Asian Cities Food Resilience

Asian Cities Food Resilience

 Arvind Kumar pandey

Experts at a recently held UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) workshop in Bangkok on resilient food systems in Asia said that Asia’s largest cities will need to maximize every bit of space, from rooftops to railroad tracks, to feed one of the world's fastest-growing populations. Although fewer people live in cities than in Asia's rural areas - approximately 43 percent - the UN projects an 89 percent increase in the region's urban population (1.6 billion people) by 2050. According to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Asia had 12 megacities of more than 10 million people each, half the world's population and the second-fastest rate of urbanization worldwide as of 2010. Brian Roberts, an Australia-based urban management specialist, has opined that feeding this expanding urban population will be a ‘challenge’ due to the widespread lack of land tenure and access to cash and markets - and the resulting lack of incentive to farm - as well as insufficient rural-to-urban food transport and storage.

According to Carla Lacerda, a programme officer with the World Food Programme (WFP) regional office for Asia, it is hard to target hunger in cities because urban issues are intricate. It is easier for humanitarian agencies to get into, but harder to come out because [the issues] are mostly about development and government responsibilities.
Additional challenges include the risk of luring rural dwellers away from depressed economies and degrading farms with urban food programmes; overlapping with agencies pursuing development goals; the increased difficulty of supporting livelihoods in cities rather than rural areas; and the challenge to measure impact due to scattered living arrangements.

Regional disaster response in Asia

 Arvind Kumar pandey

Recent media reports indicate that the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Center) was formally endorsed and signed at the association's summit on 17 November in Bali (Indonesia), signalling a greater role for regional mechanisms. Oliver Lacey-Hall, regional head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Bangkok said: "That's the goal. That's the way forward." When disaster strikes, national capacities are often not enough; with regional mechanisms such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific offering a second line of response. The UN and international community would form a third tier - ready to assist national and regional efforts.

Establishing order in times of crisis is one of the goals for the AHA Center, active some five years after the first regional workshop on its establishment in 2006. According to Lacey-Hall, Southeast Asian countries have not always had the capacity to respond in full, but the time when the international humanitarian system was dominated by a few countries and western aid agencies is over. "Many of these countries now see disaster management as a priority. There has been a change from the government saying, 'Give us what you've got' to 'This is what we need'. Asia is the most disaster-prone region in the world; in 2010, disasters affected more than 200 million people. In global terms, 89 percent of all people affected by emergencies live in Asia. But coordinating the increasing capacities of nations to respond to their own crises and those of others remains largely unchartered territory for regional groups.

Weather Disasters & Climate Change

Arvind Kumar pandey

According to a UN science report released on 18 November the link between climate change and extreme weather events, including punishing heat waves, droughts, and torrential rains and resulting floods is confirmed. The report warns that the U.S. will suffer heat waves, droughts, and more powerful hurricanes like Irene, with vulnerable people and places likely to suffer most from extreme weather, including low-lying island States facing sea level rise and stronger storm surges, and drought-prone countries in Africa. New York released its own climate study in mid-November, predicting that with expected sea level rise and stronger storms, future hurricanes could flood the tunnels into Manhattan within an hour and put one-third of the city underwater, with climate induced impacts beginning within a decade. The cost of US weather disasters in 2011 is already approaching $50 billion, according to the National Climate Data Center.

It is now certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases and warming aerosols like black carbon are increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather by putting more heat energy into the climate system. Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, has suggested: “These climate change impacts have become so clear and so close now that we need fast, aggressive mitigation if we hope to avoid the worst consequences. “Fast mitigation is the best adaptation, and it means cutting short-lived climate forcers, including black carbon, ground-level ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, used in refrigeration. Cutting these non-CO₂ climate forcers can be done quickly and inexpensively using existing technologies and in most cases existing laws and institutions.”

