A few months ago, I was talking to my colleague Kimberly, about how difficult it is to talk about the future of agriculture in public without things spinning out of control. Most people don’t much care. But those who do, REALLY CARE. It doesn’t take long in any conversation, for example, before someone in the conversation begins accusing someone else of being part of a corporate conspiracy, or someone accuses a whole community of being “peasant romanticists”. The energy and anger of the interchanges sometimes seems out of proportion and quite unconstructive.

Oxfam has been engaged in agriculture policy and programming since our early beginnings—so we brush against these partisans all the time. Indeed, there are many partisans among us. Often, our favored course is to keep our heads low and avoid the rough and tumble.

But, that’s not really possible in the current era. With the launch of our GROW Campaign, we have put the issues of food, hunger, and sustainable, inclusive agriculture at the center of Oxfam’s public engagement and the heart of our policy agenda. So, how do we broach these subjects without instigating mortal combat and without making Oxfam a target of every possible interest and ideology?

Well, the best idea we came up with was to host a conversation and hope that good ideas and some elements of a consensus emerge. So that’s what we’re doing.

Starting Monday, we’re hosting a ten-day Future of Agriculture online discussion and debate. We’ve invited experts and leaders in the field to contribute provocative essays, and we’ll invite everyone else to weigh in. That means you.

Set your browsers and ready your keyboards. And jump right in!

By Nick Galasso, Oxfam America research and policy advisor on inequality and economic growth.

Last week, the World Bank released a new report assessing declining income inequality over the 2000s in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Each country experienced significant reductions in inequality over the last decade. This finding is not new, but the authors helpfully tease out some nuance behind the trend.

Their findings suggest two factors drove the contraction in inequality. First, the skills premium (the wage distribution based on education) fell. In other words, the difference in pay between skilled versus unskilled workers declined. In Argentina, declining labor income inequality was driven by a boom in trade that caused a drop in demand for skilled workers. These conditions were bolstered by strong unions and a rise in the minimum wage. Focused government spending on higher education increased the supply of skilled labor in Mexico. Both factors—reduced demand and increased supply for skilled workers—were in play in Brazil.

The second factor is more progressive government transfers, as expanding coverage of cash transfer and social security programs played a significant equalizing force in the distribution of non-labor income in each country.

All three cases put in relief that solving inequality is fundamentally a problem of politics, not economics. In each, government spending on education, conditional cash transfers, and other social expenditures helped drive down inequality.

The authors provide some astounding figures highlighting why tackling inequality is crucial.

In Mexico, nearly 60 percent of the poverty decline since 1996 is attributed to reducing inequality. Argentina’s inequality drop accounts for 40 and 50 percent of extreme and moderate poverty declines, respectively. For Brazil, 50 to 60 percent of extreme poverty decline is attributable to reducing inequality.

These figures remind us that the fight against inequality and the fight against poverty are one in the same.

Two campesinos (farmers) in northern Guatemala (2012). Pablo Tosco/Intermón Oxfam

Paul O’Brien is the vice president, policy and campaigns, for Oxfam America.

Washingtonians: I regret to inform you that we need your home. Please remove yourself and your belongings by the end of the month, or we will have our armed goons do it for you. Unfortunately, we are not going to talk about this, and there is no money for your troubles. We need your land. It is for the greater good. Thank you for understanding.

Sound crazy? Somewhere in the developing world, that speech, or something like it, will probably happen today. Over the last decade, in developing countries, a land area larger than Washington, D.C. has been sold from under the feet of poor communities every day. 500 million acres—enough to feed a billion people—have been traded, mostly to cash-rich countries, foreign agribusiness and equity investors over the past 10 years. Think about California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas being sold off in a mad, unregulated, land rush without any real transparency on who is doing the buying, under what terms, or what they plan to do with the spoils. All those Southwesterners wondering what the hell happened to their land and their lives?

