On this Cumulative Impacts Working Group call, Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of Food Tank, provided a general global overview of a variety of food and food policy issues, including hunger, malnutrition, stunting, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity. She also discussed the impact of climate change and food price volatility.
Ted Schettler, MD, science director at the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN) as well as at CHE, discussed long-term cumulative impacts of inadequate diet, nutrition, and lack of access to healthy food.
Both speakers addressed the need for fundamental changes in the agricultural system(s) that dominate throughout much of the world not only to address current needs but also those of future generations.
Special note: Also join CHE on a separate call in July to learn more about food systems and policy with another panel of experts working in the field. Visit the call page.
Featured Speakers
Danielle Nierenberg is a co-founder of Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world, and innovations in sustainable agriculture. From 2009-2012, Danielle was the director of the Nourishing the Planet project housed at the Worldwatch Institute. She spent two years traveling to more than 35 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, meeting with farmers and farmers’ groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, and journalists collecting their thoughts on what’s working to help alleviate hunger and poverty, while also protecting the environment. Danielle worked with more than 60 authors from all over the world to produce State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. The State of the World symposium she organized in January 2011 brought together representatives of USDA, the World Bank, farmers organizations, agricultural research organizations, and other stakeholders.
Ms. Nierenberg served as a Food and Agriculture senior researcher at Worldwatch from 2001-2012 working on major research projects on gender and population, the global meat economy, emerging infectious diseases related to the food system, climate change and agriculture, and innovations in sustainable agriculture.
Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, is SEHN's and CHE's science director. Dr. Schettler has worked extensively with community groups and nongovernmental organizations throughout the US and internationally, addressing many aspects of human health and the environment. He has served on advisory committees of the US EPA and National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Schettler is co-author of Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment, which examines reproductive and developmental health effects of exposure to a variety of environmental toxicants. He is also co-author of In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, which discusses the impact of environmental exposures on neurological development in children, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging: With a Closer Look at Alzheimer' and Parkinson's Diseases. Among many others, Dr. Schettler's current projects include active participation in the Health Care Without Harm coalition, contributing to its international campaign to improve the environmental performance of hospitals and other healthcare institutions. Dr. Schettlerworks with colleagues from other organizations and maintains an intensive public speaking schedule, giving frequent talks on environmental health, ecological health, and the precautionary principle.