Primo piano dal Mondo

Rome, 16 November 2009 – The Director-General of the FAO, Jacques Diouf, opening the Summit on Food Security in Rome, declared that the number of starving people had reached a billion and that every thirty seconds five children die of starvation. Diouf added that with this difficult premise we have to prepare ourselves to feed, in 2050, 9.1 billion people and to do this we have to raise food production 70%, something made much more difficult by climate change. Pope Benedict XVI underlined the link between hunger and climate change as well in his presentation.

The International Forum organized by Greenaccord in Viterbo from 25 to 29 November has as its main thrust showing the urgency of effective measures to stem the tide of the worst effects of the climate change already underway. Witnesses, most of them farmers and fishermen from developing countries, will illustrate the increasing difficulties with their production of food, caused by the effects of climate change that are already serious in their countries. In the presence of 120 journalists from all over the world they will raise the alarm in particular to the representatives of the nations that will meet in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December 2009, joining their voices to those of internationally famous scientists who will be present at Greenaccord’s Forum.

Everyone present at the Forum will sign a memorandum which will be delivered to Copenhagen to  Rajendra Patchauri, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the IPCC (the organ of the UN that coordinates research on climate change); the memo requests that no more time be lost, and to set out a road map, one which is agreed to and has the power of law, to the complete decarbonization of the economy by 2050. This initiative is opportune especially in this moment, when US president Barack Obama, at the end of the summit of the Pacific Rim countries, despite reaffirming his determination for the fight against climate chance, declared along with the president of China Hu Jintao that Copenhagen will not be the place to sign an important new agreement on the reduction of emissions but rather an important step in that direction. 

“I don’t want – declared Prof. Andrea Masullo, president of Greenaccord’s Scientific Committee – “our children and grandchildren, in 2050, finding themselves on a planet inhabited by more than 9 billion people and devastated by climate chance, rereading the scientific reports of today, the speech by the director-general of the FAO and the pope, to ask themselves what we were thinking and why we did not do anything when everything that was going to happen was clear.”