The missing dimension in two global summits:

Global justice in land distribution

Tissa Balasuriya OMI

Two recent global events recall the danger to human life due to widespread hunger. The first is the World Food Summit sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome in mid November 2009. The other is the World Summit on Global Climate Change, met in Copenhagen on December 10. Worsening climate change will also have a grave impact on hunger in the world.

Global attention

Boosting agriculture to fight hunger. File photo

The neglect of global justice in the distribution of land among the hungry landless peoples of the world is the most serious missing dimension in the present global dialogues of the food summit and climate summit. The leaders of the world, especially of the poor countries are urged to lay the foundations for a future global attention to this main issue of human life.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization one billion people are undernourished and a child dies every six seconds because of malnutrition. That is 10 children die each minute, 14,400 a day. The agricultural policies of the rich countries of the West, including Oceania, subsidize their agricultural exports that makes agricultural production unprofitable in the poor countries, and farmers commit suicide when they are unable to feed their families despite their hardwork.

Malnutrition

According to the most recent estimate that Hunger Notes could find, malnutrition, as measured by stunting, affects 32.5 percent of children in developing countries-one of three (de Onis 2000). Geographically, more than 70 percent of malnourished children live in Asia, 26 percent in Africa and four percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. In many cases, their plight began even before birth with a malnourished mother. Under-nutrition among pregnant women in developing countries leads to one out of six infants born with low birth weight. This is not only a risk factor for neonatal deaths, but also causes learning disabilities, mental, retardation, poor health, blindness and premature death.

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 /kilocalories (kcal) per person a day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase enough food.

Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is the most lethal form of malnutrition/hunger.

It is basically a lack of calories and protein. Food is converted into energy by humans, and the energy contained in food is measured by calories. Protein is necessary for key body functions including provision of essential amino acids and development and maintenance of muscles.

World Food Summit

Fr. Lombardi the Vatican spokesperson recalled that the World Food Summit is taking place in a scenario in which the tragedy is too often forgotten.

"In 2000 the famous Summit of the Millennium stated that the number of hungry people should be halved, of the 800 million at that time to 400 million in 2015; but in 2009 we have reached instead some 1.2 billion, a horrible tragedy, a strong impetus to migrations, a very grave threat to peace."

Colonialism

There is a close relationship between hunger and the evolution of the present world system due to the expansion of the European countries to the rest of the world after 1492. The first stage were the European invasions of the Americas, the African and Asian peoples and Australia and New Zealand. The indigenous native populations of the Americas and Oceania were decimated by violence and spread of Western diseases like smallpox against which the indigenous people had no remedies.

It is estimated that there were 80 million native American population in these lands in 1492, but by 1600 their numbers had been reduced to one million due to wars and diseases brought by the invaders. (cf: Joerg Rieger ?Christ and Empire? Fortress Press Mineapolis, 2007, p.283, quoting Matthew Fox).

Ulrich Duchrow writes "...the conquered territories are robbed of their precious metals and raw materials with the aid of firearms and slavery, and ninety percent of their inhabitants are killed in the greatest genocide in world history. Robbery and murder of the peoples of America, Africa and Asia is the basis of Europe's wealth and world leadership. (Ulrich Duchrow) Europe in the World System 1492 (1992', WCC Publications Geneva 1992, p 4, also cf.(Eduardo Galeano:) Open Veins of Latin America Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent." Monthly Review Press, NY, 1974.

The map of the modern world was made mainly by European (colonial) expansion which was by invasion and capture of weaker peoples territories, by expelling the natives further into the interior, by wars among colonial powers, by murder of the natives and their virtual extermination, and by purchase of vast areas of land from colonisers, usually after their conflicts.

Greatest land deal

Thus the purchase by the USA from France in 1803 of an area covering 2,144,000 sq km / 828,000 sq mi, including the present-day states of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. The price paid was $15 million (60 million francs), or roughly four cents an acre. The purchase doubled the size of the USA. It is called the "greatest land deal in history". Texas was bought from Mexico in 1848 for $15,000,000. Mexico ceded to the United States nearly all the territory now included in the states of New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas, and western Colorado was purchased for $ 15,000,000 and the U.S. assumption of its citizens' claims against Mexico.

Alaska was bought for $ 7,200,000 from Russia in 1867. It is the largest state in the USA. Thus USA was bought and formed in large measure for $ 37,000,000.

(Source: Quest 157- Centre for Society and Religion)

A consequence of these invasions was the setting up of the world system, as the map of the world of 1900 indicates. The imperial powers were Portugal and Spain, Britain and France followed by the Netherlands and Belgium and later by Germany and Italy, while White Russia expanded Eastwards upto China and the Pacific Ocean.

A second factor in the process of colonization was the unequal distribution of the land of Planet Earth in such a way that the White European peoples occupied much of the land spaces thus emptied by violence, and disease and push of the natives who survived further Westwards towards the Pacific on the West.

Great disparity

As the native people recovered from the genocide and some married persons of European origin as in South America, there was great disparity in the land distribution of the earth.

Both the world food crisis and the climate change relate to the distribution of arable land among the people of the world. This in turn depends on the world system which has been brought about by the Western expansion into the rest of the world during 1492 to 1945. In this colonial expansion the European people turned most of the rest of the world into colonies whose economies were transformed to suit the rich colonizer powers.

Western colonialism had some positive transformation of the world, such as improvement in health, education, social services, and a certain economic development of the poor countries.

At the same time there has been a growth of poverty with the present situation of the malnourishment of a billion people throughout the world, especially in Asia, Africa, and South America.

To be continued