My previous post described the early signs that the world might be on the brink of another food crisis like the one it suffered in 2007-08.

That crisis led to a massive increase in foreign investment in agricultural land. While not necessarily an unhealthy practice, the land deals closed in the wake of the last food crisis were mostly short-term strategies to safeguard food availability in the developed world. This did not address the structural challenges Alan Dupont and Mark Thirlwell identified in their recent Survival paper, and even more, ignored long-term sustainability.

Highly criticised in this respect is practice of food-insecure countries and profit-hungry private investors competing in a race for the world's farmland.

In an October 2008 report by the NGO GRAIN, this phenomenon was characterised as 'land grabbing' and subsequently picked up by the media as 'neo-colonialism'. The nature of this practice is best described as wealthy developed countries or private international investors negotiating land deals with governments in developing countries for the lease of agricultural land, preferably for a minimal cost-per-acre and a lease-term of 99 years.

Over the last two years, Africa and Southeast Asia have been targeted, but now Latin American and Central Asian countries are also leasing out their 'idle' or 'waste' land (a characterisation often disputed by local communities).

The world experienced major unrest and riots in low- and middle-income countries when food prices sky-rocketed in 2007-2008. Now, only two years later, food prices are soaring again and the world is on the brink of a new global food price crisis.

Analysing the causes of the 2007-2008 food price crisis, my colleagues Alan Dupont and Mark Thirlwell write in an article for Survival that 'a key driver of the recent (2007-2008) price spike was a sharp increase in world prices of cereals'. This price spike was a result of a number of intertwined issues. On the demand side we find population growth, shifting diets (the nutrition transition), urbanisation, unsustainable lifestyles, and increasing private investor demand.

But the supply side also has its problems, with climate change, environmental pollution, soil depletion, and increasing fresh water scarcity. Over 2009, none of these issues were structurally addressed, which leaves many of the underlying problems unresolved and likely to trigger a new food price crisis at any time.

The recent climate-change-induced drought and catastrophic wildfires in Russia have seriously affected grain production, and led the Russian Government to introduce export bans to at least the end of this year. Consequently, food prices are once again surging and were up 5 per cent in August, but are, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), still 38 per cent below the peak of June 2008. Nonetheless, a 30% price increase for bread did spark riots in Mozambique last week.

It appears that this new food crisis could mark the start of what Dupont and Thirlwell call 'a new era of food insecurity'. The FAO does not want to set off any alarms prematurely, and carefully tries not to depict the recent sudden price spike as a 'crisis' or 'emergency'. This makes sense; the distress signals in the 2007-2008 crisis made food prices rise even more and caused a massive increase in foreign investment in agricultural land.

This race for the world's farmland will be the subject of a follow-up post.

Photo by Flickr user .SantiMB, used under a Creative Commons license.

Once again, Bill Gates is behind a major charitable initiative that shows the potential to dramatically change the world. 'The Giving Pledge', brainchild of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, aims to convince billionaires to give at least half of their fortune to charity.

Starting in the US, already 40 of the wealthiest families and individuals have made the pledge. If all 400 billionaires in the US come on board, this would amount to some US$600 billion, according to estimates by Forbes Magazine. Just imagine what would happen if all the world's billionaires made the same pledge. A quick calculation of the total fortune of the top 100 in the Forbes billionaire list amounts to some US$1.4 trillion. Halve that, and you've got US$721.7 billion.

Calculating these numbers is a very interesting exercise, especially in the light of the replenishment of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria later this year. The Global Fund needs some US$20 billion to scale up its operations so that by 2015 we can:

Since its discovery in the mid-1990s, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has attracted attention from scientists, media and activists. More and more evidence is appearing to show that so-called 'ocean gyres' – large rotating ocean currents – essentially function as a marine trash vortex for the plastic waste that ends up in the sea.

The plastic debris in the Pacific Garbage Patch is hardly visible from above, so on the outside it doesn't appear to be a sea-of-rubbish the size of the Northern Territory. Yet, the micro-particles floating around contain all kinds of dangerous toxins, which in some cases might not immediately kill the confused fish feeding on it but will, due to our increasing love and consumption of fish, end up in our own food chain.

Even worse, the Pacific Garbage Patch is not an isolated phenomenon. There are four more ocean gyres also accumulating plastic waste. Only a couple of months ago scientists discovered the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, containing pollution levels similar to the Pacific Patch.

• Are we closing in on a vaccine for HIV & AIDS? A breakthrough in medical research has found antibodies that can block more than 90% of HIV strains.
• In fighting killer diseases and improving international health, Bill Gates rightfully identifies 'the important role of the pharmaceutical industry'. The Access to Medicine Index 2010 shows how accessible the medicines of large pharmaceutical companies actually are to people in poor developing countries. 
• Improving women's health in the developing world, through more investments in reproductive health for women and girls, is crucial to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
• An interesting piece on the future of international health, addressing the concern that the world is focused on chasing global health goals and seems to forget about country-specific contexts.

• With anxiety about swine flu easing, scientists criticise global follow-up in flu monitoring. They point out that we need to better monitor how flu strains develop and mutate in pigs. Pigs can catch both human and bird flu and thus could host a potentially lethal new flu virus.
• A study shows that the clearing forests in the Amazon has not only an environmentally devastating impact, but also brings about a serious health concern: an almost 50 percent increase in malaria cases.
• Ready for affordable organic food? In Laos they've found a solution to poverty and food insecurity: sustainable insect farming. Insects are cheap, provide nutritional benefits for humans and are apparently quiet enjoyable with a cold beer.
• The spread of TB in Africa has long been assumed to be mostly driven by the high incidence of AIDS incidence. Now it appears that mining is also a major factor in the spread of the disease.
• In support of the Born HIV Free campaign, Paul McCartney streamed his concert in London's Hyde Park on 27 June exclusively on YouTube; it will remain available until 27 July.

