THE PROTEIN CRUNCH

We need to recycle waste nutrients as well as physical materialWe are facing a global food shortage as the protein available from land and marine sources is reducing at a time when the population is increasing in number and the emerging middle classes are demanding more western diets.

Weather instability and soil degradation are already leading to reduced yields. Following poor harvests, India and Russia respectively banned the export of their rice and grain.

Food price increases are running well ahead of the general inflation rate. This particularly affects the poor as they spend a higher proportion of their income on food than the rich. Food price increases have triggered riots and political instability and this will increase. The amount of available land and water is decreasing, as is the output of marine fishmeal - all key agricultural inputs. This points to a food and protein crunch even without the population growth already taking place. Has the Earth reached its carrying capacity?

When we burn a ton of coal we are left with a few kilos of ash - the rest is CO2 in the air Man-made ecological disasters are likely to increase. Environmental refugees will intensify conflicts over resources. The traditional response is social breakdown, local conflict and even war.

The current status quo implies that the markets will make an 'efficient allocation of hunger starvation and death'. Already some 25,000 people a day die of hunger. Charity simply disrupts this otherwise efficient system.

The capitalist system is effectively dumping the third world poor, except where they have the natural resources required to continue feeding the rich and their industries.

We need to work with nature not try to industrialise it World leaders rallied together during the credit crunch to address the global financial issues in just such a manner. Perhaps the world needs a visible and tangible environmental mega crisis to make people realise that such a co-operative and pre-emptive effort is imperative. From water to the seas and land we need joined up thinking and policies.

To sustain our future we have to work with the grain of nature and relearn forgotten principles that kept us in balance with nature. Using the best of both old and new technologies - from windmills to hydroponics - we can repair the future, restore the balance with nature and increase the Earth's carrying capacity.