Event
Securing Food Futures in the Asia Pacific: Evaluating Regional Frameworks for Food Security
6-8 October 2010
Venue: Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Background
The global food crisis of 2008 (which was characterised by both volatility in food prices and shortages of food) and the uneven but almost certainly largely negative impacts of climate change have drawn attention to the importance of food security as a regional challenge for the Asia-Pacific.
The use of the term ‘security’ to describe the reliability of food systems – food production, accessibility, distribution and utilisation – dates to the 1996 World Food Summit. Food security was defined there as existing when ‘all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. In contemporary policy debates, however, the security dimensions of food crises have become more complex, multi-scale and interconnected. For some, the focus is on the human security of those who are poor, marginalised and most likely to be food insecure. Others adopt a political economy model of human/economic security. The model focuses on two aspects: 1) the farmers and fisher people for whom food production is a crucial livelihood issue; 2) the economic consequences for countries that are increasingly required to be net food importers and for whom structures of supply and distribution are crucial. In a series of recent reports on climate change, security analysts have increasingly raised the spectre of higher levels of regional instability caused by food scarcity; of an exacerbation of social destabilisation, conditions for distributional conflicts and the problems of weak and failing states; and of increased migration and mounting pressures on regional governments to accept refugee populations given the increase in the millions of the number of food insecure persons in Asia due to food scarcity.
This complex of security concerns has generated demands for a range of strategic policy responses. These fall broadly into four categories: increasing the resilience and sustainability of agriculture and fisheries productivity; improving disaster risk management; enhancing social protection schemes; and strengthening community-based development. Because food insecurities are no longer just local problems, food security requires that effective policy responses are supported by regional governance arrangements. The salience of regional food security has been recognised in a variety of regional institutional contexts including the Cha-am Hua Hin Statement on ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation on Food Security and Bio-Energy Development (October 2009); the 2nd Joint Statement on East Asian Cooperation; the ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan 2007–17; and most recently the 31st Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry in November. Regional governance efforts on food security include the ASEAN Food Security Information System (AFSIS); the Strategic Plan of Action on ASEAN Food Security (SPA-FS); the ASEAN-FAO Regional Conference on Food Security (May 2009); the ASEAN MultiSectoral Framework on Climate Change and Food Security; the NEAT Working Group on East Asian Food Security (July 2009); the ASEAN Plus Three Roundtable on Food Security Cooperation Strategies; and the recently upgraded East Asia Emergency Rise Reserve.
This growing concern about regional food security has been accompanied by the recognition that continued efforts will be required to exchange and evaluate information on best practices and to identify and address emerging issues related to food security. Indeed, this is made specific in Strategic Thrust 6 of the ASEAN Food Security Information System. This symposium project is a response to these requirements. It acknowledges that while there is a substantial body of sector-specific literature on food security, there has been little systematic research that assesses the extent of coherence or fragmentation of regional responses and that evaluates the impact of those responses. Little is known, therefore, about the potential of regional initiatives to meet simultaneously the human and national security dimensions of food insecurity.
Anticipated results
This project will deliver a more comprehensive understanding of the security challenges of food scarcity in the Asia-Pacific region. Through its assessment of current regional cooperative mechanisms and modalities on food security, its identification of best practices as well as gaps in those arrangements, and its evaluation of their likely impact on the future of food security in the Asia-Pacific, this project will result in improved knowledge of the kinds of regional governance arrangements that are required to guarantee a resilient and secure food system and to protect those who are most vulnerable to food scarcity. The project will also result in specific and relevant evidence-based policy recommendations to enhance regional efforts in addressing the complex issue of food security in the Asia-Pacific.
Significance
It is timely to assess regional efforts to respond to the challenges of food security. In the period of 2007–08, the number of food insecure persons increased to almost 130 million globally. Most of these people are found in Asia. It is clear from the regional impacts of the 2008 food crisis that the challenge for the Asia-Pacific is how to ‘make progress in guaranteeing food security in a context where the production of food will be increasingly stressed in the face of decreasing resources pitched against continually expanding demand’.[1] There are currently few relevant studies that focus on regional governance arrangements for food security. The significance of the project lies in (i) its inter-disciplinary contribution to broadening our understanding of the necessary as well as sufficient conditions for regional best practices; (ii) its contribution to the conceptual literature on food scarcity in the context of non-traditional and comprehensive security; and (iii) its relevance for policymakers and other communities of practice.
- Amitava Mukherjee, ‘Securing food security in the Asia Pacific: a partial analysis’ (Beijing: UN Asia Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery, 2009), p. 1; at http://www.unapcaem.org/publication/FoodInsecurity09.pdf
Click here for the workshop programme.
Please note that the forum is open to the public and that the workshop is for invited participants only.
For media and other queries, please contact Ms Amy Chen at Amy.Chen@anu.edu.au. Co-organisers: