Strong upward trends and increased variability in global food prices over the past two years have led to concern that hunger and poverty will increase across the world.

The global food crisis is a stark reminder of the fragility of the global food system. The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities captures the debate about how to go forward and examines the implications of the crisis for food security in the world’s poorest countries, both for the global environment and for the global rules and institutions that govern food and agriculture. In this volume, policy-makers and scholars assess the causes and consequences of the most recent food price volatility and examine the associated governance challenges and opportunities, including short-term emergency responses, the ecological dimensions of the crisis, and the longer-term goal of building sustainable global food systems. The recommendations include vastly increasing public investment in small-farm agriculture; reforming global food aid and food research institutions; establishing fairer international agricultural trade rules; promoting sustainable agricultural methods; placing agriculture higher on the post-Kyoto climate change agenda; revamping biofuel policies; and enhancing international agricultural policy-making. Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

As the threats of food insecurity loom ever larger, the world faces the sad irony of food shortages in the global South alongside a purported 'obesity epidemic' in the global North. The twin issues of food production and food access are of particular concern in the context of climate change, 'peak oil', biofuels, and land grabs by wealthy nations. Food Security, Nutrition and Sustainability offers critical insights by international scholars, with chapters on global food security, supermarket power, new technologies, and sustainability. The book also assesses the contributions of diet and nutrition research in building socially just and environmentally sustainable food systems and provides policy recommendations to improve the health and environmental status of contemporary agri-food systems. The book features contributions from a range of social science perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, public health and geography, with case study material drawn from throughout the world.

This decade has been marked by multiple, often overlapping, crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and the ongoing war in Ukraine have all threatened the fabric of our global food systems. But opportunities can be found amid crises, and the world’s food systems have demonstrated surprising resilience. With new evidence on what works, now is the time to rethink how we address food crises. Better prediction, preparation, and resilience building can make future crises less common and less devastating, and improved responses can contribute to greater food security, better nutrition, and sustainable livelihoods.

This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the World Bank shows the substantial progress the Bank has made, this mainly through the dictionary section with concise entries on its component institutions, related organizations, its achievements in various fields, some of the major projects and member countries, and its various presidents. The introduction explains how the Bank works while the chronology traces the major events over nearly 70 years. Meanwhile, the list of acronyms reminds us just who the main players are. And the bibliography directs readers to useful internal documentation and outside studies.

This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. Despite numerous international consultations and an increased number of actors, there has been no real growth in international assistance, except for the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, and dietary transition. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will change in the United States bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?"--

This book offers a unique assessment of the G20’s development agenda and its potential to be an impactful actor in the global architecture of development cooperation. Representing two-thirds of the world population, 85 percent of economic output, 75 percent of global trade, and 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the G20 embodies an overwhelming concentration of economic and political power, enhanced through regular meetings of heads of state and government. This position allows it the opportunity to play a significant role in ongoing multilateral policy processes, but also to further undermine universal development governance at the UN, already challenged by the Bretton Woods institutions, OECD and G8. Providing context and a history of the G20’s involvement in development governance, expert international contributors consider the outcome of major conferences, the perspectives of China, India, and the EU, the shift away from positions held by Western countries and the role of civil society. They also offer in-depth analysis of the G20’s engagement with issues concerning infrastructure, food and agriculture, taxation, macro-economic policy and the Sustainable Development Goals. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of development, international organisations and global governance.