Sustainable Management of Environmental Risks in Agricultural Production: Ensuring the Right to Food

The current research is about the sustainable management of environmental risks in agricultural production to ensure the right to food. In a globalized world, agricultural production is determined by external economic, environmental, social, legal, and political factors, as well as internal factors depending on each State’s conditions. Environmental risk factors, particularly, the growing climate change and its negative effects or the occurrence of a global pandemic, restrict agricultural industry development and create uncertainty in guaranteeing people’s right to food. Agricultural production is the first right to food material guarantee. Ensuring agricultural production is ensuring people’s right to food, their food security or at least the minimum necessary to avoid hunger. The aim is to systematize environmental risks sustainable management concepts and characteristics applied in agricultural production to guarantee the right to food. The environmental risk’s sustainable management entails an efficient use of financial and economic resources in agricultural production to prevent or reduce the environmental risk identified impact. The research establishes some general points of environmental risks sustainable management in agricultural production to guarantee the right to adequate food. The following research methods and techniques were selected: the theoretical-legal and document analysis.

Man Made Famines: an International Crime. A Critique to the Current Gaps in the International Legal Framework

There is a gap in the current legal framework that might result in the infringement of the human right to food and it is given by the lack of criminalisation of intentionally caused famines. Man-made famines should be recognised as crimes against humanity because after analysing the APs and the Rome Statute, we observe that they only mention starvation episodes, and several other behaviours and situations that would end with a famine are not considered at all. We are referring here to cases when a state has the capacity to predict a famine-related disaster and the resources to minimize its impact but it fails to mitigate the effects and to mobilize a response.Compared with starvation, famines are events that have much more severe repercussions for larger areas, larger social groups or even whole countries. Furthermore, they usually cover a much longer period of time such as seasons or even years. Moreover, the perpetrators have to be major players such as governments, organisations or groups with sufficient economic or military power.Finally, famines may be achieved through military actions, policies and other political actions influencing and altering the normal social processes connected to the production of food.

Ensuring food security of indigenous peoples in Latin America by the UN food and agricultural organization (FAO)

The activities of the United Nations in the 21st century, as in the earlier period, are undoubtedly devoted to protection and promotion of human rights. It promotes the realization of fundamental human rights through specialized agencies in various fields taking in account concerns and needs of vulnerable groups of population, in particular indigenous peoples. The World Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), in its turn, develops policies and implements strategies and programs to guarantee food security and the right to food to aboriginal people around the world, including in Latin America.

COVID19 and Human Right To Food: Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in Kenya with the Impacts of Government’s Response Measures, A Participatory Qualitative Study

Background Globally, governments put in place measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Information on the effects of these measures on the urban poor is limited. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of the urban poor in Kenya in the context of government’s COVID-19 response measures and its effects on the human right to food. Methods A participatory qualitative study was conducted in two informal settlements in Nairobi between January and March 2021. Analysis draws on eight focus group discussions, eight in-depth interviews, twelve key informant interviews, two photovoice sessions and three digital storytelling sessions. Phenomenology was applied to understand an individual’s lived experiences with the human right to food during COVID -19. Thematic analysis was performed using NVIVO software. Results The human right to food was affected in various ways. Many people lost their livelihoods affecting affordability of food due to response measures such as social distancing, curfew, and lockdown. The food supply chain was disrupted causing limited availability and access to affordable, safe, adequate, and nutritious food. Consequently, hunger and an increased consumption of low-quality food was reported. The government and other stakeholders instituted social protection measures. However, these were inadequate and marred with irregularities. Some households resorted to scavenging food from dumpsites, skipping meals, sex-work, urban-rural migration and depending on food donations to survive. On the positive side, some households resorted to progressive measures such as urban farming and food sharing in the community. Generally, there was a view that the response measures could have been more sensitive to the human rights of the urban poor. Conclusions The government’s COVID-19 restrictive measures exacerbated the already existing vulnerability of the urban poor to food insecurity and violated their human right to food. Future response measures should be executed in ways that respect the human right to food and protect marginalized people from resultant vulnerabilities.

An Analysis of New Zealand’s Role in Food Insecurity in Fiji

<p>Access to adequate food is a human right. Despite this, globally around three billion people lack access to food sufficient to allow them to live free from hunger and malnutrition. In the Pacific, despite millennia of positive nutrition, they now have some the highest rates of diabetes and obesity in the world, and 75 percent of their population are dying prematurely from non-communicable diseases (NCD’s). One of the main risk factors for NCD’s is an unhealthy diet. A key finding coming out of the Pacific Food Summit in 2010 was that imported foods represent a threat to Pacific food security. New Zealand is a key trader with the Pacific. It has also come under criticism in recent years over its trade of poor quality meat to the Pacific, which it has been argued is contributing to poor health outcomes there. This research seeks to look deeper into the relationship between New Zealand trade and Pacific food insecurity, using Fiji as a case study. A key foundation for this research is the ‘right to food’. The right to adequate food is a fundamental right of all human beings. This is established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent treaties, to which all signatory countries are bound. Recently, this right is being discussed in an extraterritorial context, meaning states have obligations not only to those within their territory, but across the globe. This places obligations on states to both respect the right to food of citizens globally, and also to protect them against actions taken by those within their territory which would undermine this right. It is against this backdrop, utilising interviews, data and policy analysis, that the trade relationship between New Zealand and Fiji is analysed.</p>

Remembering the commons and reinvigorating them

The Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons proposes a normative view of what food ought to be, in the process highlighting instances where and when that potential has been actualized. Food currently is an object to sell and extract private value rather than social sustenance. This book proposes that food be reconceptualized against its long liberal and recent neoliberal history as property, making a persistent argument about decommodifying food in 24 detailed chapters. It is in re-commoning that the more than two dozen authors of the book--many of them leaders in their field--find better, alternative ideas about the right to food, global public good, food justice, and food sovereignty. They highlight how food as a commodity is currently characterized by its tradable features (appearance, calorie, price, packaging, purchasing power, taste, etc.), thereby denying its non-economic values. It asks two central questions: what would good policies look like if we build on the assumption that food should be the commons, and how do we get there?

An Analysis of New Zealand’s Role in Food Insecurity in Fiji

<p>Access to adequate food is a human right. Despite this, globally around three billion people lack access to food sufficient to allow them to live free from hunger and malnutrition. In the Pacific, despite millennia of positive nutrition, they now have some the highest rates of diabetes and obesity in the world, and 75 percent of their population are dying prematurely from non-communicable diseases (NCD’s). One of the main risk factors for NCD’s is an unhealthy diet. A key finding coming out of the Pacific Food Summit in 2010 was that imported foods represent a threat to Pacific food security. New Zealand is a key trader with the Pacific. It has also come under criticism in recent years over its trade of poor quality meat to the Pacific, which it has been argued is contributing to poor health outcomes there. This research seeks to look deeper into the relationship between New Zealand trade and Pacific food insecurity, using Fiji as a case study. A key foundation for this research is the ‘right to food’. The right to adequate food is a fundamental right of all human beings. This is established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent treaties, to which all signatory countries are bound. Recently, this right is being discussed in an extraterritorial context, meaning states have obligations not only to those within their territory, but across the globe. This places obligations on states to both respect the right to food of citizens globally, and also to protect them against actions taken by those within their territory which would undermine this right. It is against this backdrop, utilising interviews, data and policy analysis, that the trade relationship between New Zealand and Fiji is analysed.</p>