Two years ago the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This milestone in the history of human rights created new momentum for the creation of a World Court of Human Rights.

Professor Manfred Nowak (Professor of International Human Rights Protection and UN Special Rapporteur on Torture) outlined some key reasons for the establishment of a World Court of Human Rights earlier this month in 'Sydney Ideas Open'.

Nowak made the case that the time is right to contemplate the creation of a World Court of Human Rights. The Court is part of a wider Agenda for Human Rights instigated by the Swiss in 2008 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The idea of an international human rights court is not new. It was the Australian jurist, politician and writer HV Evatt (pictured) who envisioned the establishment of an International Court of Human Rights in 1947. Around the same time, several other important international initiatives were put forward, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an International Criminal Court, and a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. While all of these proposals materialised in one form or another, a World Court of Human Rights is – sadly enough – still shelved.

Here are some of the arguments Manfred Nowak made in support of the establishment of a World Court of Human Rights:

• Dengue and malaria are both vector-borne diseases spread by mosquitoes, but are vastly different in nature and even spread by different types of mosquitoes. Dengue causes some 250,000–500,000 severe cases of dengue fever every year, a nasty illness with no licensed vaccine or drug treatment. New research has brought scientists one step closer to a much-needed vaccine.
• Snakebites may seem a somewhat trivial health concern, but a global snakebite analysis points out that some 2.5 million people suffer from venomous bites each year and more than 125,000 people die as a result of venomous snakes. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, there is a lack of knowledge of effective antivenoms. The WHO launched an online snakebite database this month to support local health practitioners to administer the correct treatment in time.
• Even more obscure are diseases like hookworm infection, river blindness and elephantiasis, clearly not common in the developed world. Many of the world's poor still suffer these 'neglected tropical diseases' – sometimes closer to home than expected. A new comprehensive global health initiative by the US President takes aim at eliminating some of these neglected tropical diseases.
• The Economist takes a look at a recent Nature article on the relationship between climate change and malaria. The conclusion is interesting: 'claims that a warming climate has led to more widespread disease and death due to malaria are largely at odds with the evidence'.

• Just days before the opening of the Shanghai World Expo, China has lifted a decades-old HIV & AIDS travel ban after realising that such restrictions have a very limited effect in preventing and controlling the spread of the disease.
• North Korea is often discussed in geopolitical terms, but last week attention was focused on the country's public health system. During a three-day visit, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, noted that North Korea's elaborate health infrastructure has allowed for some notable achievements in public health, however, the country still faces numerous challenges.
• The world's key preventative resource against malaria, the insecticide-treated bed net, encounters some cultural hurdles in parts of Africa. The bed nets are not designed with the cultural preferences and beliefs of the rural African villager in mind, and therefore end up being used for other purposes – like catching fish – or not at all.
• South Africa accumulated more HIV-positive citizens than any other country under former President Mbeki. Now, President Jacob Zuma is making a big effort to turn things around by launching a campaign to test 15 million of the country's 49 million people for HIV by June 2011.
• Keep an eye on the spread of numerous diseases with HealthMap, which gives you an overview of the latest disease alerts from around the world – sourced directly from a wide range of news, media, community and scientific sources.

Last week I wrote about the possibility of a world without malaria. Today, a tangible message from the Pacific confirms that this goal is far from elusive.

According to representatives from Vanuatu's National Malaria Control Program and the World Health Organisation, both Vanuatu and Solomon Islands more than halved the number of malaria cases between 2003 and 2008.

This positive message in the fight against malaria is even more important considering that both countries – together with Papua New Guinea – form the so called 'Melanesian malaria belt' where we find the highest number of malaria cases per capita in the world.

Vanuatu's Malaria Program and the WHO believe that the key to this impressive reduction is two-fold.

Malaria used to be a neglected disease.

But over the last decade the world has come to recognise the immense human, social and economic burden of malaria. Initiatives like Roll Back Malaria, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the adoption of the health-related Millennium Development goals all contribute to reducing the mortality and morbidity caused by malaria.

Nonetheless, on World Malaria Day, this coming Sunday, we still find almost half of the world's population at risk of malaria with close to a million deaths annually. There were some 247 million cases of malaria in 2006, with 90 percent of the world's malaria deaths occur in Africa.

Earlier this week, UNICEF and Roll Back Malaria released a report outlining the progress and impact made in Africa's fight against malaria. At least 10 of the most endemic countries in Africa showed declines in new malaria cases as well as an impressive decline in child mortality of 50 to 80 percent.

This dramatic progress in Africa results from massive up-scaling of coverage due to major increases in funding and awareness of the burden of malaria. Sizeable contributions from the Global Fund play a crucial role in malaria control, which so far has allowed for the distribution of over 104 million insecticide-treated nets for malaria prevention.

In addition to Sam's regular linkage posts and Rory's occasional security linkage, I'm happy to present some global health linkage:

• The WHO is taking measures against the massive misuse of anti-malaria drugs, a practice that has allowed the parasite to develop resistance against treatment.
• Prevention is of course better than treatment, so it's welcome news that a Dutch biotechnology firm and British health care company have closed a partnership to jointly develop a malaria vaccine.
• Still on prevention, the Executive Director of UNICEF stressed during a visit to Lesotho that education must be central to all efforts to combat the spread of AIDS.
• Progress in producing a more cost effective drug for TB. Indian scientists have mapped the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, paving the way for a new drug.
• More worrying news from East Africa, where countries are planning to adopt an anti-counterfeits policy which will endanger local production and importation of generic medicines. This may effectively put the lives of many people living with HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis on the line.