Injustices of Global Climate Change and Food Security The Copenhagen Summit heard passionate pleas of many poor developing countries, particularly small island states that will be totally decimated by climate change. These voices were not heard and the future looks bleak for these countries as they will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change with substantial social, economic and environmental costs. The irony and the injustice here is that these very countries have hardly contributed to the green house gas emissions causes of global climate change. The United States meeting with China, India, South Africa and Brazil behind closed doors prepared a climate change accord in a matter of two hours, apparently not heeding to the preparations and recommendations of over two years of extensive international negotiations since the 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference. In the final hours of Copenhagen Summit the “accord” was simply announced to the other 188 nations with no opportunity to even read the content of the agreement. This unilateral and undemocratic process involving just five nation states to “save the Copenhagen Summit from total collapse” not only undermines the very founding principles and procedures of United Nations but also puts into question its role and functioning as the legitimate world representative negotiations forum. The details of the closed door deliberations have not been made public but India and China have indicated their satisfaction with the outcome as it leaves them to continue their development, without monitoring of their carbon emissions. India, a voice of the developing world for decades can no longer stand tall as the champion of the world’s poor and disenfranchised countries. South Africa and Brazil having been silent, now are stating their disappointed with the accord. As the lead nation in Africa, one would have expected South Africa to speak for the sub Saharan countries that will be the most impacted by climate change and they lack the means to cope. The developed countries are often criticized for their lack of real commitments and actions to make a difference to the worlds poor. Now it is even more concerning that the four richest developing countries also in their own self interest shy away from making a case for the plight of the world’s poorest countries, most at risk of climate change. Copenhagen may turn out to be the first serious dent in the alliance of developing countries for a more just, fair and equitable world. In contrast to the trillions of dollars spent to save banks during the recent financial crisis, in Copenhagen the developed countries put forward a US $ 30 billion aid package over three years to assist over a hundred countries to deal with the impacts of climate change as well as mitigate. And to keep aspirations alive, there was also an indicative “promise” of an annual climate change aid funding of US $ 100 billion of bilateral, multilateral and private business in 2020 and beyond. While the developing countries did not question this paltry and delayed aid promise, the principal concern is the wait for another 10 years for assistance to begin investments in adaptation to climate change. Not only precious time will be lost but the social, economic and environmental costs of inaction will escalate while greenhouse gas emissions continue to intensify climate change thus making the task of timely adaptation that much more difficult. In most global negotiations conferences, delegations of the developed countries, for example the United States and the EU come well prepared with facts, figures and planned tactics and are accompanied by an army of “lap top” expert advisors that instantly calculate and put forward well substantiated arguments during the negotiations while most developing countries have no experts sitting behind them to turn to for counter arguments in the negotiations process. No wonder developed countries succeed in driving the negotiations process in their own narrow and selfish self interest. The post-summit aspiration that the Copenhagen accord be turned into a legal binding global agreement is wishful thinking as that opportunity was lost as the political leaders scrambled home to deal with “pressing” problems. It is unlikely that the high level of the world’s political leaders in Copenhagen will come together again in the next decade, and certainly not at the follow-up climate negotiations meetings being planned in Germany and Mexico in 2010. Climate change is potentially the greatest catastrophic crisis facing the world in the 21st century and the Copenhagen Summit missed the opportunity to thrash out an international binding agreement to reduce the intensity of future climate change. The costs of extending the summit by a few days to reach a deal would have been a 2010 New Year gift, perhaps enabling the world to change course towards a sustainable and sustaining future. The world community has failed for decades to deliver on the universal right to food. The World Food Summits targets, such in 1974 “eradicate world hunger in ten years “ and in 1996, 2000 and 2002 “reduce world hunger by half by 2015” remain empty promises with little progress. It is particularly concerning that the most recent 2009 World Food Security Summit in Rome concluded with the urgency to eradicate world hunger but chose to delete the 2015 time line. Today a billion people are chronically hungry in a world that has the capacity and resources to eradicate hunger. We have the means but we lack the political will to mobilize and implement actions. Copenhagen was yet another example of a world conference that focused on climate change mitigation to limit global warming and failed to deliberate on the equally more pressing issues of climate change adaptation, especially with regard to agriculture which directly accounts for food provision and the livelihoods of over half the world’s population The most concerning aspect of climate change relates to potential decline in the agricultural productivity in many poor and food insecure developing countries in contrast to developed countries that will have better weather conditions with the potential to increase food production. However there is a tendency in, for example the European Union and the United States to invest in landscape conservation and biofuels production which will reduce land allocated to food production and thus less food exports. Many food insecure countries rely on food imports for a substantial proportion of their food security. This is highly concerning as situations may arise whereby food is simply not available on world markets no matter at what price. The 2008 world food crisis saw a doubling of world food prices in a matter of weeks causing food riots across the world. A number of exporting countries also imposed bans on food export bans. The instability in world food markets is likely to increase with growing world food demand and the future impacts of climate change on food production. The Copenhagen summit deliberations focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions towards mitigating climate change. The issues of adaptation to climate change were not given an equal priority and without this, eradicating world food insecurity will be hindered. The world desperately needs a moral and ethical commitment and implementation actions and an acceptance of the differential responsibility. Without this there can be little hope to feed and save the world from the real, emerging and definitive threats of climate change