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food security
Reimagining Conservation Post-Cop16: The Case for a Universal Basic Income
The recent COP16 underscored the need for inclusive conservation strategies in Latin America, where social conflicts and environmental vulnerabilities intersect. A Universal Basic Income could be the answer.
Nov 13, 2024
The recent 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16, has highlighted the urgent need to rethink conservation strategies, particularly in Latin America, where the convergence of social conflict and environmental vulnerability creates a complex, high-stakes landscape.
The global environmental crisis, manifesting in the accelerated loss of biodiversity, is exacerbated by deep socio-economic inequalities. Yet communities most affected by environmental degradation are often those that can play a crucial role in its protection. Traditional approaches are no longer sufficient; conservation efforts must be both innovative and inclusive. Therefore, it is vital that communities are included in the formulation of policies that impact their lives. And to take an active role in conservation, they require support through financing mechanisms tailored to their specific needs.
The intersection of conservation and social justice is not merely an ideal; it is an urgent necessity that we must embrace to achieve a sustainable future for all.
In this regard, Universal Basic Income (UBI) emerges as an essential tool for empowering vulnerable communities and promoting equitable conservation strategies. It is not merely about mitigating environmental impacts; these actions also strengthen community resilience and contribute to peace, helping to prevent conflicts. However, the true potential of UBI is only fully realized when supported by financing mechanisms such as Cap and Share.
A Model of Climate Justice
The Cap and Share model generates socio-economic equality through emission reductions and biodiversity protection. And by redirecting these resources towards UBI, we can create a virtuous cycle in which vulnerable communities benefit directly from conservation actions.
Cap and Share enables communities to receive regular, unconditional payments, providing them with crucial financial security. This not only alleviates pressure on natural resources but also facilitates active community participation in the conservation of their surroundings. UBI is not simply economic assistance; it is a model of climate justice that ensures those most affected by climate change receive direct support, empowering them to become agents of change.
Colombia Pilot Project
In Colombia, where the intersection of urgent environmental challenges and violent conflict is particularly evident, a pilot project implementing UBI could be pivotal. This initiative would provide regular income to affected communities, offering them economic relief and the opportunity to engage in conservation practices. Such a project would not only generate immediate benefits for the communities involved but also serve as a vital case study for scaling UBI initiatives across similar contexts. The evidence gathered from this pilot could demonstrate the effectiveness of UBI in reducing poverty, enhancing food security, and fostering peaceful sustainable practices, thereby making a compelling case for broader implementation.
Global evidence suggests that regular income from UBI can have significant positive effects on food security and community autonomy. Communities receiving cash transfers can diversify their income sources and improve their agricultural practices, thereby reducing pressure on ecosystems. In Colombia, this could mean a reduction in practices that contribute to deforestation, as communities empowered by financial security are more likely to invest in sustainable land management.
Armed conflict in Colombia has left deep scars on the country’s social and environmental fabric. Displaced communities and areas of high ecological degradation serve as constant reminders of the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues. Restoring the environment and reducing inequalities must be tackled together to achieve lasting peace. Implementing UBI, supported by Cap and Share, could be a crucial step toward rebuilding the relationship between communities and nature, creating a foundation for sustainable development.
A Sustainable and Equitable Future
As we look forward, it is essential that the conversation around inclusive financing does not stall. Every dollar allocated to conservation should be seen as an investment in the communities that care for our most precious ecosystems. Both international and national actors must recognise the importance of these initiatives and collaborate to ensure that vulnerable communities have access to the resources they need.
The implementation of UBI, alongside mechanisms like Cap and Share, not only offers an economic solution but also addresses the root causes of social and environmental injustice. In doing so, we not only protect biodiversity and ecosystems but also build more just and resilient societies, capable of facing present and future challenges. The intersection of conservation and social justice is not merely an ideal; it is an urgent necessity that we must embrace to achieve a sustainable future for all.
Concluding this chapter of COP16, it is clear that the path to effective conservation must be inclusive. Promoting dialogue around financing mechanisms that empower vulnerable communities is essential to ensure that conservation strategies are fair and effective. Only by doing so can we strengthen the resilience of our communities and contribute to a more equitable world, where nature and humanity coexist in harmony. A pilot project in Colombia can provide the necessary evidence to scale these initiatives, offering a replicable model on a larger scale, which can be advocated in upcoming scenarios such as COP29 and COP30.
