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Page added on May 6, 2015
World heading to grave food crisis
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Natural disasters in food exporting countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, have aggravated the situation
Essa Al Ghurair speaking at the conference. -Supplied photo Ras Al Khaimah – The world is heading towards a serious global food crisis particularly as the food exporting countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, have been hit with massive natural disasters. And looking for alternative solutions to the problem has become inevitable. This was affirmed by local and international experts at the Third International Conference on Global Warming: Food Security held on Tuesday in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. The conference, held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, highlights key issues of food security and climate change. While Gulf countries import up to 90 per cent of their food, industry stakeholders are urged to invest in the region’s food security, according to a top Emirati businessman. Essa Al Ghurair, Chairman of Al Ghurair Resources, said the population of the GCC countries is expected to cross 53.5 million in 2020 from 36 million today, according to Alpen Capital’s latest reports on healthcare and food security. “Gulf countries have therefore increased investment in food-growing farms in Asia and Africa and started to build strategic food reserves.” The food crisis is projected to be worse in 2050 when the world population grows to nine billion, he added. “As such, the UAE needs to increase food by 35 per cent.” The per capita food consumption for the GCC region is forecasted to reach 983kg by 2017, Ghurair said. “Food import bill of the countries in the Gulf region double from $24.1 billion in 2009 to $53.1 billion by 2020.” This increase is attributed to the rapidly growing population in the GCC, increase in foreign tourists as well as the rising income levels of the region, he noted. “Although nominal GDP is forecast to soar to over $2 trillion in 2020, the ability of the GCC governments to ensure food security would largely depend on cash reserves.” However, global warming, food security and sustainability are some of the focal issues that gulf countries are trying to tackle. “Food security could help socio-economic development and strengthen stability in the region.” Al Ghurair said the UAE has been very active to ensure food security. “The country is also promoting the development of aquaculture projects and improving food security through purchase of arable lands in East Africa, Southern Europe and South Asia.” Dr Saif Mohammed Al Ghais, Executive Director of the RAK Environment Protection and Development Authority, said the conference, addressed by key experts from the United Nations, United States, the UAE government and the private sector, is meant to ensure sustainability of the UAE natural resources. “Decision makers need to pay more attention to food security which is directly affected by global warming that all regional and international efforts must join hands to face the problem, particularly at poor countries with no food resources.” |
12 Comments on "World heading to grave food crisis"
apneaman on Wed, 6th May 2015 4:05 pm
“Natural disasters” ? Sure if it makes you feel better about it.
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We Blew It: A Time Line of Human Impact on the Planet
http://scs-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/int/v22n5/htdocs/we-blew-it/human-impact.jpg
Northwest Resident on Wed, 6th May 2015 4:17 pm
Anybody ignorant enough to be talking seriously about “2050 when the world population grows to nine billion” is immediately disqualified as someone not worth paying attention to.
Perhaps a better title for this article would be, “World heading to the grave due to food crisis”.
No? Then how about this alternative title: “How TPTB get the word out to those few individuals perceptive enough to catch the real meaning while instilling false confidence and delusional peace of mind in all others”
Davy on Wed, 6th May 2015 4:44 pm
N/R, agreed, whenever I hear excel goal seek titles of the BAUtopians about problems far into the future I think “numb nut”.
The problem with BAUtopians is they can’t acknowledge immediate problems as predicaments. If the BAUtopians acknowledged these things it would destroy the social fabric. If you come out and say we are at limits of growth and a collapse is near all hell would break lose.
Instead we get sanitized articles putting the day of reckoning out to either 2030 or 2050 depending on what they are goal seeking. This folks are cowards and intellectual light weights afraid of facing the horrible truth of a a bottleneck that will rebalance population and consumption to a level unimaginable by these clean shaven academics with manicured hands.
apneaman on Wed, 6th May 2015 6:20 pm
We’ve Damaged the Planet So Badly It’s Entering a New Epoch
May 6, 2015
http://www.vice.com/read/welcome-to-the-age-of-man-0000642-v22n5
BC on Wed, 6th May 2015 6:47 pm
Davy, I think you are precisely correct, FWIW.
JuanP on Wed, 6th May 2015 7:16 pm
If you live in any of the GCC countries, get out while you still can!
steve on Wed, 6th May 2015 7:33 pm
@ Davy…yes I have heard those same numbers 15 years is a common number they throw out… I still say we are already at collapse it is just papered over with stock market manipulation and FED manipulation…
Davy on Wed, 6th May 2015 8:10 pm
Steve, it is hard to define collapse. What benchmarks do we have? We are a global people now so is that collapse global, regional, national, and local. I say all of the above in varying degrees. We also have to include financial, ecosystem, and social to the mix. The subsets are many and varied. This is a complex world so we have many subsets. We are on nearly every prime piece of real estate around the globe so we have multiple locals.
The whole painting is impressionistic and surreal. I say painting because trying to view this situation with linear thinking just confuses things. Personally I am calling it a bumpy descent. We have left the bumpy plateau. Real growth is over and never to return to BAU. Time frame is indeterminate because we are part of this process and unable to detach and look in like a scientist might a petri dish. You are definitely safe to say we are in collapse and I can’t argue with that.
Lawfish1964 on Thu, 7th May 2015 9:44 am
This will hit the fan here in the next year. Lake Mead is at its lowest level since 1937, when it was being filled. The people in California, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada will soon find that technology can’t save the day and make water appear in the desert. And lo and behold, the Fed can’t simply print water. When the first middle class stooge goes to his sink to get some water and the tap is dry, that’s when the SHTF. Talk about a black swan event. The west will be uninhabitable (not that I’d want to inhabit it anyway).
Speculawyer on Thu, 7th May 2015 11:08 am
Have you noticed that most of the refugees and migrants move in the direction from closer to the equator to closer to the poles.
Central America -> USA
North Africa & Mid-East -> Europe
Central Africa -> South Africa
SouthEast Asia -> Australia
Climate change is real.
GregT on Thu, 7th May 2015 2:17 pm
Climate change is going to get even more real. Soon to be:
USA -> Canada
Europe -> Northern Europe/ Russia
apneaman on Thu, 7th May 2015 2:23 pm
Giles Slade discusses his book American Exodus — Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival. Some scientists predict the sea will rise one and a half metres before 2100, but rapidly melting polar ice caps could make the real increase much higher. In the coming century, intensifying storms will batter our coasts, and droughts and extreme heat events will be annual threats. All this will occur as population grows, and declining water resources make growing food ever more challenging. What will happen when the United States cannot provide food or fresh water for the overheated, overcrowded cities where 80 per cent of Americans currently live? The good news is that this overall decline of habitability in the mid-latitudes will be matched by increases in the carrying capacity of sparsely populated lands above the 49th parallel. This phenomenon suggests that waves of environmental refugees will travel north as southern conditions worsen. Our northern lands are our Noah’s Ark – a vital refuge in the time of mankind’s greatest need.
American Exodus argues that we are entering a long period of global turmoil which will be characterized by human migration on an unprecedented scale. It is a frighteningly believable survey of our immediate future, but it ends on a note of hope: we may yet survive the coming century of climatic change if we act now to safeguard our shelter of last resort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmb1nFdRS8Q