World food prices hit record high

By Bryony Jones for CNN
February 3, 2011

London (CNN) -- World food prices rose to an all-time high in January, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The FAO's Food Price Index measures the cost of a basket of basic food supplies -- sugar, cereals, dairy, oils and fats and meat -- across the globe.
The index rose by 3.4% in January -- the seventh monthly increase in a row -- to its highest level since records began in 1990.

The cost of sugar, cereals, dairy and oils and fats all went up last month, while meat prices remained steady.
FAO economist Abdolreza Abbassian said high prices were likely to persist in the months to come.
Rising commodities costs are one of the major factors behind a growing wave of civil unrest across the Middle East and North Africa.

If prices remain high, it will be just a matter of months before the world's poor are hit by another major food price crisis
--Chris Leather, Oxfam

"High food prices are of major concern especially for low-income food deficit countries that may face problems financing food imports and for poor households which spend a large share of their income on food," said Abbassian.
Responding to the FAO's announcement, Oxfam said the latest price rises "should ring alarm bells in capitals around the world."

"If prices remain high, it will be just a matter of months before the world's poor are hit by another major food price crisis," said Chris Leather, the charity's policy advisor. Governments need to act now and act together to stop the rot.
"High global food prices risk hunger for millions of people. Poor people in developing countries spend up to 80% of their income on food. For them high food prices mean selling off their land or sacrificing their child's education simply to put food on the table."

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, economist Nouriel Roubini warned that rapidly rising food prices posed a serious threat to global stability.

"What has happened in Tunisia and is happening right now in Egypt, but also the riots in Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, are related not only to high unemployment rates and to income and wealth inequality, but also to the very sharp rise in food and commodity prices," he told CNN.

Does living in the city age your brain?

Kobe, Japan (CNN) -- There is a reason more than half the world's population lives in cities, with the number expected to grow. Cities have a lot to offer. Residents can walk to nearby shops and enjoy cultural attractions not available to those in more rural areas. Also, living in a city may make your commute to work much shorter.

Unfortunately, according to health officials from the World Health Organization, that convenience may come with a price -- higher levels of stress and a measurable impact on your brain.

The problem seems to be "attention," or more specifically, the lack of it. With so many different distractions -- from a flashing neon sign, to the cell phone conversation of a nearby passenger on a bus, a city dweller starts to practice something known as "controlled perception."

That toggling back and forth between competing stimuli can be mentally exhausting.
In fact, according to a recent study from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, just living in an urban environment makes it more difficult for an individual to hold things in memory.

In the same study, researchers split undergraduate students into two groups. One spent the day in a suburban neighborhood, the other group in a busy city. Overall, those in the city scored lower on attention tests and had a worse mood comparatively.

Some of this may be no surprise, especially if you live in a city yourself. The good news, however, is a solution may be relatively easy. Recent studies have shown just getting glimpses of green areas can improve brain performance.

While it would be great to get completely "unplugged" for long periods of time -- spending a few minutes a day in a park gives you time to reduce your cognitive efforts and relieve mental exhaustion.

So, a key for urban city planners is to maintain and enhance natural green settings as much as possible, and for individuals to take brief respites to enjoy them.

Oceans failing the acid test, U.N. says

(CNN) -- The chemistry of the world's oceans is changing at a rate not seen for 65 million years, with far-reaching implications for marine biodiversity and food security, according to a new United Nations study released Thursday.

"Environmental Consequences of Ocean Acidification," published by the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP)," warns that some sea organisms including coral and shellfish will find it increasingly difficult to survive, as acidification shrinks the minerals needed to form their skeletons.

Lead author of the report Carol Turley, from the UK's Plymouth Marine Laboratory said in a statement: "We are seeing an overall negative impact from ocean acidification directly on organisms and on some key ecosystems that help provide food for billions. We need to start thinking about the risk to food security."

Tropical reefs provide shelter and food for around a quarter of all known marine fish species, according to the U.N. report, while over one billion people rely on fish as a key source of protein.

Increasing acidification is likely to affect the growth and structural integrity of coral reef, the study says, and coupled with ocean warming could limit the habitats of crabs, mussels and other shellfish with knock-on effects up and down the food chain.

The report, unveiled during the latest round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, says that around a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions are currently being absorbed by the oceans, where they are turned into carbonic acid.

