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We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.

The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded. All these prices are double those of a year or two ago.

Lester R. Brown in his office. (Photo courtesy Earth Policy Institute)

As a result, prices of food products made directly from these commodities such as bread, pasta, and tortillas, and those made indirectly, such as pork, poultry, beef, milk, and eggs, are everywhere on the rise.

In Mexico, corn meal prices are up 60 percent. In Pakistan, flour prices have doubled. China is facing rampant food price inflation, some of the worst in decades. In industrial countries, the higher processing and marketing share of food costs has softened the blow, but even so, prices of food staples are climbing.

By late 2007, the U.S. price of a loaf of whole wheat bread was 12 percent higher than a year earlier, milk was up 29 percent, and eggs were up 36 percent. In Italy, pasta prices were up 20 percent. World grain prices have increased dramatically on three occasions since World War II, each time as a result of weather-reduced harvests.

But now it is a matter of demand simply outpacing supply. In seven of the last eight years world grain production has fallen short of consumption. These annual shortfalls have been covered by drawing down grain stocks, but the carryover stocks - the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins - have now dropped to 54 days of world consumption, the lowest on record.

From 1990 to 2005, world grain consumption, driven largely by population growth and rising consumption of grain-based animal products, climbed by an average of 21 million tons per year. Then came the explosion in demand for grain used in U.S. ethanol distilleries, which jumped from 54 million tons in 2006 to 81 million tons in 2007. This 27 million ton jump more than doubled the annual growth in world demand for grain. If 80 percent of the 62 distilleries now under construction are completed by late 2008, grain used to produce fuel for cars will climb to 114 million tons, or 28 percent of the projected 2008 U.S. grain harvest.

Current ethanol production is primarily from the starch in kernels of field corn. (Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy NREL)

Historically the food and energy economies have been largely separate, but now with the construction of so many fuel ethanol distilleries, they are merging. If the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy.

Thus as the price of oil rises, the price of grain follows it upward. A University of Illinois economics team calculates that with oil at $50 a barrel, it is profitable - with the ethanol subsidy of 51¢ a gallon (equal to $1.43 per bushel of corn) - to convert corn into ethanol as long as the price is below $4 a bushel.

But with oil at $100 a barrel, distillers can pay more than $7 a bushel for corn and still break even. If oil climbs to $140, distillers can pay $10 a bushel for corn - double the early 2008 price of $5 per bushel.

The World Bank reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on, will lose their grip and begin to fall off.

Projections by Professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing from over 800 million to 625 million by 2025.

But in early 2007 their update of these projections, taking into account the biofuel effect on world food prices, showed the number of hungry people climbing to 1.2 billion by 2025. That climb is already under way. Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses. As grain prices climb, a politics of food scarcity is emerging as exporting countries restrict exports to limit the rise in domestic food prices.

At the end of January, Russia - one of the top five wheat exporters - will impose a 40 percent export tax on wheat, effectively banning exports. Argentina, another leading wheat exporter, closed export registrations for wheat indefinitely in early December until it could assess the condition of the new crop. And Viet Nam, the number two rice exporter after Thailand, has banned rice exports for several months and will likely not lift this ban until the new crop comes to market. Rising food prices are translating into social unrest. It began in early 2007 with tortilla demonstrations in Mexico.

Then came pasta protests in Italy. More recently, rising bread prices in Pakistan have become a source of unrest. In Jakarta, 10,000 Indonesians gathered in front of the presidential palace on January 14th this year to protest the doubling of soybean prices that has raised the price of tempeh, the national soy-based protein staple.

When a supermarket in Chongqing, China, where cooking oil prices have soared, offered this oil at a reduced price, the resulting stampede when doors opened killed three people and injured 31.

Somali women collect plastic containers full of vegetable oil donated by Saudi Arabia at a World Food Program distribution point. (Photo by Peter Smerdon courtesy WFP)

As economic stresses translate into political stresses, the number of failing states, such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Haiti, which was already increasing before the rise in food prices began, could increase even faster.

There is much to be concerned about on the food front. We enter this new crop year with the lowest grain stocks on record, the highest grain prices ever, the prospect of a smaller U.S. grain harvest as several million acres of land that shifted from soybeans to corn last year go back to soybeans, the need to feed an additional 70 million people, and U.S. distillers wanting 33 million more tons of grain to supply the new ethanol distilleries coming online this year.

Corn futures prices for December 2008 delivery are higher than those for March, suggesting that market analysts see even tighter supplies after the next harvest. Whereas previous dramatic rises in world grain prices were weather-induced, this one is policy-induced and can be dealt with by policy adjustments.

