As world leaders meet at COP26 to make commitments for climate action, displacement associated with disasters and the impacts of climate change continue.  They threaten homes, livelihoods and lives warns the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Floods and storms forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes across all regions of the world in October. Despite an end to monsoon and rainy seasons in Asia, intense rainfall triggered severe flooding and landslides. Storms hit parts of the United States and Europe still recovering from summer wildfires, which destroyed vegetation — a natural flood defence.

Following a summer of heatwaves, drought and wildfires across parts of the United States and Europe, flooding brought about by storms in October led to evacuations in Evia, Greece and California. The same phenomenon occurred in Australia at the beginning of 2021, as widespread flooding followed an unprecedented bushfire season, forcing tens of thousands into displacement.

Extreme weather also continued across south-east Asia. In China, floods uprooted more than 330,000 people in the provinces of Sichuan, Shanxi and Shaanxi in the first week of October alone. Shanxi experienced its worst flooding since records began, with average rainfall 13-times higher than normal. Heavy rainfall driven by a late monsoon caused severe flooding and landslides in India and Nepal. An estimated half a million people were displaced to relief camps in India’s West Bengal state.

A high-intensity storm in the Mediterranean wrought destruction in Algeria, Italy and Tunisia, while tropical cyclone Kompasu left a trail of destruction across China, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Viet Nam. Cyclone Shaheen uprooted around 5,000 people in Oman in early October, and Mexico was struck by hurricanes Pamela and Rick. More severe weather and further displacement is expected in the coming months as the typhoon and cyclone season has only just begun in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

“Displacement in the context of disasters and climate change is one of the defining global challenges of our generation, affecting high and low-income countries alike,” said Alexandra Bilak, Director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). “In 2020, disasters, primarily triggered by weather-related hazards, resulted in 30.7 million forced movements. This is more than three times the number prompted by conflict and violence.”

 Bilak explained, “The scale of this type of displacement worldwide is certainly a cause for concern, as is the very real risk that global warming will lead to more frequent and intense weather events that can upend people’s lives.” 

Another month of extreme weather uproots hundreds of thousands across the globe – World | ReliefWeb

 Despite all the promises and pledges by politicians and the media, COP26 will be nothing short of a disappointing failure. The proposals responding to the climate emergency will be a hoax, the solutions sabotaged by vested interests and government policies paralysed by procrastination and postponements, with actual progress accomplished only on paper and not in practice. The tragedy of Glasgow’s conference is that it was no surprise for its informed participants who fully expected a failure but forlornly hope for a better outcome.

Despite many well-crafted speeches COP26 will make no substantive difference to the world’s worsening environmental situation and will once more prove itself to be another ineffectual climate conference. The reason is found in the economic system.

It is not going to be automatic that every environmentalist will end up demoralised or disillusioned by the pronouncements of COP26. Socialists, though, are not so easily duped by illusory assurances from the capitalist class. We are not unique in this scepticism. It is clear others share our cynicism in capitalist solutions and understand that a system geared towards profits can only lead to further environmental disaster. We have noted the banners and placards that say “System Change, not Climate Change”, the rejection of the false solutions offered by “green capitalism”. But socialists present a clear alternative, the vision of a society, based on shared ownership and democratic control. 

At this summit, the environment and social justice are the main themes brought forward by the numerous grass-roots groups, pressuring the governmental bodies. They are vocally and vociferously questioning all the official delegates commitment to take action to stop climate change.

But there is a completely different question to ask and a totally separate demand to make. The question has now become: Is capitalism sustainable? 

Today is time for building a cooperative commonwealth. The World Socialist Movement (WSM) understands the stark reality that capitalist production and “the market” cannot and will not halt climate catastrophe. Whatever new “green” technologies may arrive, they won’t end the system’s need for growth and expansion to create profit. A socialist transformation will be absolutely necessary for the survival of some sort of recognisable civilisation. The task ahead is to build a vision across national borders, not only to relatively comfortably well-off people in rich countries but to the vast global populations living at or near poverty levels and for them to see a common future that will be in their own interests and those of their children. We’re talking about universal access to quality food, decent housing and adequate healthcare. The answer cannot be based on cutting and curtailing the living standards of the already poor in a sacrifice to save the planet. Austerity is not desirable, although we can be sure what “standards of living” mean will be re-thought and not reflect the current consumerist lifestyles of America or Europe.

