Food Sovereignty in the Era of Land Grabbing: An African Perspective (Review Completed - Accepted)
Food is a basic human right. One of the humanity’s significant achievements has been to produce adequate food for the largest growing population. However, the co-existence of chronic hunger and malnutrition with presence of adequate capacities and appropriate mechanisms to address it is one of the gravest paradoxes of our time. In one-third of African countries the average daily calorie intake remains below the recommended level of 2100 kcal. The need and importance for greater food sovereignty has emerged out of broader concerns over the negative impact of globalized world’s food system on food security and environmental sustainability. Adoption of the food sovereignty principles are essential to address hunger since they empower local communities to have greater control over their productive resources, use and sustain ecologically friendly means of production, and access local markets as well as nutritious and culturally accepted food. The majority of African farmers (many of them are women) are smallholders, with two-thirds of all farms below 2 hectares and 90 % of farms below 10 hectares. However, the existing trend of land grabbing especially in Africa seriously affects food sovereignty in an unprecedented level. The introduction of intensive agricultural production, due to land grabbing often based on a transformation of complex and diversified smallholder farming systems for export and commercial purpose can seriously threaten biodiversity and land and water resources. This paper explores different dimensions of the complex relationship between food sovereignty and land grabbing within the perspective of African countries
Keywords: Desertification, Food Security, Food Security Governance, Food Sovereignty, Land Grabbing
The Economic Costs and Consequences of Desertification in Iraq (Published)
This paper focuses on the problem of desertification which Iraq is facing, and which is threatening its food security and affecting its social and economic development. The degrees of desertification have increased to the point where it affects %75 of the total land space of Iraq, and particularly the arable areas. This is due to several causes; some of it is caused by natural circumstances, while others are due to human activities which led to the salinization of the soil, deterioration of the plant cover and formation of sand dunes. This intensified the economic consequences in Iraq, and led to reduce of productivity. The state is burdened with large amounts of money in the reclamation of the deteriorated lands. The immigration from rural areas to cities has increased, poverty has spread and unemployment is rife. It also caused the extinction of many plant and animal species in the period 1990 – 2010. This paper indicates that the cost of combating desertification is around 10.3 – 20.5 billion dollars. This is a huge cost which affects the present and future economic situation that leads to decreases the generations in development and progress
Keywords: Desertification, Economic Costs, Iraq, Salinization