The crop fuels program that currently satisfies scarcely 3 percent of U.S. gasoline needs is simply not worth the human suffering and political chaos it is causing. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into ethanol, it would satisfy scarcely 18 percent of our automotive fuel needs. The irony is that U.S. taxpayers, by subsidizing the conversion of grain into ethanol, are in effect financing a rise in their own food prices. It is time to end the subsidy for converting food into fuel and to do it quickly before the deteriorating world food situation spirals out of control.

{Lester R. Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" where he develops a vision for an environmentally sustainable economy. His principal research areas include food, population, water, climate change, and renewable energy. The recipient of scores of awards and honorary degrees, in 1974, he founded Worldwatch Institute, of which he was president for its first 26 years.}

Growing demand for biodiesel could drive large-scale forest conversion for energy crops, warns a study published in Conservation Biology.
With petroleum supplies expected to peak in the next 5-30 years and growing concern over climate change, biodiesel production may expand by 100-fold by 2050, estimates Lian Pin Koh, a researcher from Princeton University. Koh says that much of this expansion could come at the expense of forests, but the degree of which depends on the feedstocks used. Energy crops like palm oil are significantly more productive than more widely used rapeseed -- which currently accounts for 84 percent of biodiesel production -- but are more likely to be established in carbon-rich and biodiverse ecosystems like the tropical forests of southeast Asia. As such, the environmental trade-off between feedstocks is complex.

Analyzing yields and planting trends for four major biodiesel feedstocks -- rapeseed, sunflower seed, oil palm and soybean -- and projecting future demand for biodiesel, Koh calculates land requirements for various crops to meet projected demand for biofuels.

Forest cover versus palm oil production in Indonesia.

"My calculations showed that the scenario of soybean-based biodiesel production to meet future global biodiesel demand would likely result in the highest amount of habitat loss (76.4–114.2 million ha)

compared with alternative scenarios of sunflower seed- (56.0–61.1 million ha), rapeseed- (25.9–34.9 million ha), and oil palm-based (0.4-5.4 million ha) biodiesel production," wrote Koh. "Fulfilling this requirement would entail a substantial worldwide expansion of feedstock cultivation.

This could lead to potential land-use conflicts, in particular with the need to preserve the world’s remaining natural habitats."

To reduce the impact of forecast biodiesel expansion, Koh recommends increasing the area of natural forest under protection, improving oil-yield efficiency of major biodiesel feedstocks, and looking for alternative energy sources beyond biodiesel.

"Future intensification of biodiesel feedstock production in [the tropics], without proper mitigation guidelines, will likely further threaten the high concentrations of globally endemic species in these biodiversity hotspots," Koh continued. "Given the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and the economic inertia for agricultural expansion in the tropics, there will be no easy solution to the problems caused by intensification of biodiesel feedstock production. There are, however, several key mitigation practices that could help.


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Environmentalists and palm oil producers should work together
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Palm oil doesn't have to be bad for the environment
As traditionally practiced in southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is responsible for widespread deforestation that reduces biodiversity, degrades important ecological services, worsens climate change, and traps workers in inequitable conditions sometimes analogous to slavery. This doesn't have to be the case. Following examples set forth by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and firms like Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, a Malaysian palm oil producer, oil palm can be cultivated in a manner that helps mitigate climate change, preserves biodiversity, and brings economic opportunities to desperately poor rural populations.

Eco-friendly palm oil could help alleviate poverty in Indonesia
The Associated Press (AP) recently quoted Marcel Silvius, a climate expert at Wetlands International in the Netherlands, as saying palm oil is a failure as a biofuel. This would be a misleading statement and one that doesn't help efforts to devise a workable solution to the multiplicity of issues surrounding the use of palm oil.

It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound. Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels.

Today, the Citarum is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories.

So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water.

Their occupants no longer try to fish. It is more profitable to forage for rubbish they can salvage and trade - plastic bottles, broken chair legs, rubber gloves - risking disease for one or two pounds a week if they are lucky.

On what was United Nations World Environment Day, the Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, displayed the shocking abuse that mankind has subjected it to.

More than 500 factories, many of them producing textiles which require chemical treatment, line the banks of the 200-mile river, the largest waterway in West Java, spewing waste into the water.

On top of the chemicals go all the other kinds of human detritus from the factories and the people who work there.

There is no such luxury as a rubbish collection service here. Nor are there any modern toilet facilities. Everything goes into the river.

