“We need a transformative change in our food and agricultural policies to have sustainability” – Ren Wang, FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
NAPLES, Italy, Oct 9 2014 (IPS)

In his parody of the Michael Jackson hit “Beat It”, the American satirist and singer Weird Al Yankovic has a parent urging his son to eat the food on his plate, warning that “other kids are starving in Japan”.

The parody has raised smiles since it was released 30 years ago, but today “Eat It” could be a battle cry for activists trying to reduce the widespread waste of enormous quantities of food, an urgent concern around the world and no laughing matter.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes of food go to waste globally every year. Meanwhile, 805 million of the world’s people are still experiencing chronic undernourishment or hunger, Ren Wang, Assistant Director General of FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department, told the 11^th International Media Forum on the Protection of Nature.“Even if just one-fourth of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world” – SAVE FOOD Initiative

“We need a transformative change in our food and agricultural policies to have sustainability,” Wang said.

Organised by the Rome-based environmental group Greenaccord and hosted for the second time by the city of Naples from Oct. 8 to 11, this year’s forum – entitled ‘Feeding the World: Food, Agriculture and Environment’ – has brought together experts, journalists and policy makers.

It comes as the United Nations’ International Year of Family Farming draws to a close, and as rising food prices continue to pound the incomes of vulnerable groups.

Wang said that although global food production has tripled since 1946 and the world has reduced the prevalence of undernourishment over the past 20 years from 18.7 to 11.3 percent, food security is still a crucial issue.

The food that goes to waste is about one-third of current global food production, so expanding current agricultural output is not necessarily the answer. In fact, the world produces enough food for every individual to have about 2,800 calories each day, according to scientists. But while some people are able to waste food, others do not have enough.

Even if waste and hunger might not be directly related, there is unquestionable inequality in the world’s food system, said Gary Gardner, a senior fellow with the Worldwatch Institute, a research and outreach institute that focuses on sustainable policies.

“In wealthy countries, food waste often occurs at the level of the retailer or consumer, either at the grocery store or at home where a lot of food is thrown away,” he told IPS.

By contrast, food waste in developing countries mainly happens at the “farm or processing” levels, Gardner said. “Food is lost because usually there aren’t systems for getting it to processing facilities and then to the consumer efficiently.”

Food losses and waste amount to roughly 680 billion dollars in industrialised countries and 310 billion dollars in developing countries, according to the SAVE FOOD Initiative, a project involving the German trade fair group Messe Düsseldorf in collaboration with FAO and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Saying that “consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes)”, the SAVE FOOD initiative found that “even if just one-fourth of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world.”

In Europe, the vast quantity of food thrown out by supermarkets has sometimes sparked public outrage, especially in countries where it is illegal for people to help themselves to the rejected items.

British supermarket chain Tesco has acknowledged discarding some 28,500 tonnes of food in the first six months of 2013, according to reports, and in Britain overall, an estimated 15 million tonnes of food is wasted annually.

In the United States, agencies estimate that roughly 40 percent of the food produced is discarded in landfills, with supermarkets accounting for much of this.

Yet, on both sides of the Atlantic, people can be prosecuted for taking food from dumpsters – a sore point with some activists who have organised public campaigns that offer meals cooked from thrown-away food.

At the Naples forum, where experts discussed the social and environmental consequences of food waste, among other issues, Gardner of the Worldwatch Institute described the experiences of activist Rob Greenfield, who has fed himself entirely from food from dumpsters while cycling across the United States.

“Many times the food was in packages that hadn’t been opened – whole boxes of cereal, sodas, that kind of thing – that for various reasons had been thrown out but which was perfectly good food to him,” Gardner told IPS in an interview.

“That’s not the optimal way for us to get rid of waste,” he added. “The better way would be not to generate that waste in the first place.”

Some solutions

Tesco and several other British supermarket chains have agreed to a programme of waste reduction, and restaurants in several countries are also taking steps not only to decrease the waste but to turn it into biogas to be used for energy.

Gardner told IPS that instead of throwing away food, supermarkets should be looking at donating produce to local organisations such as soup kitchens, although it would be better if they “weren’t generating the waste to begin with.”

