Blaming leaders in America and abroad for not doing enough to combat climate change, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said continued failure to tackle the problem will result in worldwide hunger, social unrest and political turmoil.

“Without action at the global level to address climate change, we will see farmers across Africa – and in many other parts of the world including here in America – forced to leave their land,” the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner told a crowd of about 1,400 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Thursday. “The result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion and even political instability.”

Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan said rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have “pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.” He called a lack of food security for nearly 1 billion of the world’s population “an unconscionable moral failing” that is also a stumbling block to a strong international economy.

“It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth,” he said.

Annan’s talk, “Food Security Is a Global Challenge,” was delivered as part of a daylong conference on global underdevelopment sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event drew the world’s leading experts in the field and featured panel discussions that explored the connections between global security and food supplies, health care and governance. Keynote speeches were delivered by Annan and Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also planned to deliver a talk to a private audience.

The conference marked the launch of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

“With this facility, and the creative thinkers and inquisitive minds for which Stanford is famous, you are well-equipped to undertake research which advances our knowledge and helps to shape our response to the many global challenges we face,” Annan said. “And with the resources at your disposal, you also have the capacity to actively engage to influence policy, implement solutions and thus improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Annan also lauded government initiatives such as America’s Feed the Future program that focus on alleviating global hunger. He recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss ways to address food insecurity.

“If we pool our efforts and resources, we can finally break the back of this problem,” he said.

But he challenged wealthier nations to do more than pay lip service to the problem.

“We need to make sure that promises of extra support from richer countries are kept and involve fresh funds rather than the repackaging of existing financial commitments,” he said.

Annan, who is the chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, said Africa represents both the greatest problem and the greatest promise when it comes to food security.

The continent is home to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but cannot produce enough food to feed its own people, he said. But if Africa can grow just half the world’s average yield of staple crops like wheat, corn and rice, it would end up with a food surplus.

Transforming Africa into one of the world’s biggest crop producers will take more than supporting farmers, he said. It entails sound environmental stewardship.

 “I hope this is an area where the Center on Food Security and the Environment can make a major contribution to finding solutions,” Annan said.

Without those solutions, the future is bleak.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where global warming brings the threat of persistent drought, current crop production is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century and 8 percent of the region’s fertile land is expected to dry up.

“Those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests,” Annan said. “This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change – the poorest and most vulnerable – that will pay the highest price.”

Annan's speech was sponsored by FSI, Stanford in Government and the Stanford University Speakers Bureau.

Despite an increase in food production and incomes worldwide, one in seven of the world’s 7 billion people is hungry.

Upheavals in food prices and the global economy, combined with a growing population’s demands for food and energy, are widening the gap between rich and poor. And that rift is creating new challenges to feed the hungry – most of whom live in remote, rural areas – without depleting the planet’s natural resources.

Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) is dedicated to addressing these challenges. Started as a research program in 2006, FSE is celebrating its launch today as a full-scale research center. The celebration is part of a larger conference hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) focused on links between international security, food and health care. The institutional elevation signifies the growing importance of food security issues at Stanford and worldwide. And it positions FSE to become the leading academic institution in the field of food security.

“Food security has quickly risen as a critical global issue comparable to international security, global health, and democratization, and will remain a pressing issue in the years head,” said Rosamond L. Naylor, director of FSE. “We’re looking at how to raise people out of poverty so they can afford more food, how to stabilize prices so food isn’t too expensive, and how to grow more food without destroying the environment.”

In an introduction given at FSE’s Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series last winter, Stanford President John Hennessy remarked, “Stanford was founded on the idea that its teaching and research could have a broader impact on society, and the area of food security certainly has that kind of possibility.”

“Our work on hunger, rural poverty, and the environmental impact of food production is critical not only to the future of our lives here in the United States but to the lives of people around the world,” said Hennessey. “We will need to bring together teams of experts from different disciplines if we are going to make important contributions to this work.”

FSE’s dual affiliation with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment supports these collaborations, and is a key factor to the center’s expansion. The center is led by Naylor and its deputy director, Walter P. Falcon. Both share a long history at Stanford studying international agricultural economics.

Naylor received her PhD from Stanford’s Food Research Institute in 1989, and is now a professor in the department of Environmental Earth System Science. Her interdisciplinary approach to teaching has resulted in popular courses such as the World Food Economy (which she co-teaches with Falcon,) and Human Society and Environmental Change. Naylor was appointed the William Wrigley Senior Fellowship in 2008 in recognition of her multidisciplinary, cutting-edge research and long-term commitment to combating global hunger and environmental degradation.

