The past six months have brought scenes from a hungry apocalypse, as at least 14 countries have been wracked by food-related violence. By mid-April UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon acknowledged that "the steeply rising price of food has developed into a real global crisis."
It's the product, economists say, of multiple factors: high oil prices, prolonged drought, biofuel production, and burgeoning meat consumption. In the short term, food aid will help. In the medium term, market-distorting trade tariffs and farm subsidies must end. But the long-term task is monumentally harder: transcending the limits of today's global food production.
As the need for fresh water increases, growing populations across the globe will increasingly turn to groundwater to slake their thirst. But where will we find that water? UNESCO's World-wide Hydrogeological Mapping and Assessment Programme (WHYMAP) created this map, along with several others, to serve as a guide to the world's groundwater resources in aquifers and other groundwater environments.
Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 55000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 3557 lectures in 26 languages.
World Pulse is an interactive global media enterprise that covers global issues through the eyes of women. We publish a magazine and link it to our global community newswire, called PulseWire, where women from over 130 countries, including from rural villages, are speaking for themselves and connecting to solve global problems.