The present system’s imperative is growth, meaning the growth of production for profit, whether or not such growth enhances or degrades human lives or promotes or not the health of the environment. In a capitalist market economy, each enterprise must profit at whatever expense, or go out of business. Sustainable development is unachievable under capitalism because it means obstructing the profit motive which drives production.

The WSM trusts in our fellow workers and their bonds of solidarity with others near and far to understand that reality and act on it. What is needed is broadening our socialist vision rather than any rejection of it by substituting and incorporating reforms and amalgamating legislation and regulation as palliatives from the capitalists’ board of directors, the State. Sustainable development to improve human welfare and protect the environment is only possible without the capitalist profit motive. It is a lesson we must learn urgently.

 Governments can’t overcome the exploitative cost-cutting logic of capitalism and it is that which lies at the heart of the environmental crises. Capitalism is only concerned with short term profits; and the collateral damage costs to the environment are simply “externalities”, as the economists call them, a price to be passed on to society as a whole and not the responsibility of the culpable company.

 There is no future if we cover up climate change remedies. Capitalism has inflicted incalculable harm on those that live on this planet. Tragically, capitalism’s destructive power, driven by its inner logic to expand, is doing irreversible damage to life in all its forms all around the globe. Rosa Luxemburg famously said that humanity had a choice, “socialism or barbarism.” These days, her warning has even more meaning as we almost daily hear of species extinction, deforestation, desertification, and extreme weather events, to the point where many are almost in acceptance of an impending catastrophe.  Our planet cannot indefinitely absorb the consequences of profit-driven, growth-without-limits capitalism. Unless we radically change our methods of production and pattern of consumption, we will reach the point where the harmful effects to the environment will become irreversible. Only the most modest and mild measures of environmental reform are agreed by all sections of the capitalist class. This makes the establishment of a socialist society all the more imperative.

Pledges at this year’s climate summit to cut carbon emissions are likely to fall far short of the targets needed to avoid heating the planet by more than 1.5C or 2C. 

So much information about climate change now abounds that it is hard to determine the accuracy of all the statistics and figures. So many scientific reports appear alongside unverified claims with academic appearances. What we do know is limited progress has been achieved to curb carbon emissions and curtail global warming while the scale of climate connected natural disasters continue to unfold at an unprecedented rate.

The situation is particularly bleak for those nations least able to cope with floods and droughts. How could it be that a species so intelligent, flexible and well-able to adapt could potentially destroy itself? 

What happens next is somewhat speculative. Humanity isn’t so much sleep-walking to disaster as racing headlong to meet it.

Our ultimate survival will be predicated entirely on our choices – will we stay committed to the capitalist system or shall we embrace socialism. If there is to be a future for the human family, it can only be a socialist one. We must oppose an economic system that magnifies greed and encourages short-term thinking while pretending there are no physical limits to capitalist expansion and growth. To continue capitalism is to make a suicide pact. 

Bandying words around without fully comprehending their meanings isn’t fruitful. Capitalism is the social system under which we live. Capitalism is primarily an economic system of competitive capital accumulation out of the surplus-value produced by wage labour. As a system, it must continually accumulate or go into crisis. Consequently, human needs and the needs of our natural environment take second place in this imperative. Capitalist investors want to end up with more money than they started out with. Capitalism is an ever-expanding economy of capital accumulation. In other words, most of the profits are capitalised, i.e. reinvested in production, so that production, the stock of means of production, and the amount of capital, all tend to increase over time. The economic circuit is thus money – commodities – more money – more commodities, even more money. This is not the conscious choice of the business owners or CEOs. It is something that is imposed on them as a condition for not losing their original investment. Competition with other capitalists forces them to reinvest as much of their profits as they can afford to in keeping their means and methods of production up to date. As a result, there is continuous technological innovation. Defenders of capitalism see this as one of its merits and in the past, it was insofar as this has led to the creation of the basis for a non-capitalist society in which the technologically-developed means of production can be now—and could have been any time in the last 100 years—consciously used to satisfy people’s wants and needs. Under capitalism, this whole process of capital accumulation and technical innovation is a disorganised, impersonal process that causes all sorts of problems—particularly on a world–scale where it is leading to the destruction of the environment.