Falcon, the Helen Farnsworth Professor of Agricultural Policy, Emeritus, served as the director of Stanford’s Food Research Institute from 1972 to 1991. Falcon’s leadership role continued as FSI’s director from 1991 to 1998. Between 1998 and 2007, he co-directed the Center for Environmental Science and Policy out of which grew the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

FSE is now engaged in over 15 major projects with $11.5 million in grant and program funding under management. Productive food systems and their environmental consequences comprise the core of the Center’s research portfolio.

“Roz Naylor and Wally Falcon have worked tirelessly to promote the center’s mission and to secure the funding needed to support the center’s growth,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker. “It is gratifying to see FSE’s research and scholarly agendas receiving a resounding vote of confidence from the University as well as some of the world’s leading foundations, agencies and individual donors.” 

U.S. ethanol policy may be the single most significant contributor to world food price instability, states a Stanford study on the global costs of American ethanol. The rapid rise of biofuels has tied energy and agricultural markets together, making it difficult to assess one without understanding the other.

The price of corn recently hit an all time high, a departure from a long-term trend that has seen the cost of corn decline with each passing decade. Price spikes have happened before, and some experts viewed the latest jump as part of this familiar cycle. Stanford food policy economists Rosamond L. Naylor and Walter P. Falcon alternatively argue in a new paper released in The American Interest that we have entered a new era where agricultural commodity prices are increasingly driven by U.S. biofuel policies. This food and fuel linkage has, and will continue to have, major implications for global food prices and the world’s poor.

Over the last decade, the U.S. ethanol industry experienced a major increase in production and consumption as a result of beneficiary of tax breaks, tariffs and government mandates. In 2005, MTBE was phased out as a gasoline additive because of environmental and health risks, and ethanol became the preferred MTBE substitute. Production was further supported with a mandate to reach a minimum target of 15 billion gallons by 2015. 

A jump in the price of crude oil gave a further boost to ethanol as a potential replacement for petroleum. As a result, 40% of the U.S. corn crop is now devoted to ethanol production. These policies have been promoted under the banner of protecting the American farm industry, securing energy independence, and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and they have succeeded on a number of these fronts.

However, as a major global producer and exporter of corn, the rapid rise of ethanol production in the U.S. during such a short period of time has produced a fundamental change in the structure of demand for corn. Increased demand has led to higher and more volatile food prices, not only for corn but other agricultural commodities. If the United States, along with the rest of the G-20, is serious about stabilizing global food prices, U.S. domestic biofuels policy in its entirety will need to be re-examined.

High prices are a boon to the U.S. farm sector, but can be devastating for poor consumers with minimal income to spend on food. Food riots have broken out in several countries suggesting the new volatility in the price of staple crops has had a severe impact on developing economies. Where once the policies of the U.S. helped keep agricultural prices on an even keel, current support for the production of corn-based ethanol has reversed this stabilizing role. 

Given the bullish financial outlook for the U.S. agricultural sector, this is an ideal time to begin dismantling both ethanol and corn (and other major commodity) subsidies. Corn-based ethanol tax and tariff provisions together cost the federal government around $6 billion annually. Cutting these subsidies would help reduce the Federal budget deficit without harming the rural economy.

The trickier political and economic questions relate to reassessing mandates, and are likely off the table with the 2012 elections approaching. This is unfortunate, for these policies will continue to cause unrest in food markets far beyond American shores.

Brazil’s House of Representatives last month approved profound changes to the Forest Code, a series of laws to regulate the country’s land use. The changes would jeopardize ecosystems and allow deforestation of about 20 million more hectares than the original Forest Code, according to estimates by Gerd Sparovek of the University of São Paulo (see go.nature.com/n8lwfu). The Brazilian Senate must seize its last opportunity to block the changes.

The proposed changes would substantially increase carbon emissions. Assuming that half of the newly affected forest (10 million hectares) will be given over to agriculture and that the average carbon biomass in the Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado is 50 megagrams per hectare (L. F. Alves et al. Forest Ecol. Manage. 260, 679–691; 2010), emissions would amount to some 500 teragrams of carbon — on top of the 100–300 Tg that arise annually from deforestation of the Amazon (J. P. H. B. Ometto et al. Oecologia 143, 483–500; 2005).

The government’s efforts to decrease Amazon deforestation would be wasted, as would investments made in the ethanol industry for a cleaner environment. Brazil’s commitment to the environment could lose credibility internationally, causing developed countries to raise import taxes on Brazilian agricultural products, making them less competitive. 

Such serious consequences would offset any short-term gain by the Brazilian agricultural sectors that might result from changes to the Forest Code.