Description:
The global food crisis is a stark reminder of the fragility of the global food system. The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities captures the debate about how to go forward and examines the implications of the crisis for food security in the world's poorest countries, both for the global environment and for the global rules and institutions that govern food and agriculture.
In this volume, policy-makers and scholars assess the causes and consequences of the most recent food price volatility and examine the associated governance challenges and opportunities, including short-term emergency responses, the ecological dimensions of the crisis, and the longer-term goal of building sustainable global food systems. The recommendations include vastly increasing public investment in small-farm agriculture; reforming global food aid and food research institutions; establishing fairer international agricultural trade rules; promoting sustainable agricultural methods; placing agriculture higher on the post-Kyoto climate change agenda; revamping biofuel policies; and enhancing international agricultural policy-making.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation
Brief description:
Jennifer Clapp is CIGI Research Chair in International Governance and a professor in the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo. Among her recent books are Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment (MIT Press) and Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance (MIT Press). She is co-editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics.
Review Quotes: [The] sixteen chapters [are] grouped loosely into sections on causes, immediate governance challenges and proposed solutions, longer-term solutions and problems, and strategies to promote a future sustainable food system.... [B]y including 2008 data and analysis, it is a timely addition to a collection on global food systems and security...a good complement to single-authored books on the food crisis.--J.M. Deutsch, CUNY Kingsborough Community College, CHOICE, April 2010, 2010 April