Are we in global crisis?
We are now in a global crisis. The crisis is just beginning, although the causes of the crisis have been building up for decades. At first, the changes were almost imperceptible.
Why is the crisis a global crisis?
Because climate change has led us to a global crisis, that goes well beyond climate change, into every aspect of human life on Earth. Our global crisis is not just environmental. It is economic because the world economy is going to be affected by it.
What is crisis management solutions?
Widely regarded as experts in the delivery of crisis management and business continuity exercising and training, Crisis Solutions are the preferred provider of crisis management exercises, workshops, and training for some of the world’s largest and well-known organisations.
The world food crisis has two faces. In the United States, shoppers stare in disbelief at the rising price of milk, meat, and eggs. But elsewhere on the globe, anguish spills into the streets, as in Somalia last week when tens of thousands of rioters converged on the capital to protest for food.
The strain on U.S. consumers, grappling with the sharpest increase in grocery prices in years, is small compared with the starvation that toppled Haiti’s government, ignited riots around the world, and is deepening the tragedy of Myanmar’s cyclone survivors. And yet the connection between the developed and developing worlds will be crucial to solving what one United Nations official has called a “silent tsunami” of food prices that has plunged 100 million people deeper into poverty. To stem the misery, relief officials are calling both for emergency aid and for changes in policy worldwide.
Solutions will not be easy to sort out since the dramatic food price escalation has numerous causes. Skyrocketing oil prices have strained every stage of food production, from fertilizer to tractors to transport. At the same time, demand for grain has never been higher, not only to feed the rising affluence of populous China and India but also to fuel cars and trucks as the world turns to ethanol and biodiesel. Supply, meanwhile, is being squeezed by a years-long drought in Australia, a major grain exporter, and experts worry that climate change may be a factor.
In all, there could not be a worse time for investors to pour money into agricultural commodities, but they have, in reaction to the weakening U.S. dollar accelerated by Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. Around the world, panicked governments have responded to high commodity prices by slapping restrictions on exports—thus only worsening the food shortage.