Blaming leaders in America and abroad for not doing enough to combat climate change, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said continued failure to tackle the problem will result in worldwide hunger, social unrest and political turmoil.

“Without action at the global level to address climate change, we will see farmers across Africa – and in many other parts of the world including here in America – forced to leave their land,” the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner told a crowd of about 1,400 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Thursday. “The result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion and even political instability.”

Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan said rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have “pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.” He called a lack of food security for nearly 1 billion of the world’s population “an unconscionable moral failing” that is also a stumbling block to a strong international economy.

“It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth,” he said.

Annan’s talk, “Food Security Is a Global Challenge,” was delivered as part of a daylong conference on global underdevelopment sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event drew the world’s leading experts in the field and featured panel discussions that explored the connections between global security and food supplies, health care and governance. Keynote speeches were delivered by Annan and Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also planned to deliver a talk to a private audience.

The conference marked the launch of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

“With this facility, and the creative thinkers and inquisitive minds for which Stanford is famous, you are well-equipped to undertake research which advances our knowledge and helps to shape our response to the many global challenges we face,” Annan said. “And with the resources at your disposal, you also have the capacity to actively engage to influence policy, implement solutions and thus improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Annan also lauded government initiatives such as America’s Feed the Future program that focus on alleviating global hunger. He recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss ways to address food insecurity.

“If we pool our efforts and resources, we can finally break the back of this problem,” he said.

But he challenged wealthier nations to do more than pay lip service to the problem.

“We need to make sure that promises of extra support from richer countries are kept and involve fresh funds rather than the repackaging of existing financial commitments,” he said.

Annan, who is the chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, said Africa represents both the greatest problem and the greatest promise when it comes to food security.

The continent is home to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but cannot produce enough food to feed its own people, he said. But if Africa can grow just half the world’s average yield of staple crops like wheat, corn and rice, it would end up with a food surplus.

Transforming Africa into one of the world’s biggest crop producers will take more than supporting farmers, he said. It entails sound environmental stewardship.

 “I hope this is an area where the Center on Food Security and the Environment can make a major contribution to finding solutions,” Annan said.

Without those solutions, the future is bleak.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where global warming brings the threat of persistent drought, current crop production is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century and 8 percent of the region’s fertile land is expected to dry up.

“Those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests,” Annan said. “This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change – the poorest and most vulnerable – that will pay the highest price.”

Annan's speech was sponsored by FSI, Stanford in Government and the Stanford University Speakers Bureau.

During the recent North American Chasedae Forum, 2011 Koret Fellow Joon-woo Park stated: "[...As the United States and Korea] grow closer together, the role of the Korean-American community becomes crucial for the future of U.S.-ROK relations." The forum, held November 4–6, was organized by the San Francisco Chapter of the National Unification Advisory Council.

Despite an increase in food production and incomes worldwide, one in seven of the world’s 7 billion people is hungry.

Upheavals in food prices and the global economy, combined with a growing population’s demands for food and energy, are widening the gap between rich and poor. And that rift is creating new challenges to feed the hungry – most of whom live in remote, rural areas – without depleting the planet’s natural resources.

Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) is dedicated to addressing these challenges. Started as a research program in 2006, FSE is celebrating its launch today as a full-scale research center. The celebration is part of a larger conference hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) focused on links between international security, food and health care. The institutional elevation signifies the growing importance of food security issues at Stanford and worldwide. And it positions FSE to become the leading academic institution in the field of food security.

“Food security has quickly risen as a critical global issue comparable to international security, global health, and democratization, and will remain a pressing issue in the years head,” said Rosamond L. Naylor, director of FSE. “We’re looking at how to raise people out of poverty so they can afford more food, how to stabilize prices so food isn’t too expensive, and how to grow more food without destroying the environment.”

In an introduction given at FSE’s Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series last winter, Stanford President John Hennessy remarked, “Stanford was founded on the idea that its teaching and research could have a broader impact on society, and the area of food security certainly has that kind of possibility.”

“Our work on hunger, rural poverty, and the environmental impact of food production is critical not only to the future of our lives here in the United States but to the lives of people around the world,” said Hennessey. “We will need to bring together teams of experts from different disciplines if we are going to make important contributions to this work.”