On biogas, some speakers said that using food or household waste for energy at the local level could contribute to wider environmental solutions, but again the main aim should be to stem the creation of waste.

“Food security and climate change have certain challenges in common,” said Adriana Opromollo, international advocacy officer for food security and climate change at Caritas Internationalis, a federation of charity organisations.

“At the local level, we have seen where using food or household waste can be a successful strategy. But we have to focus on solutions that are tailored to the particular context,” she told IPS.

The ways to reduce waste can begin simply. Some U.S. food services companies found that by providing only plates (without accompanying trays), in school cafeterias, students were encouraged to take only the food they could consume, consequently throwing away 25 percent less waste.

Perhaps schools should record another version of “Eat It” for lunch hour.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Credit: Anton Fomkin/cc by 2.0

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

A new ranking has lauded Germany for its energy efficiency, while condemning the United States for lagging near the bottom.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a non-profit here, called the U.S. economy’s inefficiency “a tremendous waste” of both resources and money, in a scorecard released Thursday. Looking at 16 of the world’s largest economies, the rankings use 31 metrics to measure efficiency-related measures within each nation’s legislative efforts as well as the industrial, transportation and building sectors.“The most important kilowatt hour is the one you don’t have to produce.” -- Mark Konold

“A country that uses less energy to achieve the same or better results reduces its costs and pollution, creating a stronger, more competitive economy,” the ACEEE’s report begins. “While energy efficiency has played a role in the economies of developed nations for decades, cost-effective energy efficiency remains a massively underutilized energy resource.”

Though Germany produced the highest overall score- with 65 out of 100 possible points- and came in first in the “industry” sector, China had the top-scoring assessment in the “buildings” category, Italy had the most efficient “transportation” sector, and France, Italy and the European Union tied three-ways in the “national efforts” division.

Rachel Young, an ACEEE research analyst, told IPS that the U.S government has taken important recent steps to limit carbon emissions, particularly from existing power plants. But she recommends much broader actions.

The U.S. needs to “implement a national ‘energy savings’ target, strengthen national model building codes, support education and training in the industrial sector, and prioritise energy efficiency in transportation,” she says. Doing so, Young suggests, would not only reduce emissions but also save money and create jobs.

ACEEE’s focus has traditionally been on improving energy efficiency in the United States. But the new scorecard’s broad emphasis – on how energy efficiency makes for both an environmentally and financially wide investment – can be applied to international economies as well.

The Worldwatch Institute, a think tank here, is one of the many international development-focused organisations that have adopted this approach.

“We think that energy efficiency is one of the fastest ways that countries can get more mileage out of their energy usage,” Mark Konold, the Caribbean project manager at the Worldwatch Institute, told IPS. “The most important kilowatt hour is the one you don’t have to produce.”

Citing the Caribbean, West Africa, Central America and South America as prime examples, Konold says energy efficiency can be a wise economic investment for governments and individuals alike.

“Especially in island countries, which face disproportionately large energy bills, energy efficiency can go a long way in terms of reducing [an individual’s] financial burden,” he says. “Something as simple as window installations can make buildings in these island countries more efficient.”

Paradigm shift?

Worldwatch and others increasingly consider energy efficiency a key element in the sustainability agenda.

Konold, who recently co-authored a study on sustainable energy in Jamaica, believes it is critical to examine the return on investment of energy-efficient practices. Doing so, he says, can help determine which cost-effective energy models should be implemented in developing nations.

Such recommendations are particularly relevant given the international community’s growing focus on efficiency issues.

The United Nations and the World Bank, for instance, recently established the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative to help “promote [a] paradigm shift” towards sustainability in developing countries. As one its three objectives, SE4ALL mandates “doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency”.

“There is a growing realisation that energy efficiency is the lowest-cost energy and greenhouse gas emission option,” Nate Aden, a research fellow the climate and energy programme at the World Resources Institute, a think tank here, told IPS. “This is especially important for developing countries that are trying to address energy access while also addressing climate change.”

