Earth Day is Great… But….

It seems it would be a cardinal sin not to write about the environment in some way, shape or form on Earth Day. Today the Farm bill remains in conference committee (the 2002 bill expires on Friday), there is a UN summit on rising food prices on Downing Street, and yesterday the UN Chief called for greater efforts to eliminate poverty in Sub Saharan Africa where none of the countries are on track to meet the 2000 millennium development goals.

As earth day, today is taken by many as a chance to applaud recent environmental efforts and educate individuals about the importance of doing more. However, the moment must not pass us by without engaging in the larger discussions about the global impact some of these measures have on those in developing nations- who often are not participants in the environmental debates.

Biofuels have been at the center of such debates, as they bring in a large profit the impact of switching land from food production to producing new fuel sources. The negative impact of biofuels around the world are numerous, as highlighted in TIME magazine last month. But the most devastating aspect by far has been the impact on food crops and therefore on those in developing nations who are hard pressed to buy food.

As fertile land is switched from producing corn for human consumption to more financially advantageous corn for fuel, one of the results has been an increased cost in food products for human consumption. Most first-world shoppers rarely notice the effects as they trickle into our supermarkets, but for the 2.7 billion people who are surviving on less than $2 a day, the effects are profound.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said soaring food prices threatened to plunge more than 100 million people into hunger, leaving a 755-million-dollar shortfall in its 2.9 billion dollar budget, forcing cuts in vital programmes.

…and…

The World Health Organization views hunger as the No. 1 threat to public health across the world, responsible for a third of child deaths and 10 percent of all disease.

“With one child dying every five seconds from hunger-related causes, the time to act is now,” (Gordon Brown at the UN Summit today)