Per Pinstrup-Andersen H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy 2001 World Food Prize Laureate Division of Nutritional Sciences 305 Savage Hall Cornell University Phone: (607) 255-9429 Email: pp94@cornell.edu

Lecture summary:
From my perspective, the global crisis is the inability of nation states to negotiate and agree on a cohesive vision for a sustainable world and the failure to agree on the implementation of even a somewhat flawed vision. The results are likely to be an increasingly fractured world in which instability, terrorism, and mismanagement of natural resources will flourish while international externalities and global public goods are not effectively handled. I believe one of the major underlying causes of this situation is a large and increasing economic and social inequality and widespread poverty, hunger, and related hopelessness. The nation states are currently focused on solving existing problems by attacking the symptoms rather than the underlying causes

Return to SOP main page