Part of this new focus is specifically due to the SE4ALL initiative, Aden says. Further,  he believes that the programme’s other two goals – doubling the share of renewable energy and providing universal energy access – are “consistent and complimentary” with energy efficiency.

“For example, in India, there’s a lot of discussion about the appropriate choices going forward, given that you have hundreds of millions who still lack access to energy,” Aden says. “You have to ask what the right choice is in terms of not only producing low-carbon emissions, but also in bringing energy to people.”

Aden also spoke enthusiastically about the “unique perspective” that private companies may take on energy efficiency, pointing to the efficiency efforts of Phillips, a U.S.-based lighting company. Aden believes that the ACEEE’s call for more energy-efficient practices will help make companies “able to plan effectively and be well-positioned from the supplier side” of energy.

Cultural change

While actions by the international community will clearly be important in implementing energy-efficient strategies from the top down, some are also emphasising the need for cultural change at the individual level.

“A huge chunk of this issue is education and awareness-building,” Worldwatch’s Konold says. “And once we start to spread the message that individuals can better their own situation, that’s when we start seeing a change,”

He says there is a profound lack of awareness around energy in many countries, pointing to a phenomenon he refers to as “leaving the air-conditioning on with the windows open”. But Konold emphasises that individuals can indeed make broad, substantive impact if they adopt more energy-saving behaviours in their homes.

This sentiment was echoed by the ACEEE’s Young, whose report pointed out that Americans are particularly guilty of energy-wasting behaviours, consuming roughly 6.8 tonnes of oil equivalent per person. This put the U.S. in second to last place in terms of individual energy consumption, only beating out Canada, where estimated oil consumption was 7.2 tonnes.

Based on this phenomenon, Young believes that individuals should “take advantage of incentives offered by their local utilities and governments to learn more about what they can do to reduce energy waste”, and to check out the ACEEE website, which “has dozens of consumer tips on improving energy efficiency.”

Unless leaders act promptly, climate change and environmental degradation will only worsen and cause greater global problems, scientists warn. Credit: Crustmania/CC by 2.0

By Farangis Abdurazokzoda
WASHINGTON, May 2 2014 (IPS)

It is time to craft new politics and economic policies to address the sustainability crisis, according to the latest edition of a flagship report by the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank here.

The global community has delayed addressing the issues associated with rapid climate change and environmental degradation for too long, according to the 294-page report, “Governing for Sustainability”.“Markets can be excellent tools for certain purposes, but they do not have a social conscience, environmental ethic or long-term vision." -- Michael Renner

And it is this failure in governance that has resulted in the most alarming environmental challenges that we face today, the institute warns, from water shortages to climate change.

The report, which marks the Worldwatch Institute’s 40th anniversary, highlights the challenges imposed by the existing economic and political order. For instance, it criticises neoliberalism for undermining democratic processes by granting a strong political voice to corporations, whose profit-maximising nature traditionally takes little account of environmental health and sustainability.

“The unrestrained flow of money into the political process essentially undermines democracy,” Michael Renner, co-director of the report, told IPS.

“We need to rethink many of our basic economic assumptions and mechanisms, and aim not only for a better and wiser distribution of resources, but also a better sharing of available work. This can’t be accomplished via conventional forms of capitalism.”

In part, the report promotes so-called B corps – or benefit corporations – that “aim not only at doing well but also doing good”. B corps are new forms of for-profit entities designed to benefit their social and environmental stakeholders – those affected by the business’s operations – as well as their profit-seeking shareholders.

“This emerging movement is still a small phenomenon relative to the total global economy, but it continues to expand, led by mostly small and medium-sized companies in the United States,” Colleen Cordes, director of outreach and development for The Nature Institute, a research and advocacy organisation, told IPS.

Still, Worldwatch’s Renner expresses some scepticism that even B corps will be able to meet sustainability goals in the long term.

“Many of the companies subscribing to these principles are still quite small, and a big question is what will happen when these firms grow larger,” he says. “Can they remain anchored to the public interest within a broader system that remains ruled by the tenets of capitalism?”

The traditional ways in which democratic societies have made important decisions, he says, have been upended.

“Markets can be excellent tools for certain purposes, but they do not have a social conscience, environmental ethic or long-term vision,” Renner notes.

