BANGKOK, June 5, 2010 (IPS) - As it took root in the rice fields across Asia, it was hailed as the solution to the hunger afflicting millions of people in the region. But four decades on, the much vaunted Green Revolution appears to have reached its limits, unable to meet new demands, to feed new mouths.

United Nations food experts are increasingly touting the region's chronic hunger figures for 2009 to confirm this reality. Last year saw the proportion of people in the grip of chronic hunger hit 17 to 18 percent in the Asia- Pacific region, up from 16 percent in 2006.

It was the first time that the number of the hungry had risen since the Green Revolution spurred a downward trend. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned this week of a change in grain production since the late 1960s, which saw the output of rice, a regional staple, triple.

The Green Revolution was a series of initiatives, including the introduction of high-yielding rice varieties, launched in the late 1960s to boost agricultural production and feed a growing world population.

According to Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO's regional head, the high yield of rice resulting from the introduction of the Green Revolution accounted for a 300 percent increase in the past 40 years, consequently seeing a "deduction of food prices by 40 percent in real terms" and helping to "reduce the proportion of hunger from 34 percent in 1970 to 16 percent in 2006."

A year ago, the Kremlin issued a stark warning: that growing competition for control of global energy resources could spark wars on Russia's borders, including those in Central Asia.

"Problems that involve the use of military force cannot be excluded, that would destroy the balance of forces close to the borders of the Russian Federation and her allies," said a key Kremlin strategy document assessing the main security threats of the coming decade.

Just 20 years ago, Russia and the energy-rich countries of Central Asia, such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus, were all united, as parts of the Soviet Union.

Moscow would have had unfettered access to their oil and gas reserves.

But the Central Asian states realise one of their greatest strategic strengths as independent countries is playing off the big global powers now scrambling to buy their precious energy supplies.

GENEVA, Jun 4, 2010 (IPS) - Although the issue of an early harvest for least developed countries (LDCs) has been raised time and again, there remains "a certain reluctance" to prioritise it in the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round of trade talks, according to South African trade minister Dr Rob Davies.

The LDCs' proposed early harvest includes an immediate resolution to the problem of the U.S.'s trade-distorting cotton subsidies; duty-free and quota-free market access for LDC exports; a waiver to accelerate services exports from poor countries; and the easing of the accession requirements for LDCs wishing to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

"Many observers feel that a sine qua non for completing a `successful' round is that LDCs need to be convinced of getting some or greater preferential market access to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries," Celine Carrere and Jaime de Melo wrote in a research article in 2009.

Apart from LDCs, South Africa, China, India, and Brazil again raised their long-pending demand for an early harvest at the informal trade ministerial summit in Paris on May 27 but failed to secure an immediate response, several trade ministers told IPS.

Davies explained the reason as follows: "The point about this is that some countries fear that if you allow an early harvest you agree that the Doha Round is dead. The counter-argument is that LDCs are not supposed to pay; they are supposed to receive concessions to be integrated into the global trading system.

Geneva (AFP) June 4, 2010
A leading international environmental alliance on Friday called for a global suspension to oil and gas extraction in ecologically sensitive areas, following the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said the moratorium should include deepwater ocean sites the industry is increasingly exploring to cope with growing energy demand, despite higher financial and environmental risks.

"The technology to minimise the risks and impacts of catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is obviously lacking at present," said IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefevre.

"Because our understanding of the impacts of this catastrophe is inadequate we must stop oil and gas exploitation -- not just in deepwater ocean sites but all ecologically sensitive areas, including polar areas," she added.

Nairobi (AFP) June 3, 2010
The world's biodiversity and ecosystems deliver services to humanity estimated to be worth as much as the world gross national income, the UN environment programme (UNEP) said Thursday.

In a study released two days before World Environment Day is held in Rwanda, the UN agency warned that two thirds of these ecoystems have already been damaged by humans.

"Biodiversity and ecosystems deliver crucial services to humankind -- from food security to keeping our waters clean, buffering against extreme weather, providing medicines to recreation and adding to the foundation of human culture," the report said.

"Together these services have been estimated to be worth over 21 to 72 trillion US dollars every year -- comparable to the World Gross National Income of 58 trillion USD in 2008," it said.

I recently took the Chevrolet Volt for a spin near San Francisco's ballpark, checking another item off my electric-car life list. (Getting to drive pre-production EVs is one fringe benefit of covering green tech.)

Then the other week, I took a drive in another car that promised to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. The car itself was unremarkable -- a Lexus RX hybrid that anyone with a spare $42,000 can buy. What was potentially revolutionary was the little black box sitting on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel.

The box had three lights and when the car's driver makes a fuel-wasting or dangerous move, such as slamming on the brakes, making fast, sharp turns or weaving through traffic -- the LEDs go from green to yellow to red.

See, the problem, dear reader, isn't just your carbon-spewing car, it's you.

Ithaca NY (SPX) Jun 03, 2010
When it comes to potentially doubling the output of the world's fourth largest food crop, the secret may be in the spit. Researchers at Cornell University, as well as the University of Goettingen and National University of Colombia, have discovered that when a major South American pest infests potato tubers, the plant produces bigger spuds.

The secret to this increased yield, they write in the peer-reviewed journal Ecological Applications (April 28, 2010), is found that the saliva of the Guatemalan potato moth larvae (Tecia solanivora).

The major pest, which forces many farmers to spray plants with pesticides every two weeks, contains compounds in its foregut that elicits a system-wide response in the Colombian Andes commercial potato plant (Solanum tuberosum) to produce larger tubers.

The researchers found that when the spit of the tuber moth caterpillar gets into a tuber, all the other tubers of the plant grow bigger, said co-author Andre Kessler, Cornell assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Researchers believe that compounds from the insect's saliva somehow increases the rate of the plant's photosynthesis to compensate for the tubers lost to the caterpillar damage. As a result of more photosynthesis, more carbon is drawn into the plant and used to create starch, which makes for bigger tubers.