Recent Highlights
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Food & Hunger
On March 16, GPF hosted a luncheon with David Pimentel of Cornell University on "Energy and Eating - How biofuels affect the world's food supply and what we should do about it." The luncheon was the fourth in a series addressing the current world food crisis. Pimentel warned that millions of tons of food are being converted into bio-energy annually, mostly as transportation fuel. He pointed out that the growing of the crops and the conversion process take more petroleum energy than is replaced by the bio-fuel, leaving a negative environmental balance and a large increase in hunger. He argued that the grains and other food crops now converted to bio-energy should instead feed the millions who are malnourished - a third or more of the world's population. A podcast of the discussion is available on GPF's website.
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Human Rights
On March 16, GPF hosted a conversation with Uruguayan rights defender Felipe Michelini, a parliamentarian and member of a special parliamentary committee on rights issues. Michelini's father Zelmar, a journalist and senator, was assassinated in Argentina by the Uruguyan military in 1976. At GPF, Michelini discussed Uruguay's problematic 1986 amnesty law, which prevents the prosecution of rights offenses committed during the period of military rule. The human rights movement in Uruguay has won prosecution of several leading figures responsible for past violations, but it is still struggling to repeal the law that shields many others from accountability.
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What GPF is Working On
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Tables and charts
Scholars and citizens turn regularly to GPF's many tables and charts on Global Food Aid, UN finance and Peacekeeping. GPF's Sarika Mathur has recently updated and reconfigured the dozens of datasets, working under the supervision of GPF Senior Fellow Klaus Hufner and Advisor Katarina Wahlberg. The tables, with associated full-color graphs, illustrate many key policy issues and are considered definitive by scholars and practitioners worldwide.
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Security Council Reform
At a moment of intense diplomatic activity at the UN on Security Council reform (and in anticipation GPF's Brussels conference in May on this subject), GPF's Lydia Boyer has reorganized and updated our website section on UN Security Council reform. Statements by member states on Council reform can now be easily browsed by year or country. There is a new section dedicated to Regional Representation as a solution to the question of membership reform. Many new documents have been added to the site as well as rich archives that go back to 1994. Updates will continue as the debate rages.
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Spotlight
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Doreen Stabinsky joined GPF as a Senior Fellow, greatly strengthening our program on Food & Hunger. A a world class expert on agricultural policy and plant genetics, she has worked for Greenpeace and has been active in advocacy on genetic engineering and environmental issues. She is now a faculty member in at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Doreen will be writing occasional commentary for GPF and will represent us in the UN negotiations towards the Rio+20 conference on the environment, to be held in 2012.
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Other News
GPF Europe's Jens Martens & Wolfgang Obenland were in New York in early March to covene a meeting of the Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives. This group, composed of civil society leaders and thinkers from across the globe, seeks to define new ways to understand and measure economic progress, so as to construct a truly sustainable and satisfying framework for life on the planet. The Reflection Group is making good progress in this ambitious project.
GPF has converted its website to a much speedier hosting service. We hope you have enjoyed the difference!
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Upcoming Events
Reunion for New York area intern alumni. We will celebrate the Fifteenth Anniversary of the program, with a reception and dinner on April 22.
A meeting is planned in April with Valerie Amos, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, as well as a luncheon with Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri of India.
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