“It’s difficult to know what can successfully change this situation, but it would appear that a mass grassroots mobilisation is needed to provide some sort of counterweight to the money-driven politics that is now in command.”

Drastic measures?

Of course, the drive to maximise profit is not exclusive to corporations. Developing countries often voice discontent about the environmental regulations that industrialised countries impose on trade, for instance, as these regulations are make it more difficult for them to attain higher economic development and growth, at least in the short term.

Renner believes that it is possible to develop and yet avoid the environmental degradation that often follows economic growth – for instance, as widely seen throughout today’s China.

“We need to facilitate a process of ‘leap-frogging’ that allows developing countries to move to much-cleaner alternatives right away,” he says, giving the example of renewable energy.

“A poor country like Bangladesh succeeded in installing 2.8 million solar home systems in rural areas, generating some 100,000 jobs in the process. That’s much better than continuing to subsidise coal and kerosene, and that’s the kind of success story that’s worth learning from and emulating.”

Still, multiple counter-examples to the Bangladesh experience could be more affluent countries that have made little to no meaningful progress in combating the sustainability crisis. The report lists several countries that have seen rollbacks in this progress.

For instance, while Australia had previously pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five percent under 2000 levels, it has now reversed course and could cause national emissions to increase 12 percent by 2020. Japan, too, has abandoned its 2020 target for cutting national emission to 25 percent below 1990 levels.

And Canada is investing heavily in developing carbon-intensive tar sands deposits, an issue that has become a political hot potato here in the U.S.

Meanwhile, with little agreement on what global steps should be taken to address climate change, it is perhaps not surprising that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is now at an all-time high. In fact, over the past decade, carbon dioxide emissions have steadily increased at around 2.7 percent annually – in the process, tripling the carbon emission rate from the previous decade.

Such statistics reinforce the sense that only a drastic change in the global economic and political governance will be able to change course.

“There is a chance we can prevent the worst disruption in climate change, as well as other sustainability challenges such as erosion or fresh water access. But these need to be addressed now,” Tom Prugh, another co-director of the report, told IPS. “The more we delay, the more irreversible our imprint on the environment will be.”

Purposeful ineffectiveness

Many other observers have connected these delays directly to a political and economic ineffectiveness brought about purposefully over the past several decades.

“Long before the climate crisis was the greatest market failure the world has ever seen, it was a massive political and governmental failure,” David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and an adviser to President Barack Obama, at Oberlin College, told IPS.

According to Orr, the U.S. and U.K. administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, buttressed by conservative economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, strongly undermined the role of the government. The effect was particularly potent in those parts of the government dedicated to public welfare, health, education and environment.

“The public capacity to solve public problems has diminished sharply,” Orr says, “and the power of the private sector, banks, financial institutions and corporations has risen.”

Yet for The Nature Institute’s Cordes, a key answer to this situation will come down to the day-to-day role individuals and families.

“We need to focus our attention on urgent issue of how to govern our countries, but also our families and ourselves,” she says. “It’s time for us to think critically before we make decisions with regard to what we buy, where we work, and evaluate our footprints.”

An offshore oil rig drilling platform. Global subsidies of fossil fuels rose to 1.9 trillion dollars in 2013. Credit: Bigstock

By Samuel Oakford
NEW YORK, Feb 10 2014 (IPS)

Despite evolving public awareness and alarm over climate change, subsidies for the production and consumption of fossil fuels remain a stubborn impediment to shifting the world’s energy matrix towards renewable sources.

Collectively, fossil fuel subsidies amount to a nearly two-trillion-dollar oar left dragging in the water.“The economic story around renewables has shifted." -- Dr. Daniel M. Kammen

Today, lawmakers hold routine hearings on climate change’s costs and mitigation, citizens in developing nations demand reparations for extreme weather, and even multinational corporations have tepidly begun advertising that rising seas could spill over onto their bottom lines.

But talk is one thing, money quite another.

“If you can remove fossil fuel subsidies, then renewables are the clear choice, they are far cheaper in the long run,” said Philipp Tagwerker, research fellow at the Worldwatch Institute and author of a recent report tallying subsidies. “Renewables are competitive at the moment, but it takes political will to change.”