FSE’s dual affiliation with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment supports these collaborations, and is a key factor to the center’s expansion. The center is led by Naylor and its deputy director, Walter P. Falcon. Both share a long history at Stanford studying international agricultural economics.

Naylor received her PhD from Stanford’s Food Research Institute in 1989, and is now a professor in the department of Environmental Earth System Science. Her interdisciplinary approach to teaching has resulted in popular courses such as the World Food Economy (which she co-teaches with Falcon,) and Human Society and Environmental Change. Naylor was appointed the William Wrigley Senior Fellowship in 2008 in recognition of her multidisciplinary, cutting-edge research and long-term commitment to combating global hunger and environmental degradation.

Falcon, the Helen Farnsworth Professor of Agricultural Policy, Emeritus, served as the director of Stanford’s Food Research Institute from 1972 to 1991. Falcon’s leadership role continued as FSI’s director from 1991 to 1998. Between 1998 and 2007, he co-directed the Center for Environmental Science and Policy out of which grew the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

FSE is now engaged in over 15 major projects with $11.5 million in grant and program funding under management. Productive food systems and their environmental consequences comprise the core of the Center’s research portfolio.

“Roz Naylor and Wally Falcon have worked tirelessly to promote the center’s mission and to secure the funding needed to support the center’s growth,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker. “It is gratifying to see FSE’s research and scholarly agendas receiving a resounding vote of confidence from the University as well as some of the world’s leading foundations, agencies and individual donors.” 

Gerhard Casper, Stanford’s ninth president and a senior fellow at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been appointed to lead the institute for a year. The announcement was made Wednesday by Ann Arvin, vice provost and dean of research.

Casper will become director on Sept. 1, 2012. He succeeds Coit D. Blacker, an FSI senior fellow, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies, and the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Blacker, whose affiliation with Stanford began in 1977, will be on sabbatical leave next year.

“Chip has provided truly remarkable leadership for FSI,” Arvin said.

Among his priorities at the helm of FSI, Casper will spearhead a search for a director who will take his place in 2013.

“As a senior fellow at FSI since 2000, President Casper brings a deep knowledge of the institute and his own unparalleled experience with academic leadership to the launch of the next phase of the institute’s development,” Arvin said. “His willingness to make this commitment to FSI assures that its many dynamic research and educational programs will be maintained and that new opportunities can be pursued vigorously.”

Casper’s work has primarily focused on constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and legal theory. He has also worked on rule of law issues, teaching in the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program at FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law.

“My main interests in life have been issues of governance as reflected in United States constitutional history and law,” Casper said. “Apart from such global problems as hunger, disease and security, governability itself has become a substantive concern for nation states, regional organizations – such as the European Union – and for the world. Hardly any substantive matter can any longer be addressed and solved parochially. Because of that, institutions like FSI are worth our attention and support. Because of that I have agreed to make my own modest contribution.

“That decision has been made much easier by the great leadership which Chip Blacker has provided over the last nine years,” he said.

Blacker, who has led FSI since 2003, called Casper the “perfect choice” to lead FSI.

"President Casper brings a deep knowledge of the institute and his own unparalleled experience with academic leadership to the launch of the next phase of the institute’s development," – Ann Arvin, vice provost and dean of research

“I’m delighted that Gerhard Casper has agreed to take the reins of FSI after I step down in August,” Blacker said. “Gerhard’s willingness to serve in this capacity guarantees strong leadership for the institute at a critically important moment in its history.”

Before starting his tenure as Stanford’s president in 1992, Casper spent 26 years at the University of Chicago where he taught law before serving as dean of the law school. He was Chicago’s provost from 1989 to 1992.

Casper, who is the Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Studies, Emeritus, and a professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, began his teaching career in 1964 as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1937, Casper studied law at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg. He earned his first law degree in 1961 and received his master of laws degree from Yale Law School a year later. He then returned to Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1964. He immigrated to the United States in 1964.

He has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (Order Pour le mérite for the Sciences and Arts), and the American Philosophical Society. He has held the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress, and has been awarded several honorary doctorates.

Casper is a member of the board of trustees of the Central European University in Budapest and additional not-for-profit boards. From 2000 to 2008, he served as a successor trustee of Yale University.

He is married to Regina Casper, professor emerita (on recall) of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.