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How to Solve Food Insecurity? Treat Healthy Food as a Human Right
There’s more than enough food to feed everyone in the U.S., but the food distribution system is built for profit, not people.
Feb 01, 2024
Here’s a milestone I didn’t even envision when I founded the nonprofit Dion’s Chicago Dream: 1 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables purchased, packed, and delivered to people who didn’t have regular access to healthy food.
But that’s what the Dream Team has done, in just three-and-a-half ears, from a standing start as a brand-new organization. For us, it is a day of celebration: We rejoice and take pride in the fact that thousands of our Chicagoland neighbors are incorporating more healthy fruits and vegetables into their diets—and they speak of being healthier, both mentally and physically, as a result.
How do we know this? Every 15 days or so, we survey each of the households receiving our weekly Dream Deliveries of top-quality fresh produce. But don’t take our word for it. Our partners at the American Diabetes Association commissioned a study that found “participants stated that the produce boxes help them maintain or return to a healthier eating track, particularly by increasing their daily intake of fruits and vegetables. As a result, they reported better health outcomes such as reduced blood pressure, improved energy levels, better sugar level management for diabetics, and a sense of overall well-being.”
Apart from programs like ours that take the time to build trusting relationships with recipients, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in understanding exactly who is food insecure and why, so there’s not a lot of understanding about durable solutions to the problem.
I founded Dion’s Chicago Dream because in our city, 1 in 5 households are at risk of food insecurity—they don’t have regular access to enough nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. We started with this vision statement: Ending food insecurity in Chicago so that every resident has consistent access to fresh, nutritious food.
I like bold vision statements as much as the next guy. But after working to get healthy food to people who need it for the past few years and finding a level of success that blows me away, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to envision an end to food insecurity, in Chicago or anywhere else in the country. After three-and-a-half years of hard work and innovation, we’ve made a big difference in some people’s lives, but the problem of food insecurity itself is as big as it ever was. I’m convinced that food insecurity cannot be solved as long as our country fails to treat consistent access to healthy food as a human right.
But while food insecurity cannot be solved, it can be managed—and that’s something I can see our society doing a lot better. As a Black man who grew up often hungry and sometimes homeless in the South Side neighborhood of Englewood—and as a Navy veteran who found himself homeless and hungry once again, after leaving the military—I understand the realities of food insecurity. I knew that if Dion’s Chicago Dream was going to make a difference, it was essential that we always put the needs of our recipients first.
For example, for a lot of the people in my neighborhood, getting to a faraway food pantry during opening hours is dangerous or unrealistic. So instead of asking recipients to come to us, we bring healthy food to people who need it. We started with a single Dream Fridge stocked with healthy food. Then we rolled out our flagship weekly Dream Deliveries of fresh produce, and our sprinter vans fanned out across the city. Then we developed network-enabled Dream Vaults, each of which can serve up to 175 families a week from a neighborhood store or other gathering spot.
We developed processes and procedures, built out infrastructure, and tracked metrics to hold ourselves accountable. As a result, we know not only how many pounds of produce we delivered, but also how the people who received that food feel about their deliveries, and what the effect on their lives has been. I believe food philanthropy—and the entire food sector—need to pay a lot more attention to tracking whether they’re truly making a difference in terms of supplying consistent and nutritious food, and to the physical and mental health effects of increased food security.
It’s frustrating: There’s more than enough food to feed everyone in the U.S. But the food distribution system is built for profit, not people, and nobody’s in charge of tracking who isn’t getting the healthy food they need, let alone figuring out and scaling up solutions. Apart from programs like ours that take the time to build trusting relationships with recipients, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in understanding exactly who is food insecure and why, so there’s not a lot of understanding about durable solutions to the problem. That makes managing food insecurity much harder than it needs to be.
Food nonprofits and philanthropists have good intentions, but that’s not enough. We need to listen to the people we serve, focus on execution, and measure our results. We need to be willing to change and innovate, and to work for the day that as many people as possible have regular access to the healthy food we all need to thrive.