The World Socialist Movement does not pretend that we are in possession of an elaborated plan for all the problems that we shall inherit and which we can implement immediately. But lacking a fully worked-out blueprint doesn’t justify accepting the current economic system that assaults the living world. Capitalism is not the system through which we will shape a sustainable future. It is only fantasies found in economics textbooks that it can and deal with the real world. Capitalism concentrates wealth, it centralises power that allows a small number of people to dominate and determine not only economic but also political decision-making. Socialism is committed to principles rooted in solidarity and democracy.

 If the future is not environmentally in balance, there will be no future. If the future is not socialist, it cannot be sustainable. We can restructure our world along with new understandings of ecology and economics and we can salvage something worthy from today’s society. But it will not be achieved if we continue business as usual.

When a green campaigner says, “All that matters now is a focus on sustainability and renewables“, we must make it clear that such an aspiration is impossible under capitalism. We require economics based on cooperation and solidarity, not capital accumulation and growth.

The US secretary of agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, said: “I do not think we have to reduce the amount of meat or livestock produced in the US. And a significant percentage is exported. It’s not a question of eating more or less or producing more or less. The question is making production more sustainable.”

In an interview at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow Vilsack claimed that livestock production could be made more efficient, and the amount of methane produced by farm animals reduced, which along with other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture would be enough to reduce carbon from farming.

Meat accounts for about 60% of greenhouse gas production from agriculture, which itself is one of the highest carbon-producing sectors globally. 

The US, the EU and scores of other countries signed a deal at Cop26 to reduce global methane emissions by 30% by 2030, though none of the countries has taken on a firm national reduction goal under the deal. If the target is reached, global heating could be reduced by about 0.2C. Cattle and sheep produce methane, as does animal manure. The potent greenhouse gas has a heating effect about 80 times greater than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, though it breaks down sooner.

Campaigners have focused on meat-eating as a key source of greenhouse gas emissions around the world, but particularly in the US where a meat-heavy diet has become the norm over decades. People in the US eat close to 100kg of meat a year, more than any other country, although there has been a trend towards healthier eating among younger people in recent years. Meat-eating is also a driver of deforestation around the world, as rainforest in countries such as Brazil is cleared for cattle ranches and to produce animal feed.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “It’s time politicians stopped giving cover to the industrial meat industry. At the moment they get a free ride and we pay the price for their huge health and environmental impacts.”

Vilsack said: “If you reduce methane by livestock by 30%, by food additives or different feed, or you capture the methane to biogas – take the manure and use it as biofuel – then you have made livestock production more sustainable. I do not think you need to reduce meat consumption to get that.” He added: “If we are going to feed 9 billion people, you need meat protein. We will need plant, animal and fish protein.” He said the US was financing demonstration projects for new technology and farming methods that would reduce methane. 

Americans can eat meat while cutting global heating, says agriculture secretary | Cop26 | The Guardian

100,000 marched through the streets of Glasgow on Saturday demanding that “something” is done about climate change. Many, many more protested in other cities around the world. 

The global warming crisis as depicted by mainstream media is narrowly conceived and identified most basically as driven by excessive emission of greenhouse gases caused by humans as the result of bad choices made by the economy by humans. The solution is simply to choose a different set of policies that do not lead to excessive emission of greenhouse gases. The changes necessary therefore does not require any systemic restructuring of human society merely some adjustment of its priorities. The problem, however, is far deeper. Capitalism is the cause of the ecological crisis we face. 

The World Socialist Movement (WSM) seeks to dispel the mistaken idea that this environmental crisis is an exception and simply the result of an aberration within the otherwise rational order of the world market and profit accumulation. The system of capitalism must be placed at the centre of any explanation as to the cause of the abuse and destruction of nature. This means accepting that replacing capitalism role as the world’s economic structure is vital and crucial to any answer to the climate emergency

The answer cannot be one of the integration of nature into ‘green’ capitalism and ‘green’ solutions marketed for profit. Capitalism has fully exposed the system’s destructive consequence to nature, guaranteeing food insecurity, driving small family farmers out of business, off the land and frequently into starvation. Socialism is indispensable to any real solution to the environmental crisis. 

