addition to malnutrition, 130–155 million people were pushed into poverty in 2008 because of soaring food and fuel prices (Cord et al. 2009). Rising food costs resulted in food riots and civil unrest in more than 60 countries (FAO 2011a; Zaman et al. 2008) and generated appeals for food aid from 36 countries (USA 2011). Countries that had long been considered food secure faced the threat of limited food imports as a result of protectionist export restrictions put in place by some food exporting countries (DEFRA 2010; Sharma 2010). Journalists declared the end to the era of cheap food (Arusa 2011; Cookson 2011; Elliot 2012), while the international NGO Oxfam (2012:1) accused policy makers of having “taken cheap food for granted for nearly 30 years,” adding “those days are gone.”

Post-crisis analysis suggests that in response to rising food prices, countries adopted different net trade positions (e.g., exporter, importer) and different policy responses to price and income shocks, leading to a broad range of outcomes (FAO 2011b:8). Larger countries were able to insulate their markets from the crisis through the implementation of restrictive trade policies and safety nets, but these policies had the negative effect of increasing prices and volatility on international markets (FAO 2011b:8). Countries most vulnerable to food swings on the international market are typically poor and net food importing. In 2008, the food import bill for low-income food-deficit countries increased by about 35 percent from 2006 (FAO 2012a). They lacked capacity to restrict exports, and had limited food reserves and inadequate funds to procure food at the higher prices (FAO 2011b:8). These countries, the majority of which are in Africa, bore “the brunt of the crisis, and staple food prices rose substantially in these countries” (FAO 2011b:8). Across the African continent, an additional 28 million people went undernourished as a result of the food price spikes (FAO 2011b). Food riots broke out in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Mozambique and Somalia, leading governments to increase military presence and to take emergency policy measures (FAO 2008b). In East Africa, more than 17 million people faced serious food insecurity as a result of low harvests, high food prices and conflict (FAO 2008b). In West Africa, high food prices negatively affected access to food as the price of staples such as sorghum, millet, rice and maize increased. The FAO (2008c) estimates that in Southern Africa high food prices impacted over 8.7 million people. In Asia, the number of people suffering from undernourishment, while higher than the numbers suffering in Africa, has been decreasing and the impact of the 2007–2008 food price spikes did not have as great an impact.

In 2007 alone, 41 million additional people in Latin America and the Caribbean were added to the rapidly growing number of undernourished people worldwide. Prior to the food price spikes, Latin America had implemented far-reaching economic reforms geared towards trade liberalization and was:

considered relatively stable and capable of absorbing external shocks, thanks to its higher foreign exchange liquidity; decreased public sector and external borrowing needs; exchange rate flexibility; lower exposure to currency, interest rate, and rollover risks in public sector debt portfolios; and improved access to local-currency loans.

(Robles and Torero 2010:117)

Robles and Torero (2010:118) note that prior to the 2007–2008 price spikes, countries in the region were generally on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of hungry people by 2015. This success is no longer guaranteed. The Latin American case serves to highlight the fragility of “emerging economies” and the impact of rising food prices on vulnerable populations, as illustrated by the regression in development targets.

Buttressed amid a burgeoning global economic crisis and a rapidly expanding environmental crisis, the food price crisis of 2007–2008 challenged dominant assumptions about food security, agriculture and development, prompting many policy makers, analysts and food producers to grapple with an increasing number of variables that made up a so-called “perfect storm” (Headey et al. 2009). These variables included environmental challenges, demographic shifts, rising energy prices, demand for biofuels, depreciation of the US dollar, unfavorable weather and trade shocks, panic purchases and export restrictions (Headey et al. 2009). This storm served to illustrate the growing interconnectedness of agricultural, energy and financial markets (Wise and Murphy 2012), but also disrupted the dominant food security policy, permanently changing the public policy debate on food security (HLPE 2011:17) and ushering in an era of food price volatility.

We now live in a world where supply and demand are more closely aligned, natural resource bases are shrinking, and agricultural systems are increasingly threatened by climate change. Research indicates that food price volatility is expected to remain the norm but drivers of volatility in international markets (e.g., biofuels, speculation and climate change) have yet to be adequately addressed (FAO 2009b; G20 2011; HLPE 2011; McCreary 2011). This new context demands increased international cooperation and coordination. Things are not likely to return to what they were, and now the human, social and economic costs are higher than the cost of inaction. In response, the world food situation is being redefined (Hart 2009; Von Braun 2007).

