Opinions

The incredible edible “expired” food
I have a confession: I eat expired food. Sometimes it’s barely expired, like the yogurt I put on top of my farm-fresh strawberries. It might be a day or two past its sell-by date, but I give it a sniff and if it smells fine, that’s all I care about. Milk, too. Since we no longer have a teenager ...
Is the Grand Bargain a big deal?
A deal to sort out emergency funding at the World Humanitarian Summit meets with a mixed response....
Is world hunger a national security issue?
May 28, 2016 By Chuck Woolery The most important thing for the public to learn about on World Hunger Day on May 28 is that world hunger is increasingly a national security issue. And it was even before the creation of The Hunger Project (THP). Shortly after THP’s creation, Pre...
Pope Francis: Overturning the concept of a ‘just war’
Pope Francis is on a roll. He has already roiled the waters of western thinking on economics and society by touching on the dangers of western capitalism drifting into socially destructive greed. He has now turned his focus to an even grander theme— the place of warfare in human life and the hallo...
Time to think bigger about the refugee crisis
I've recently returned from the Middle East and East Africa, where I visited a number of refugee camps — car parks of humanity. I went as an activist and as a European. Because Europeans have come to realize — quite painfully in the past year or two — that the mass exodus from collapsed countr...
Focusing on the future of food: what’s next for global agricultural research
Food security scientists from around the globe gathered in Johannesburg last week with one objective: to work towards the transformation of agriculture as engine for growth in developing regions of the world. The gathering was also an opportunity to examine what farmers need to prosper in the face o...
What the Panama Papers mean for global development
The financial secrecy and tax evasion revealed by the Panama Papers has an extraordinary human cost in developing countries and threatens the realisation of the UN’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals....
Vatican to host first-ever conference to reevaluate just war theory, justifications for violence
he Vatican will be hosting a first of its kind conference next week to reexamine the Catholic church's long-held teachings on just war theory, bringing some 80 experts engaged in global nonviolent struggles to Rome with the aim of developing a new moral framework that rejects ethical justifications ...
Water scarcity, urbanization, and climate change are combined threats to food supplies in the developing world
Global water resource security poses a serious threat to the world’s population, even before we even factor in the effects of climate change. The global water consumption rate is double the rate of population increase. Demand is expected to outstrip supply by more than 50 percent by 2025, leaving ...