Without the vision of a better world and the organisation to change things that go with it, the protests of the green campaigners will go nowhere. We are running out of time and soon there may well be no future at all

Capitalism is the real enemy, not people themselves. Capitalism is overwhelmingly the driver of planetary ecological collapse, from climate change to resource depletion to pollution. Today, a roaring out-of-control economic system is cutting down forests, sweeping clean oceans and seas, gouging out mountains for minerals and ores, pumping toxic effluents into rivers and out lakes, devouring destroying fragile ecosystem built up over millennia. Capitalists and corporations aren’t totally evil, (although many are), but they can’t stop themselves. They’re just doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing for their shareholders, returning dividends and raising their stock prices. That’s what is demanded. The conglomerates can’t end poisoning and pillaging, looting and polluting, trashing the planet into one giant global land-fill site. All that matters is senseless business growth, regardless of the ringing of alarm bells or the sight of red warning lights. 

Solutions to the ecological crisis are blindingly obvious but don’t make “economic” sense to the investors’ logic.

 We all know the answers. Stop excessive greenhouse gas emissions. Cease wasteful consumption of resources. End the harmful pollution of the soil, water, and air.

We don’t need any new technology to solve these problems. We just need to halt doing what we’re doing. But we can’t because of being locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders.

Our aim is a society that serves the welfare of humanity and the well-being of our environment. The WSM offer no blueprint here or anywhere else for the society we dare to imagine and seek to build other than to help organise the large majority of the population toward this goal. We are living in terrifying times and no-one knows what seeds will take root.

America’s Great Plains are being torn up with frightening implications for biodiversity and carbon storage. Everyone knows about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, but grasslands are off their radar

Grasslands used to cover a large swath of North America before European settlement. When Europeans arrived, they quickly plowed up about half of the grasslands on the continent and converted them to agricultural use, growing corn, soybeans and wheat. And today, new research shows the rate that the ecosystem is being lost has been increasing.

Patrick Lendrum, a scientist with the World Wildlife Fund’s northern Great Plains program, led a research team that released a report in September showing that from 2018 to 2019 an estimated 2.6m acres of grassland were plowed up, primarily to make way for row crop agriculture – an area larger than Yellowstone national park. Lendrum says. “That’s an alarming trend.” It’s also a huge blow for efforts to fight the climate crisis and represents a little reported unfolding environmental disaster in the US.

Farmers and ranchers make decisions based on global commodity prices. There’s an increased demand for crops for human food, livestock feed and fuel. Biofuels like ethanol boomed in 2009 or 2010 and that increased demand.

“Grasslands are mostly used for grazing of livestock and when that balance gets out of line, and crop agriculture becomes more profitable, that’s when we see the resurgence of the tillup,” says Tyler Lark, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin who has studied grasslands for the past decade.  Lark is also studying the ways that croplands are being turned into housing – so the total amount of cropland isn’t expanding that much, but it’s being developed for residential use, and crops are being pushed to the periphery. “It’s almost a cascading effect, as we look at future urban expansion,” he says.

There are enormous implications for climate change when people dig up grasses that have been intact for hundreds of years, because grasslands store tons of carbon in their soils. Native prairie grasses have deep roots that stabilize the soil and prevent erosion. When people plow it up, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. It also exposes the soil to the air, which increases erosion and can also lead to nitrate leaching. People often think of forests as natural ecosystems that store huge amounts of carbon, Lark says. But grasslands store immense amounts as well, out of sight, under the ground. “When we plow those up, a lot does become lost. If we can reduce the conversion, that will go a long way in lowering emissions.”

Once grasslands have been destroyed for agriculture, Lendrum says, it can take decades or even centuries to restore them. The WWF is working with landowners to convert croplands back into grasslands, but the process is slow and expensive. “Once that piece of grass is initially tilled, it’s very difficult to restore those ecosystem benefits,” says Lendrum. “Carbon in particular, it’s a slow process.”

Lark says the future is really about using the croplands we have already in the most efficient manner, and improving yields. “There is lots of room to expand production without expanding cropland area – it’s just easier to expand area than work on innovation.”

 Just as increased attention to rainforests and savannah led to protecting them globally from deforestation, the same level of awareness could be applied to grasslands. Lark says he could see campaigns around native ecosystems, conversion-free supply chains, and products that aren’t contributing to the loss of grasslands.

Ben Turner, a natural resource management scientist at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas, says “We’re not going to reclaim even a small percentage of all the grasslands we’ve lost,” he says. But farmers can make cropland as functional as grasslands used to be, by diversifying crop systems, integrating livestock with crops, and finding ways to value ecosystem services like pollinators and migratory birds.