The problem has also shifted. When the concept of food security emerged in the 1970s, it was very much framed in the context of availability: how to get enough food supply to meet growing demand. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by questions of access as it became clear that availability of food does not guarantee access (Sen 1981). However, the post-2007–2008 crisis reality is grounded where these two challenges intersect. While access remains a problem, the question of availability has re-emerged as a new challenge and will be an increasingly pressing issue due to impacts of climate change, growing demand for food (e.g., changing diets, population growth, biofuels), rising cost of petroleum, restricted availability of water, desertification and soil degradation.

Having examined some of the impacts of the food prices spikes and the resulting crises, attention now turns to a review of the main triggers of the price spikes.

Triggers of the 2007–2008 food price spikes

After decades of historic lows, the food price rise of 2007–2008 sparked a new era of higher food prices and extreme food price volatility (HLPE 2011:9).³ While food prices peaked in the summer of 2008, they actually started to rise in late 2006 alongside rising oil prices. Some claimed that high prices presented an opportunity for producers of agricultural commodities; however, the cost of agricultural production rose at the same time due to higher energy and fertilizer prices (DEFRA 2010:9) often nullifying potential gains from increased market prices.

While several factors contributed to the food price spikes, DEFRA (2010:10) noted:

Attributing significance to one factor or another in the price spike is very difficult (and attributing robust percentages, arguably impossible), given the complex way that the various issues combine. Take away one or other of several of these factors and it may well be that there would have been no price spike, but that does not mean then that each of these was the cause of the event.

There is general agreement that contributing factors on the supply side included increases in the cost of oil, poor harvest—especially of wheat—and decreased production due to drought (Abbott et al. 2008; Baffes and Haniotis 2010; Collins 2008; DEFRA 2010; FAO 2008a, 2008c; Gilbert 2008; Trostle 2008; Wiggins et al. 2010; Zaman et al. 2008). On the demand side, and from a financial perspective, inflation from world economic growth is a commonly accepted factor. Policies, including export bans and restrictions as well as the reduction of import tariffs, also played a role. The depreciation of the US dollar led to an increase in prices tied to the US dollar, resulting in higher costs across the food supply chain (Demeke et al. 2009; Oxfam 2012; Sharma 2010; Wiggins et al. 2010). Speculation on futures markets also played a role in the price spikes, although the significance is debated (FAO 2008a, 2011a; Gilbert 2008; Oxfam 2012; Sharma 2010; Wiggins et al. 2010).

Yet changes in supply and demand fundamentals cannot adequately explain the price spikes (Robles and Torero 2010:122). As David Barling (2012) notes, trying to categorize challenges in these terms can prove problematic in agriculture and food policy and some elements are central to both supply and demand. Barling (2012:5) uses the example of land, which is both a demand and supply factor:

[A]s demand for good fertile land for production is often in heavily populated coasted and estuarial areas and river valleys and plains where there are residential demands. Equally, land is a prerequisite for food production while competing with a range of other demands, not least other non-food crops such as large scale production of biofuels to meet the competing demand for new energy sources.

Similarly, ad hoc trade policy interventions and excessive speculation in the commodity futures market also fall outside of a simple supply and demand equation (Robles and Torero 2010:122). Attempting to understand the reasons for these spikes through such a model inevitably frames solutions with the same perspective, reinforcing an approach which may not warrant reinforcement.

Crisis repeating: Era of food price volatility

After the food price spikes of 2007–2008, food security, and agriculture more broadly, remained on the international agenda as we shifted into the predicted era of food price volatility. And, as the name would suggest, food prices spiked again in 2010. Global figures on hunger from 2010 suggest that the number of hungry people had decreased to 925 million, in part due to economic growth and a reduction in international food prices from the 2008 highs (FAO 2012b). However, between July and September 2010, the price of wheat increased from 60 to 80 percent, a reaction to crop losses due to a period of drought in Russia and a subsequent export ban imposed by the Russian Federation (FAO 2012a). Rice and maize prices also rose during this period.

The food system remains in a state of crisis: food markets remain remarkably volatile. In the spring of 2011 international food prices were on the rise for the second time in three years. In February 2011, the World Bank Food Price Index reached its 2008 peak, after rising by 47 percent from June 2010 (World Bank 2011:i).

In 2012, in the US, a large proportion of agriculture was located in areas affected by drought. In July 2012, 88 percent of US corn, 44 percent of cattle production and 40 percent of s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• 1 Introduction and overview The world food price spikes
• 2 Global governance A framework for analysis
• 3 The evolution of global food security policy
• 4 The reform of the Committee on World Food Security
• 5 Participation in global governance Coordinating “the voices of those most affected by food insecurity”
• 6 Multilateral power dynamics Comparing outcomes of policy roundtables
• 7 Best practice The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure
• 8 Policy coordination at the global level The Global Strategic Framework
• 9 Conclusion Reflections on civil society engagement in global food security governance
• Index