After the 2008 financial crisis, subsidies fell along with plummeting energy prices, but by 2011 they had rebounded to pre-crisis levels. That volatility, whether due to supply and demand or geopolitics and speculation, is partly why countries are looking to lessen their exposure to carbon-based fuels.

Though definitions vary, in 2013 the IMF found that when “post-tax” externalities like carbon emissions, effects on health and resource scarcity were considered, global subsidies of fossil fuels rose to “$1.9 trillion worldwide – the equivalent of 2.5 percent of global GDP, or 8 percent of government revenues.” Estimates for renewable subsidies top out at a comparably measly 88 billion dollars globally.

“That’s a pretty hard equation to overcome,” said Dr. Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. “Fossil fuels not only have the advantage of subsidies, but they are the incumbent.

“That said we are seeing much faster growth in the renewable sector,” Kammen told IPS. “The economic story around renewables has shifted. It’s not just wind – solar is competitive now, and we are seeing big pushes for geothermal.”

Though critics of renewables often cite their higher cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) compared to traditional sources, when externalities are considered, that dynamic is reversed. According to the Worldwatch report, customary analyses find it can take up to 15 cents of a renewable subsidy to generate one kWh, far higher than the 0.1 to 0.7 cents per kWh for fossil fuels. But including externalities immediately tacks on an additional 23.8 cents per kwh to fossil fuels but only half a cent to renewables.

Tagwerker writes that “accelerating the phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies would reduce CO2 emissions by 360 million tons in 2020, which is 12 percent of the emission savings that are needed in order to keep the increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius.”

A mixed support system

Generally, consumption subsidies that lower prices at the point of sale have prevailed in the developing world, while producer subsidies have been more common in industrialised countries.

Over the past decade, while fossil fuel subsidies haven’t abated, their characterisation has shifted from one of necessity to troublesome vestige.

Last year, the G20 reiterated its pledge to “phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption over the medium term.” And during his January State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama told Congress “climate change is a fact” and called for the phasing out of an estimated four billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives – many dating back a century, when oil exploration was dangerous and far more expensive – that U.S. companies enjoy every year.

Yet politicians and investors alike still the find the long-term payouts from alternative energy projects don’t always jibe with their short-term electoral goals and the pressures of quarterly earnings – leaving policy to lag and projects wanting for infusions of cash.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that in the developing world, consumption subsidies alone cost countries over 500 billion dollars.

Media coverage tends to focus on these parts of the world when unrest follows moves to remove or reduce fuel subsidies. Indeed, last year several dozen people were killed in Khartoum during riots after the Sudanese government, facing a fiscal crisis brought on by the annexation of the oil-rich south, eliminated subsidies. Meanwhile in India, where the government has been more cautious, the oil ministry predicts fuel subsidies for the fiscal year will end up 750 billion rupees over budget.

For years, poorer governments found lower fuel prices the simplest way to keep basic goods just cheap enough that the poorest in society could survive – a sort of broad-stroke welfare. Today, they remain fearful that reform runs the risk of triggering inflation, raising prices for food and basic goods beyond the reach of millions.

But unlike traditional forms of state welfare that attempt to target the needy, consumption subsidies are nearly always flat and regressive, funneling wealth to those who consume the most. The IMF has found that in low and middle-income countries, the richest 20 percent of households receive six times the benefits from subsidies as the poorest fifth. Among gasoline consumers alone, the disparity widens to 20 to one.

Tagwerker says governments can look to places like Indonesia, where, despite snags, subsidy curtailments were coupled with targeted cash-transfer schemes to assist those most affected by higher prices.

“You can avoid the period of unrest if you carefully plan it,” said Tagwerker, adding that all countries should consider carbon trading, which has a track record of reducing emissions.

“You are already spending so much on importing fossil fuels and subsidising them to keep them at a low price, why don’t you set up a fund that puts this towards renewable energy? China, of all places, has a consumption tax on fossil fuel and they put it towards renewable energy.”