America’s native grasslands are disappearing | Endangered habitats | The Guardian

Year in and year out we release millions of tonnes of CO2 and methane gases into the atmosphere. Every year acre upon acre of tropical rainforests are destroyed or seriously degraded. So, at the same time, we are destroying the plant life that uses carbon dioxide and converts it into oxygen. The result is global warming. Many of the dangers are well understood but nobody knows for sure and nobody can predict with certainty the critical tipping points when any combination of such changes might produce a sequence of further rapid changes which would be catastrophic from a human point of view. It must be obvious that a set of problems that are global in scale, affecting populations across the entire planet, can only be effectively tackled by cooperation between all peoples. You can’t have the world divided up between rival capitalist states — all riven by economic competition both within their boundaries and between each other and all driven by the economic pressures of profit and class interests, with a good many of them at actual war with each other — and expect to be in a position to solve the problems of the global environment. Effective action has got to be based on world cooperation.

To get the cooperation we first have to get rid of the present system which is based on economic competition. We need to establish a system based instead on common ownership, a world where all means of producing and distributing goods and all productive resources are held in common by the whole community. This means the end of the wages system through which workers are exploited for profit and the end of producing goods for sale so as to get that profit. It means people living and working in the community in a relationship of direct cooperation with each other, producing the goods and running the services that we need. This is a way of organising the community where the use of money will be entirely redundant.

If we establish common ownership, if we set up a society that is run solely for human needs as a result of people cooperating together, we are at last in a position where we can control our actions. Under capitalism, we are at the mercy of economic forces that nobody can control. Get rid of these economic forces and we are at last in a position to make democratic decisions about how best to use production for the benefit of the community.

Socialism is not the instant solution to problems but the means by which we can resolve problems. In socialism, we get the release of all productive resources — machinery, transport, raw materials, energy and labour — for the benefit of the community, but as, to start with, there will be a great deal to do we would have to make choices. We would have to make decisions in line with agreed priorities of action.

We’ve got to supply a lot more food, so that has to be increased. We’ve got to supply decent housing for everyone and that is an enormous world project. The mention of just these two priorities of action means that we would need a lot more energy and, as we know, the supply of energy is one of the worst villains in this problem of environmental damage.

It is clear that socialism will have to do two things at the same time: increase the supply of energy and do it in ways that protect the environment.

Do we keep on using nuclear generators knowing that inevitably this leads to what we do with their radioactive waste?

Do we keep on burning oil, knowing that oil is an immensely useful material that can supply thousands of very durable products? The burning of oil in power stations is in fact the kind of profligate waste that only capitalism could go in for.

What about coal, do we keep on burning it? There is no doubt that the burning of coal can be made less damaging by the installation of pollution-abatement equipment but it is expensive. In socialism, money would not be a factor. So we could if we wished to go on burning coal in a less damaging way and, of course, there are immense world reserves of this. Or simply,  we could agree to keep coal in the hole.

However, most people would agree that the most desirable way of producing energy is with the various renewable, benign methods such as solar, wind and wave power etc. This is clearly where the future lies.

Socialism would be free to go in for rapid development of these ecologically-benign methods. With the establishment of socialism, we will throw off the economic shackles of the profit system and break through into the freedom to use all our talents, skills and energies to solve problems through cooperation and collaboration.

 Child marriage robs girls of their childhood and threatens their lives and health.

And girls who marry before 18 have worse economic and health outcomes than their unmarried peers, which are eventually passed down to their own children, further straining a country’s capacity to provide quality health and education services.

Child brides often become pregnant during adolescence, when the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth increases – for themselves and their infants.

The practice can also isolate girls from family and friends and exclude them from participating in their communities, taking a heavy toll on their physical and psychological well-being, 

The following facts and figures, which have been compiled by the two main world specialised bodies -UNICEF and UN Population Fund (UNFPA), should suffice to unveil such a flagrant human rights violation.

— Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.

While the prevalence of child marriage has decreased worldwide – from one in four girls married a decade ago to approximately one in five today – the practice remains widespread.

— Child marriage can lead to a lifetime of suffering. Girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence.

— Young teenage girls are more likely to die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s, and their children are more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Infants born to teenage mothers are also more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Wherever they occur, harmful practices rob girls of their childhood, deny them the chance to determine their own future and threaten the well-being of individuals, families and societies.