Cooking Stoves Linked to Pneumonia

 Arvind Kumar pandey

According to a recent study published in Lancet journal and reported by the media, in many developing nations around the world, cooking is primarily done over a wood-burning fire pit. It is estimated that this is the primary cooking and heating source for 43% of the global population, about 3 billion people. A team of international researchers have found that pneumonia is linked with young children who are continuously exposed to the smoke from cooking fires. They found that if smoke-reducing chimneys are used on the cooking stoves, cases of severe pneumonia can be reduced by one-third. Cooking fires are perhaps the type of air pollution that directly impacts human health, because its emissions take place right next to people’s breathing zones. The fires used in developing countries are almost always open flames with no real chimney. The researchers found that children, who are exposed every day to the smoke, inhaled the equivalent of smoking three to five cigarettes a day.

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Liverpool, University of California, Berkeley, and from del Valle, Guatemala. The team spent time in the rural communities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, working with households which had pregnant women or young infants. Some households were given a woodstove with a chimney and others continued using open fires. They found that cases of severe pneumonia were reduced one third for the households with the chimneys. A smaller decrease was reported for all cases of pneumonia, severe and non-severe. This is likely due to the reduction of smoke not being completely sufficient. According to Dr. Nigel Bruce from the University of Liverpool, "Increasing awareness of the effects of woodsmoke on health will help us to significantly reduce the numbers of cases of severe pneumonia, as well as respiratory disease in adults."

Global Fund in limbo

 Arvind Kumar pandey

Media reports show that international assistance to the Global Fund to fight HIV, TB and Malaria has more than halved the estimated amount of money available in its next round of funding, the disbursement of which has been delayed until 2013, due to the world economic crisis. The delay in Round 11 funding was announced at the Fund's latest board meeting on 26 September, the second such delay, which has pushed the application deadline back to at least 1 March 2012. According to Christoph Benn, director of the Fund's external relations and partnerships, the size of the pot has also shrunk - to US$800 million, less than half of the $1.5 billion projected for the round as of mid-2011.

According to Mario Raviglione, director of Stop TB, more than 70 percent of antiretroviral drugs in the developing world are funded by the Global Fund and in Africa; it finances about 85 percent of TB programming. Mario further cautioned that reductions in Global Fund money and international global health funding are likely to reverse recent gains in the fight against TB and increase mortality, he cautioned. Talking to the media recently Mario Raviglione said: "A postponement of rounds at the Global Fund and decline in international funding will have dramatic consequences in the attempt to respond to the multidrug resistant TB epidemic and that's where the funding gap is greatest." The international financial crisis has adversely impacted on the countries in Euro zone, Japan and the United States thereby culminating in reduction in assistance to the Global Fund. The recipient countries, particularly those in Africa, will have to raise local resources and avoid frauds.

Climate Change & Rivers

 Arvind Kumar pandey

According to a recent study, soaring temperatures and erratic rains brought on by a changing climate may radically alter water flows in the world’s major river basins, forcing people to give up farming in some areas. The study – part of a five-year research project on four continents, the first to take a close look at 10 river basins - is based on data from 17 climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to examine the potential effect of changing temperatures and rainfall patterns on the water flows in rivers from now until 2050. Mark Mulligan, a leading author of the study, has opined that climate models cannot predict how rainfall patterns will behave in future with a high degree of certainty: “What we do know is that we cannot be confident about hydrological stability. Some rivers could become wetter and then drier, or vice versa. The key message to countries is: ‘Become more adaptable’.”

The study expects that all African river basins will be water-stressed by increased rates of evapo-transpiration as temperatures rise, but is uncertain about how gains in rainfall may offset that impact. In Asia the seasonality of changes in rainfall and temperature - which affects how rivers behave in the wet or dry season - will be critical, especially in wet basins like the Mekong. Mulligan drew parallels with the uncertainty of the current financial crisis, pointing out that unprepared institutions and experts were responding in crisis mode. He said their findings on the impact of climate change on river basins indicate that the world faces an uncertain future regarding water, and the impact was unpredictable. A framework is needed to plan a strategy for the better management of water, and make countries and people more resilient.