International Trade and Food Security: Can Agrobiodiversity Reconcile Both?

This paper focuses on how economic dynamics regarding global markets and international trade regulations affect food security, with a specific focus on agrobiodiversity, mainly by identifying major gaps in existing international reports. The question of how the concept of food security has evolved and how it has been addressed and analyzed at the international level by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) will first be explained, followed by argument on how the lack of an internationally coordinated response to address the economic impacts on food insecurity has led to market disruptions and price volatility. This paper argues that global economic governance should focus on tackling these issues through international trade policies aimed at enhancing agrobiodiversity, which would in turn enhance food security, especially for those countries where people in demand of food is not particularly solvent. Issues that are clearly linked with food security, namely global governance, political economy, and agrobiodiversity, will be addressed here. Food security is also strongly linked with other thematic areas, including climate change, rural development, sustainable land use, aid effectiveness, and health. It is difficult to understand the international response to global food security as an isolated issue; we must see it as part of the larger picture of the global development framework, and analyze it along with other on-going international processes

Límites Constitucionales al Gasto Público: Suecia, Reino Unido, Suiza, Chile y Alemania

Unas finanzas públicas sólidas son el requisito previo para la reconstrucción de la confianza en la capacidad del Estado para actuar y son fundamentales en el crecimiento a largo plazo así como para la creación de condiciones de empleo favorables. La falta de confianza en la sostenibilidad de las finanzas públicas en algunos Estados miembro fue uno de los principales desencadenantes de la crisis en la zona euro. Numerosos países de nuestro entorno decidieron, algunos antes incluso de la llamada ‘crisis de la deuda’, introducir mecanismos de límite de deuda en sus legislaciones. Otros adoptaron compromisos políticos firmes que se han mantenido en el tiempo, y cuyos resultados vemos a día de hoy. Entre estos países, analizaremos detenidamente cinco de ellos: Suecia, Reino Unido, Suiza, Chile y Alemania

Securing Sovereignties: Implications of Institutional Food Governance Frameworks for Agrobiodiversity Protection in Urban and Peri-Urban Landscapes in Mexico and Ecuador

Among existing intermediaries between the State and people, cities constitute today one of the core implementing bodies of national declarations, frameworks, and programs, according to the national distribution of competencies. Institutional food governance frameworks, oftentimes designed by national or state- level administrations, can play a major role in agrobiodiversity protection at the local level. Because this role may be beneficial or deleterious depending on a number of factors, analyzing the links and finding the balance between the two may help local governments design the necessary policies to preserve the environment without the expense of increasing food insecurity. While studies on institutional agrobiodiversity governance tend to focus on the international and national levels, there is little attention to the potential of local administrations in the protection of agrobiodiversity. Mexico and Ecuador represent two different approaches to food governance, namely food security and food sovereignty. Drawing on the experiences of Mexico Federal District and Quito Metropolitan District in the protection of agrobiodiversity in urban and peri- urban landscapes, this study explores the role and potential of local governance in agrobiodiversity protection in the said two cities. It further analyzes the relationship between institutionalized food sovereignty or food security frameworks, and agrobiodiversity protection. This analysis is used to comparatively discuss the implications of each approach for agrobiodiversity protection. Indeed, institutional food governance frameworks can be designed to support diversified smallholder agroecosystems, pushing sub-national governments to ensure food security and agrobiodiversity protection through the promotion of sustainable agriculture

Development and the ‘Wise Use’ of Urban Wetlands in Manila Bay

It is often said that in developing countries “biodiversity policy is development policy”. Which biodiversity (and for whom) and which development (and for whom), however, remain unanswered questions. Societies seeking development inevitably shape biodiversity through the interface of science, policy, and human institutions. As a result, opposing visions of development may affect biodiversity conservation in different ways and, together with climate change, could make the future highly uncertain for areas like the Philippine wetland we will discuss

Governing Agri-food Transitions: Food Democracy Principles and the Facilitative Governance of Social Innovations