… And the figures

— Globally around 21% (over 1 in 5) of young women were married before their 18th birthday.

— 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children.

— 12,000,000 girls under 18 are married each year. And more than 150 million additional girls will marry before their 18th birthday by 2030.

Where most?

UNICEF and UNFPA also report that, across the globe, levels of child marriage are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where around 4 in 10 young women were married before age 18, followed by South Asia, where 3 in 10 were married before age 18.

Lower levels of child marriage are found in Latin America and Caribbean (25%), the Middle East and North Africa (17%), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (11%).

Among a raft of alarming statistics, a UN report has just found that children account for around 28 percent of trafficking victims globally. And that Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and the Caribbean have the highest share of children among detected trafficking victims, at the rates of 64 and 62 percent, respectively.

Let alone that girls are forced by traffickers and smugglers to sexual exploitation. “Sexual tourism has a child face. No country is untouched and no child is immune.”

Child Marriage – 800 Million Girls Forced to Be Mothers | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Food waste is not only caused by forgetful consumers and accidents in food supply chains. 

In fact, food systems research has shown that food waste is a core, and even profitable, feature of food systems today. But as it is so often the case with environmental hazards, the profit motive trumps preventive action, and the issue of food waste is only superficially addressed.

Industrial food systems create industrial-scale food waste.  Several studies have shown that large-scale food waste is an inevitable outcome of the competition, speed, and growth-driven market mechanisms which rely on overproduction to generate profit at the expense of people and the environment.

Currently, up to half of the food produced globally is never eaten.

It represents 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

None of us wants to think that our food systems might be designed to be wasteful, especially given that the world’s resources are being depleted at an alarming rate, and that up to a quarter of our fellow humans are going hungry.

 The abundance of calories produced by our food systems (in the United States, up to 4,000 calories per day for each person) presents a glaring contradiction to the scarcity and hunger manufactured alongside it.

United Nations’ Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) Action Track 2, titled Shift to Sustainable Consumption Patterns, focussed partially on the issue of food waste. But it stated “eliminating wasteful patterns of consumption” and “building consumer demand for sustainably produced food”, as the main goals in this arena, rather than addressing root causes of wastage.

Emily Mathiesen of FIAN International notes that “the UNFSS overlooked structural inequalities and human rights abuses that perpetuate food insecurity and hunger”.

Campaigning group Feedback Global’s executive director, Carina Millstone, blames the summit’s shortcomings around the issue of food waste and the food system in general on the disproportionate role corporations played in its organisation.

Millstone was part of the food waste working group of Action Track 2, but she says she realised early on that the group was dominated by a “handful of organisations intent on promoting voluntary, business initiatives and citizen action for food waste above all else”. Like hundreds of others that boycotted the summit, Feedback Global, which has worked on food waste issues since 2013, stepped aside “as it became clear the recommendations would skirt around identifying and addressing the root causes of food waste – profit-driven corporate agribusiness”.

At the farm level, research by Feedback Global showed how unfair trading practices and power concentration in food systems allow major agribusinesses to transfer the risks and costs of food waste to farmers. The consolidation of the manufacturing and retail sectors ensures that large food corporations control the conditions of trade, including prices, aesthetics, cancellation and volumes. Farmers, especially those growing monocultures, are therefore pressured to meet strict buyers’ requirements, and overproduce.

That so much food is being wasted while so many are going hungry is an undeniable sign that our economies of food are lacking justice. But it is misguided to suggest the problems of hunger and food waste can simply be resolved if we invest more in food redistribution.

 The global expansion of charitable solutions like food banks cannot fix the underlying economic inequalities that produce hunger. In what food security expert Andrew Fisher calls the “hunger industrial complex”, food waste, hunger and corporate interests collide to maintain the status quo. Beyond the laudable efforts of thousands of volunteers, extensive corporate sponsorship of the global expansion of food banking hints that this model is not about transforming and preventing wasteful systems, but primarily managing, perpetuating and even justifying excess.  

Research shows that food charities in many countries often struggle to handle large-scale donations due to a lack of sufficient storage, cooling and transport infrastructure.

The global advocacy group This Is Rubbish highlights in its Plenty To Share campaign, tackling root causes of food waste and hunger means tackling global wealth inequalities while preventing further corporate control over our food sources.

‘Big Food’ at the UN table: A recipe for big waste? | Opinions | Al Jazeera