Investment quibbles

In May 2013, Goldman Sachs announced it would finance more than 500 million dollars’ worth of residential solar panels for U.S.-based SolarCity Corp, allowing the company to offer homeowners zero down payments. The Wall Street firm, which pledged to put 40 billion dollars towards renewable projects by 2021, has also pumped 1.5 billion into a Danish wind farm and invested 340 million into an Indian wind venture.

But despite headline-grabbing deals like Goldman’s, overall investing in alternative energy sagged 12 percent last year to 244 billion. Investors remain skittish of the higher initial outlays required by renewable projects, a problem made worse by austerity in Europe and the winding down of stimulus in the United States. The U.N. found that “developers, equity providers and lenders were unsure about whether commitments to subsidise renewable energy deployment would continue.”

However, Kammen believes the next few years will see larger sovereign wealth funds financing more alternative energy projects. As the sector consolidates and interest rates remain low, Kammen says money earmarked for real estate may be shifted to renewable electricity-generating ventures which financially mimic the purchase of office space or other rent-paying assets.

“Because renewables have very low fuel costs the real issue is up-front financing. If one doesn’t correct this fundamental over-subsidy of the incumbent fossil technology, it makes the issues of renewables that much more difficult.”

Re-allocating subsidies to renewables would help investment get over the initial hump, says Tagwerker.

“You’ve got to shift the paradigm from paying every month to ‘we pay everything in the first month then we don’t have to pay for the following year’. If you could use all the money that is spent on fossil fuel subsidies for that, you’d have [renewable] plants popping up everywhere.”

Stanzin Dolma of Choglamsar-Leh in India breaks down while showing the ruins of her home, wrecked by the August 2010 floods and landslides. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Erik Assadourian
WASHINGTON, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

Is sustainability still possible? Yes. Is it still probable? No. With bold action today, tomorrow, and in years to come, we could succeed in creating a sustainable and prosperous society. But what does bold action actually mean?

First and foremost, we have to start living within Earth’s boundaries: stop changing the climate, wiping out biodiversity, disrupting the phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, and so on. And to do that we’ll need to live a one-planet lifestyle.

For some that’ll mean increases in consumption – as they step out of poverty – but for the two billion consumers on the planet, it will mean dramatic alterations in how they live. For example even if the average resident of Vancouver became a vegan, gave up flying and driving, lived in passive solar homes, and cut their purchases in half, they’d still be living 60 percent above a one-planet threshold, according to Ecological Footprint analysis.

To get to that scale of change (and keep in mind the goal of such radical changes is to prevent a dystopian future of runaway climate change) will require nothing short of a complete overhaul of human cultures, a topic explored in depth in Worldwatch’s latest report, “State of the World 2013”.

Gone are the days where profit, growth, and stuff come first. We’ll need to shift corporate structures, the rules of marketing, and once again ground our economies in ecological realities. We’ll need to relocalise, and cultivate community interdependence again. We’ll need to reserve fossil fuels for their essential uses only – unsubstitutable ones like making drug inputs or high grade plastics for surgical use – and quickly move toward a renewable-energy based civilisation even if that means significant cuts in energy in the short-term (as we build our renewable energy capacity).

And to get any of this done, we’ll need activists and entrepreneurs pushing us toward this new normal – using all sorts of strategies: social enterprises putting positive impact over profit, an upgrade of the environmental movement that builds long-term power and helps people adapt to life in a sustainable culture, a redesign of environmental education to prepare future leaders for the challenges to come, and political movements that aren’t afraid to use civil disobedience and make audacious demands.

But even then, with such bold action, success is far from guaranteed. Thus we need to also start preparing for “the long emergency” now – while we still have capital (of the natural, financial, social and human varieties) and a window of stability to draw upon.

And how should we prepare? Make our governance systems more robust and deepen their commitment to democracy; assess the risks and benefits of ‘magic bullets’ like geoengineering, before we make a rash decision in a moment of panic; prepare for the large flows of migrants that climate change – even at its current level – have locked into the system; and start applying the lessons from other forced contractions to today’s societies and figure out how to make these inevitable transitions as painless as possible.

