Interim findings of the World Re­sources Report 2013-2014: Cre­ating a Sustainable Food Future project that the world will need to produce 69% more calories than it does at present to feed the estimated 9.6 billion global popu­lation by 2050. Ensuring this level of production while alleviating the impact of human activity on the natural environment were key top­ics at Stories to Watch 2014: Food Security and Sustainable Devel­opment, co-hosted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) China and the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University on February 28 in Beijing. Manish Bapna, exec­utive vice president and managing director of WRI, and Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University, shared their insights on the major environmental and development issues facing China and the World during 2014.

 

Global food production is con­strained by an increasing number of adverse factors, the foremost of which is water scarcity, said Bapna. Today, about 1.2 billion people live in absolute water scarcity, a num­ber that will increase to 1.8 billion by 2025. Another critical difficulty in achieving food security is the regional unevenness in the global food distribution.

 

The Central Economic Work Conference held last December, indicated that achieving food security and the development of sustainable agriculture are areas of utmost importance for China. Introducing China's food strategy, Hu Angang said that for the medium term, China is striving to feed a population of 1.4 billion, attain self-sufficiency in the production of cereals and absolute safety in grains, meet requirements for higher-quality food, and build a more advanced and efficient modern food secu­rity system. “To achieve these goals, the main task of develop­ment and reform is to ' improve two capabilities and build three segments', namely the capabili­ties to improve comprehensive food production and the capabil­ity of global development, and to promote the changes of the grain circulation segment, inven­tory segment and processing segment."

Translated by Bai Le

Revised by Charles Horne

The Chinese version appeared in the Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 567, March 5, 2014

Chinese link: http://www.csstoday.net/xueshuzixun/guoneixinwen/88115.html