The filthy water is sucked into the rice paddies, while families risk their health by collecting it for drinking, cooking and washing.

Twenty years ago, this was a place of beauty, and the river still served its people well.

As one local man, Arifin, recalled: "Our wives did their washing there and our children swam."

Its demise began with rapid industrialisation during the late 1980s. The mighty Citarum soon became a garbage bin for the factories.

And the doomsday effect will spread. It is one of two major rivers that feed Lake Saguling, where the French have built the largest power generator in West Java.

Experts predict that as the river chokes, its volume will decrease and the generator will not function properly.

The area will be plunged into darkness.

But at least the factories will be stilled and their waste will stop flowing.

And perhaps the river will begin to breathe again.

The environmental damage caused to developing nations by the world's richest countries amounts to more than the entire third world debt of $1.8 trillion, according to the first systematic global analysis of the ecological damage imposed by rich countries.

The study found that there are huge disparities in the ecological footprint inflicted by rich and poor countries on the rest of the world because of differences in consumption. The authors say that the west's high living standards are maintained in part through the huge unrecognised ecological debts it has built up with developing countries.

"At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor," said Prof Richard Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. "That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of accounting that we do here."

Using data from the World Bank and the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the researchers examined so-called "environmental externalities" or costs that are not included in the prices paid for goods but which cover ecological damage linked to their consumption.

They focused on six areas:

• greenhouse gas emissions,
• ozone layer depletion,
• agriculture,
• deforestation,
• overfishing
• converting mangrove swamps into shrimp farms.

The team calculated the costs of consumption in low, medium and high income countries, both within their borders and outside, from 1961 to 2000. The team used UN definitions for countries in different income categories. Low income countries included Pakistan, Nigeria and Vietnam, and middle income nations included Brazil and China. Rich countries in the study included the UK, US and Japan.

Striking disparities

The magnitude of effects outside the home country was different for each category of consumption.

For example, deforestation and agricultural intensification primarily affect the host country, while the impacts from climate change and ozone depletion show up the disparity between rich and poor most strikingly.

Greenhouse emissions from low-income countries have imposed $740 billion of damage on rich countries, while in return rich countries have imposed $2.3 trillion of damage. This damage includes, for example, flooding from more severe storms as a result of climate change.

Likewise, CFC emissions from rich countries have inflicted between $25 billion and £57 billion of damage to the poorest countries. Increased ultraviolet levels from the ozone hole have led to higher healthcare costs from skin cancer and eye problems.

The converse figure is between $0.58 and $1.3 billion.

The team publish their results today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We know already that climate change is a huge injustice inflicted on the poor," said Dr Neil Adger at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, who was not involved in the research, "This paper is actually the first systematic quantification to produce a map of that ecological debt. Not only for climate change but also for these other areas."

"This is an accounting tool that allows you to say how much the high-income world owes the low-income world for the environmental externalities we impose on them," he said.

The team confined its calculations to areas in which the costs of environmental damage, for example in terms of lost services from ecosystems, are well understood.

That meant leaving out damage from excessive freshwater withdrawals, destruction of coral reefs, biodiversity loss, invasive species and war. So the researchers believe the figures represent a minimum estimate of the true cost.

"We think the measured impact is conservative. And given that it's conservative, the numbers are very striking," said co-author Dr Thara Srinivasan, who is also at Berkeley.

President George W. Bush today saw a model of Masdar City - the world's first zero carbon, zero waste, car free city.

Plans call for the green, sustainable city to open by 2009 in the desert sands of this federation of Gulf states that have built their wealth on oil and natural gas.

After viewing a model of the proposed city at the Emirates Palace Hotel, President Bush said, "We just heard a briefing about how they're going to construct a city based entirely upon renewable energy. It will be an opportunity to see what works and what won't work, and an opportunity to share their technology with others."

"I appreciate the commitment to conservation and to the environment, and the leadership you've shown here," the president said before leaving for Dubai and Saudi Arabia on the last leg of his Middle East visit that began January 9 in Israel.

The electricity for the six square kilometer Masdar City will be generated by photovoltaic panels, while cooling will be provided with concentrated solar power.

Drinking water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant. Landscaping within the city and crops grown outside the city will be irrigated with grey water and treated waste water produced by the city's water treatment plant.

Ground breaks for the construction of the city in early 2008 and is scheduled to open late in 2009.

A model of the Masdar City will be unveiled on January 21, at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, billed as the world's largest conference and exhibition on future energy solutions, innovations, investments, and policy.