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How We Can Fight Hunger Even as the Planet Warms
These approaches are proven to help communities adapt to the damage already done and can transform current systems to help minimize future consequences.
Nov 21, 2023
Where I live in Kenya, weeks of heavy rainfall and severe flooding have caused deaths, displacement, and damage to crops and infrastructure. So far, 33 people have died and more than 121,000 have been forced to relocate. We were already struggling with hunger and poverty after a severe, prolonged drought, which affected more than 4 million Kenyans. This climate whiplash from extreme drought to extreme flooding is unprecedented, and we need to build new systems for adaptation and resilience.
The situation is not unique to Kenya. Many of the world’s poorest countries bear the brunt of the climate crisis, despite contributing the least to the problem. Somalia experienced its worst drought in 40 years, floods have devastated Pakistan, and the impacts of a worsened El Niño in Central America are not just tragedies, but a great injustice.
Rising global temperatures are having immediate impacts on the world’s most vulnerable people. As temperatures rise and weather patterns grow more unpredictable, basic necessities are becoming increasingly scarce. Already more than 783 million people go to bed hungry every night. The Lancet predicts that 525 million more people could face climate-induced hunger as soon as 2041.
Climate and hunger are intimately linked and current systems have failed the world’s most vulnerable communities.
With the world’s largest climate gathering, COP28, around the corner, these urgent implications are top of mind, with a full day dedicated to how climate is impacting food, agriculture, and water—something our teams deal with every day.
Our teams work in 55 countries, responding to climate catastrophes that undermine food security and livelihoods all over the world. Increasingly, climate collapse is forcing people to leave their homes and start anew. Women are particularly vulnerable, since in some regions, women make up more than 60% of the agricultural workforce yet own only 20% of the land. The impacts of biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, and shorter growing seasons are being felt globally.
At COP28, Action Against Hunger is calling for governments to take action in these five ways:
- Increase Access to Climate Finance For the Most Vulnerable: The U.N.’s $100 billion-per-year target for international climate finance has been missed repeatedly, leaving vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of climate breakdown without sufficient support. Industrialized countries must at least double their contributions to the Green Climate Fund, make funds easier to access, increase the proportion of grants (since loans can worsen the debt crisis for low-income countries), and explore innovative sources of finance such as taxation based on the “polluters pay” principle.
- Agroecological Food System Transformation: The climate crisis is one reason 783 million people go to bed hungry each night. Paradoxically, global food systems cause one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and destroy ecosystems. Now, the agricultural industry is promoting technological solutions to reduce and offset emissions, an approach that can make smallholder farmers more dependent on outside resources, increasing poverty and decreasing resilience. Agroecology, a form of sustainable farming that helps people make the most of their local natural resources, can diversify and localize food production, promoting health, sustainability, and social justice. Governments should implement policies and provide funding for agroecological approaches based on local and Indigenous knowledge that empower smallholder farmers and workers, especially women.
- Safeguard the Right to Water: Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) investments can prevent disease, promote food security, and help communities adapt to the climate crisis. Yet, half the world’s population is already experiencing severe water scarcity, meaning water security must top the COP agenda. We are calling for investments in WASH infrastructure and more resilient health facilities that can withstand disasters, as well as nature-based solutions for water management.
- Recognize and Support Women as Agents of Change: Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate collapse since their livelihoods often rely on local food systems and they have fewer safety nets such as land, property, and other assets. Women also hold many solutions, as they are often custodians of biodiversity, pioneers in agroecology, and at the forefront of adaptation efforts. Women from diverse backgrounds must be included in negotiations, and governments and companies must listen to their voices and the transformative approaches they promote.
- Anticipate and Address Rising Humanitarian Needs: Extreme weather exacerbates humanitarian crises and can create situations of acute hunger, especially in combination with conflict and economic instability. The global community must scale up humanitarian funding that is flexible, multi-year, and forecast-based.
Climate and hunger are intimately linked and current systems have failed the world’s most vulnerable communities. These five approaches are proven to help communities adapt to the damage already done and can transform current systems to help minimize future consequences. Without serious intervention, hunger will rise. Despite the dire outlook, climate-resilient solutions are available and effective. But we have to act now.
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