Submitted by ETC Staff on
The Cordoba Group is meeting in advance of the summits addressing food security and climate change. World food insecurity has been aggravated during the last year, and more than 1 billion people are suffering from hunger. Today´s hunger is not a result of production failure but due to a failure of equitable access to food. The food crisis will be the subject of global attention during the World Food Summit (Rome, November). Simultaneously, the world´s concern over the climate change has deepened and it will be debated at the Climate Change Summit (Copenhagen, December). There is, however, a policy disconnection between these two processes. The food crisis and its impact on vulnerable groups, particularly children and women, show that excessive reliance on market-based approaches is a mistake. We identified four shortcomings in international policy coherence that could make the present crisis still worse. These are the absence of accountability in the governance of food and agriculture, the gap between policy formulation and budgetary decisions, the lack of effective participation by those who are most affected, and the disconnection between intergovernmental action on climate change and on the food crisis. In this context, we are calling for new initiatives to enable small producers to play a major role in feeding the world in 2050. The 2008 Cordoba Declaration which recommended a set of strategies for the promotion of the right to food remains as relevant as ever. We wish to remind States of their obligation to use the right to food as the overarching framework as well as a tool to achieve food security for all.