Masdar City will host the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology; world-class laboratories and research facilities; commercial space for clean-tech companies; light manufacturing facilities and a carefully selected pool of international tenants who will invest, develop, and commercialize advanced energy technologies.

Design and operation of Masdar City must deal with the realities of Abu Dhabi's sub-tropical, arid climate where temperatures range from a low of around 10° Celsuis (50° F), to a high of around 48° C (118° F) in the summer.

The city is part of the Masdar Initiative, Abu Dhabi's investment in the exploration, development and commercialization of future energy sources and clean technology solutions.

"The world needs a portfolio of solutions," said Dr. Sultan al Jaber, CEO of Masdar. "It can no longer be hydrocarbons or renewables. It is a combination of both."

Artist's conception of Masdar City. (Image courtesy the Masdar Initiative)

The Gulf real estate sector must address sustainability issues if it wants to deliver the US$500 billion of developments planned for the next seven years in the region, Dr. al Jaber has said.

The global conservation organization WWF will work with Masdar to ensure the city meets standards of sustainability which include specific targets for the city's ecological footprint.

The cooperation will take place through the "One Planet Living™" program, a global initiative launched by WWF and environmental consultancy BioRegional.

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, director of WWF International's One Planet Living initiative, said, "Today Abu Dhabi is embarking on a journey to become the global capital of the renewable energy revolution. Abu Dhabi is the first hydrocarbon-producing nation to have taken such a significant step towards sustainable living."

The principles of the Masdar Target include zero carbon, zero waste, and sustainable transport through facilitating and encouraging the use of public transport, vehicle sharing, supporting low emissions vehicle initiatives.

Sustainable materials will be used and construction specifications are based on high recycled materials content within building products, Forest Stewardship Council certified timber, and bamboo.

Energy used to manufacture materials will be tracked and the reduction of embodied energy within materials and throughout the construction process will be encouraged.

Sustainable food will be plentiful in Masdar City and retail outlets will meet targets for supplying organic food and sustainable and or fair trade products

The sustainable water target specifies that per capita water consumption will be at least 50 percent less than the national average and all waste water will be re-used.

All "valuable" wildlife species will be conserved or relocated with positive mitigation targets, according to the Masdar target.

Cultural sustainability will be encouraged so that the architecture will integrate local values, fair wages and working conditions for all workers as defined by international labor standards will apply, and facilities and events will be provided for every demographic group.

Dr. al Jaber said, "We are pleased to be able to work with One Planet Living to make our vision a reality."

"Masdar City will question conventional patterns of urban development, and set new benchmarks for sustainability and environmentally friendly design," the Masdar CEO said. "The students, faculty and businesses located in Masdar City will not only be able to witness innovation first-hand, but they will also participate in its development."

U.S. companies and universities will participate in the building and operation of Masdar. The U.S. company CH2M HILL will be the program manager for the first phase of the development and will be responsible for technology integration and for aligning the efforts of the designers, contractors, and third parties with program goals and standards.

"Masdar is inspiring for its vision, boldness and leadership," said CH2M HILL chief executive Ralph Peterson. "It promises to showcase and accelerate the development and adoption of technologies in renewable energy, energy efficiency, carbon management, waste management and water usage."

"As innovations and applications created by the Masdar initiative take hold, cities around the world will surely benefit, making a great idea a truly transformative idea," Peterson said.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company signed an agreement in February 2007 that will allow MIT's Technology and Development Program to help develop the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, the first institution dedicated to research-driven graduate programs in the region.

"MIT faculty and staff will provide advice, scholarly assessment and assistance in connection with the establishment of the Masdar Institute," said MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay. "This includes working with ADFEC to develop collaborative research and create indigenous academic programs, to create a strategy for commercializing Masdar Institute's research results and to build the institute's organizational and administrative capabilities."

The Masdar Institute plans to admit its first postgraduate students in Abu Dhabi in the summer of 2009.

"The Masdar Institute will serve as the nucleus of the Masdar Initiative, feeding it with talent and innovative technologies to enhance economic development and promote new industries using renewable energy and resources in the emirate and the region," said Masdar CEO Dr. al Jaber, who is also the ADFEC.

chief executive.

Pooran Desai OBE, co-founder of BioRegional and Technical Director of the One Planet Living Communities program, said Masdar would be the largest and one of the most advanced sustainable communities in the world.

"The vision of One Planet Living is a world where people everywhere can lead happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the Earth's resources," he said. "Masdar gives us a breathtaking insight into this positive, alternative future."