The specific diseconomy of our broken food systems has perpetuated a state of suppressed agency wherein citizens are purposefully turned into mere passive consumers, while in parallel spreading the idea that, in democracy, consumer sovereignty and dollar voting are people's best voice. This logic has led to a situation of structural violence: privileged populations have profited from increased information access, expanded choices, and better quality and healthier foods, while disenfranchised communities subjugated to enduring gender, race, and class disparities remain imprisoned in a reality of poor information access, limited choices, and lower quality, frequently unhealthy foods. In recent years, socially innovative initiatives including farmers’ markets, public-access community gardens, or food-buying groups, have begun to expand traditional understandings of democracy, democracy in these cases being non-traditionally understood as the exercise of collective rights to self-determination. Empowering communities at the local level has been identified as the first step towards establishing sustainable food systems (UN Human Rights Council, 2014), and governments and authorities are becoming increasingly aware of the need to support and promote local social innovations to achieve that objective. If social innovations are key in achieving sustainability, critically examining them becomes a crucial democratic exercise, lest they remain ephemeral lifestyle choices of a privileged subset of society. Some of these initiatives, while well-intentioned, have been uncritical of power relations and existing disparities, unreachable to the broader population due to their insensitivity to recognition and redistribution struggles. Others, not so well-intentioned, have hoarded sustainability discourses and, with the connivance of governments and authorities, often misled well-intended eaters into supporting seemingly sustainable but inherently problematic practices. A third, important but under- recognized set of initiatives, have come from within communities themselves, designed to serve those very communities, often including core values like participation parity, endogenous leadership, and self-empowerment. In the last decade, food democracy has been defined in multiple ways. First, as opposed to “food control”, in the form of an inclusive approach to food policy and in terms of its bottom-up approach and of diversity of views and interests (Lang, 1999). Shiva (2003) also uses it in opposition to food dictatorship understood as the control by foreign transnational corporations through GM crops. Then, as an ideal method for ensuring participation in the food system (Hassanein, 2003), and in opposition to the corporatization of the organics' movement (Johnston & Baumann, 2009). Some authors have continued to frame the debate of food democracy in terms of localism (Brecher, Costello, & Smith, 2000; F. M. Lappé & Lappé, 2002; Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007); while others touch much closer on core issues central to food democracy as understood in the present analysis, such as power relations: “A central concern is the problem of commodity fetishism or, put differently, a lack of transparency in the food system that obscures how relations of production are socially produced rather than naturally given.” (Johnston & Baumann, 2009, p. 110) Democracy has also been identified as one of the main features of food sovereignty (Jacobs, 2013; McMichael, 2013; Patel, 2009a; 2009b; Windfuhr & Jonsén, 2005), with research having looked into democratic attributes within food sovereignty practices at the local level (Wald, 2015). However, as a concept, democracy in the food system remains credulously presumed and generic at best, and problematically manipulable at worst. Despite the work of these authors, there is a lack of systematic analyses looking beyond simple definitions by opposition, mere calls for engagement/participation, or non-quantitative mileage definitions. While concepts like “localization”, “transparency”, or “alternativeness” have helped deepen the analysis of the agri-food system and its actors, isolated notions no longer serve scrutinize recent complex social dynamics, as they do not constitute a comprehensive framework through which to analyze the status of these niches of innovation in democratic terms. As a result of this conceptual gap, governance organizations involved in the agri-food system have been unable to identify key democratizing traits in these initiatives, inadequately addressing the divide between privileged and disenfranchised communities. The hypothesis of this paper is that food democracy is necessary because achieving sustainability involves conflicts over values. The first section of this paper proposes a characterization of food democracy, aiming to identify potential democracy principles for food initiatives, both in their internal and external dimensions. Going beyond conventional criteria of generic participation or transparency, our framework will also consider community-building, horizontal integration of the various actors in a territory, community leadership, ability to generate public debate, economic accessibility, outreach capacity, and empowerment through social action. The second section evaluates the contribution of these principles toward improving social learning processes regarding socio-ecological sustainability controversies in the field of sustainable food transitions. The third section applies this framework to 64 food-related initiatives interviewed in the EU (Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain.) As social demands for new forms of democracy increasingly regard socio-environmental governance processes, this research provides a framework to identify democratic attributes in food- related initiatives. These attributes can be key in the support, promotion, and facilitation of social innovations in the agri-food system. Social innovations, particularly in the food system, are transforming and creating new social relations, addressing unsatisfied human needs in the transition towards more sustainable and resilient systems, but to truly transform society and effect lasting change, they must be critical of power structures and radically democratic in essence. The hope of this research is to provide useful principles for the kind of necessary democratic conditions a food initiative must fulfill to be truly socially transformative