For one way or another, our civilisation is going to contract, the only question is whether we take proactive control of this process, or we wait for nature to take its course. A course that very few will like.

*Erik Assadourian is Co-director of Worldwatch’s “State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?” which will release on Apr. 16, 2013.

Despite the growing worldwide demand for organic food, clothing and other products, the area of land certified as organic still makes up just 0.9 percent of global agricultural land, with 37 million hectares being farmed organically.

Organic farming delivers a wide range of benefits, including reduced human exposure to toxic chemicals, improved resilience of landscapes and greater profit margins for farmers.

The countries with the most certified organic producers in 2010 were India (400,551 farmers), Uganda (188,625), and Mexico (128,826). The region that added the most organic farmland between 2009 and 2010 was Europe.

Overall, the amount of organically farmed land worldwide dropped by 0.1 percent between 2009 and 2010, due largely to a decrease in organic land in India and China. Still, organic farmland has grown more than threefold since 1999.

The modern organic farming movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s largely as a reaction to consumer concerns about the rising use of agrochemicals. The period after World War II and through the 1950s is commonly known as the “golden age of pesticides”.

But as the health and ecological impacts of agrochemicals began to be understood, governments started to regulate their use, and consumers began demanding organically certified foods.

Now fast forward to 2010, when organic food sales reached 59 billion U.S. dollars.

Although the requirements for certification vary for each certifying organisation, farming organically involves following certain ecological principles, such as applying mulch to fields or rotating the crops grown in certain fields. Organic farming prohibits the use of synthetic chemicals, such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

Compared with conventional farming methods, organic farming is much healthier for a farm’s entire ecosystem: it boosts on-farm biodiversity, protects nearby waterways from chemical pollution and helps soil retain water and nutrients, improving resilience to drought and other harsh weather patterns. It also reduces human exposure to chemicals or toxic residues, which have been linked to a variety of illnesses.

The Rodale Institute, an organic research and advocacy organisation in the United States, has conducted a comparative study of organic versus conventional farming since 1981. The study focuses on corn and soybeans, for which the United States is the number one and number two producer, respectively.

The study found that organic agriculture outperforms conventional farming on many levels. Over 30 years, organic fields produced equivalent yields, including 31 percent higher yields in times of moderate drought.

Organic soils also retained more carbon, microbes and water, and organic systems were three times more profitable than the study’s conventional systems, producing an average net return of 558 dollars per acre each year compared with 190 dollars per conventional acre. Organic fields emitted nearly 40 percent less greenhouse gases per pound of crop.

Reliable data are lacking for land that is farmed according to organic principles but has not been certified organic. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that the majority of smallholder farmers still operate organically by default, either because chemical inputs have not been introduced to their community, or because their complex agricultural system does not require chemical inputs.

In recent decades, certified organic products have created a niche market, allowing farmers to earn premium prices over conventional products, particularly when selling to supermarkets or restaurants. Farmers in developing countries have also found that their produce will fetch a higher price if exported to more lucrative international markets.

The costs of compliance with international organic standards, however, often force farmers to reduce their on-farm diversity and maximise production of a few “cash crops,” such as cotton, coffee and cocoa, certified organic farming can cause some of the same ecological problems as conventional farming.

Farmers may choose to avoid certification because they believe that the costs or regulation involved in certification hinders their operation, and that their customers trust them to grow food safely and healthfully. This choice is increasingly possible as farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture become mainstream worldwide.

Producing food sustainably, which includes farming without chemicals whenever possible, will be extremely important in the coming decades as the global population continues to grow and as climate change affects land quality worldwide. Organic farming has the potential to contribute to food security, boost farmer incomes, enhance biodiversity and reduce ecosystems’ vulnerability to climate change.

But it is important too that organic farming form part of a larger, more sustainable global food system – where low-income consumers can access and afford fresh, nutritious foods; where farmers can protect endangered plant and animal species that may not be the most productive, but that can withstand drought or temperature extremes; and where supermarkets and advertisers promote consumption of healthy rather than highly processed foods.

Laura Reynolds is a staff researcher with the Worldwatch Institute’s Food and Agriculture Program.