Overall, pH levels in seas and oceans worldwide have fallen by an average of 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. The report predicts that by the end of this century ocean acidity will have increased 150 percent, if emissions continue to rise at the current rate.
But scientists say there may well be winners and losers as acidification doesn't affect all sea creatures in the same way.

Adult lobsters, for example, may increase their shell-building as pH levels fall, as might brittle stars -- a close relation of the starfish -- but at the cost of muscle formation.
"The ability, or inability, to build calcium-based skeletons may not be the only impact of acidification on the health and viability of an organism: brittle stars perhaps being a case in point," Turley said in a statement.

"It is clearly not enough to look at a species. Scientists will need to study all parts of the life-cycle to see whether certain forms are more or less vulnerable."
Scientists are more certain about the fate of photosynthetic organisms such as seagrasses, saying they are likely to benefit from rising acidification and that some creatures will simply adapt to the changing chemistry of the oceans.

The authors identify a range of measures which policymakers need to consider to stop pH levels falling further, including "rapid and substantial cuts" to CO2 emissions as well as assessing the vulnerability of communities which rely on marine resources.

"Ocean acidification is yet another red flag being raised, carrying planetary health warnings about the uncontrolled growth in greenhouse gas emissions. It is a new and emerging piece in the scientific jigsaw puzzle, but one that is triggering rising concern," Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director, said in a statement.

Current emissions risk 'devastating' temperature rise, scientists warn

London, England (CNN) -- A rise in global temperatures of four degree Celsius is likely to occur during the 21st century causing "devastating impacts" if greenhouse gas emissions continue rising at the current rate, according to a group of international scientists.

In a special issue of the UK journal "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A" -- which coincides with the start of the United Nations climate talks in Cancun, Mexico -- scientists argue that delays in reducing emissions is making the target of two degrees Celsius -- a rise currently deemed safe by scientists -- "extremely difficult" and "arguably impossible" to achieve.

This, they say, raises the prospect of dangerous temperature rises later in the century.
Kevin Anderson, co-editor of "Four degrees and beyond: the potential for global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications," told CNN: "Emissions are going in completely the wrong direction. A rise of two degrees Celsius is much more challenging than is widely accepted."

A range of papers examine the various effects temperature rise would have on rainforests, sea-levels, agriculture and water supply, as well as trying to predict when four degrees might be reached.

The UK's Met Office Hadley Center estimates that at current emissions trajectories it could be by the 2070s, but perhaps as early as the 2060s.
It might not seem a lot, and for people living in northern Europe it might sound highly preferable given the early onset of winter this year. But what's important to remember, Anderson says, is that four degrees Celsius is a global mean figure.

"Most of the world is covered in oceans and take a lot longer to warm up. So what you would expect to see is a higher average temperature on land and much higher variations in some parts of the world, where there could be variations even as high as 10-15 degrees Celsius," said Anderson, director of the UK's Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.

"These sorts of changes will certainly have some devastating impacts for eco-systems and for many people living around the planet."
If the scientists are right, sea levels could rise two meters by the end of the century, displacing around 2.5 percent of the world's population over the course of the century.

Furthermore, rainforests will be at risk of retreat in eastern Amazonia, Central America and some parts of Africa, according to a paper by Przemyslaw Zelazowski from the Environmental Change Institute at the UK's Oxford University.

Forests in Africa's Congo Basin may expand Zelazowski says, which would tally with a recent study by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) which suggested rainforests flourished in a previous warming event 56 million years ago.

But Klaus Winter, a staff scientist at STRI conceded that "horror scenarios probably have some validity if increased temperatures lead to more frequent or more severe drought..."
What is not in doubt, according to scientists, are the "daunting challenges" facing agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa as smallholders are left with dwindling options for crop and livestock production.

Anderson concedes that skeptics will continue to question the validity of climate predictions given the recent "climategate" emails and reporting errors in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He says predictions are "an innately more difficult area of science to get some robustness on," but stresses these papers represent a "conservative" analysis.
"What we do know, with a high degree of certainty, is that emissions are going up and we know the sorts of rates they are going up at. Unless we see some significant changes we are going to see some much higher temperatures," Anderson said.

He says now is the time for the United Nations to show some courage and leadership.
Move ball forward at Cancun climate talks
"We don't not have the luxury of allowing for lots more negotiations and for future technologies to get out of this problem we have got ourselves in to. We need action now in 2010."