Why am I writing about this now? Honestly, because we are launching a report today laying out these facts, Our Land, Our Lives, and I want you to read it and join our new campaign. We may have an opportunity to meaningfully address this madness in the next few months.

The World Bank is about to gather the mighty in Tokyo for their Annual Meeting. It’s the coming out party for the new Bank president, Jim Kim—and we are going to hear what he cares about. If he makes stopping bad land grabs a priority, the Bank could play a massive role in fixing this Achilles heel in the global food system.

Early signs are discouraging. Today, the World Bank rejected our report recommendations, claiming “[the Bank] does not support speculative land investments or acquisitions which take advantage of weak institutions in developing countries or which disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment.”

Having watched the Presidential debates last night, I’m acutely sensitive to spin, and that feels like spin to me. Of course the Bank doesn’t actively “support” bad acquisitions or investments in land. But here is the thing—they don’t even know if their land investments are good or bad for affected communities. When we asked them to show us good large scale land investments where communities weren’t kicked off their land and were adequately compensated, they couldn’t find one.

That’s why we are asking the World Bank Group to take a breath! We want them to temporarily stop funding new large scale agricultural land acquisitions until they can be sure these deals aren’t going to violate human rights or harm communities. We want the Bank Group to put solid guidance in place, particularly because we want the 100+ major investing institutions that follow the IFC’s Performance Standards to take basic, reasonable precautions when doing a land deal.

Personally, I still have hope that Jim Kim will commit to doing this in Tokyo. My gut says he is “one of us”—a development activist who wants the poor to know what his institution is doing across the board. He can be proud in other areas: A new aid transparency index rated the Bank second of all major donors on aid transparency this week. Human Rights Watch (notoriously hard to please) recently applauded the Bank for using transparency to fight corruption.

The Bank knows that information is power. It is time to acknowledge that fact in the global land free-for-all. Our report suggests precisely how the Bank can lead an honest public effort to grapple with this issue.

And let’s not spin this proposal as an investment-killing idea. Oxfam has called for greater investment in poor countries for decades. We want communities to benefit from sound investments in agriculture. The Bank can leave its head in the sand and ask communities to trust the market’s invisible hand, or sort this mess out before we see even more community-used land disappear.

Credit: Oxfam America Action Corps and  Grazioso Pictures Inc.

Last week, I managed an (almost) zero mile meal. My backyard chickens provided eggs for a crustless quiche, flavored by garden-grown cherry tomatoes and basil, with freshly dug roasted potatoes on the side. The food was all local—almost. You need olive oil, salt and pepper to flavor, well, everything. And for dessert there was coffee and chocolate, wonderful foods that don’t grow so well in Massachusetts—but that do come in fair trade varieties that ensure small-scale farmers and farm workers around the world get a fair deal.

The meal was a reminder that “Eating Local” is just one part of the food justice equation. Buying fair trade is another. And there are many more. As Oxfam prepares to mark World Food Day on October 16, we’re thinking a lot about all the components of food justice. We hope you’ll do the same by holding a World Food Day meal and talking about how you can fight world hunger from your kitchen table.

Oxfam’s GROW Campaign recently released a report, Food Transformations, which detailed the power of consumers to contribute to global food security. For instance, meat production alone takes up eight percent of the world’s water supply. If a family of four substituted lentil burgers for beef burgers for just one night, they would save the equivalent of 17 bathtubs full of water. That is a small change with a powerful impact. To help consumers harness this power, Oxfam has launched the GROW Method, five easy ways to feed your family healthy and delicious meals while ensuring everyone on the planet has enough to eat, always.

The steps seem simple and straightforward: waste less food, eat local and seasonal, support small farmers worldwide, eat less meat, and cook smart. But nothing is simple when it comes to the politics of  the plate. When the USDA raised the idea of employees participating in Meatless Monday this summer, it sparked a political firestorm. Meanwhile, a stalled Farm Bill threatens to harm food security from Michigan to Mali, and ethanol mandates are requiring much needed food to be used as fuel. As food prices rise and Oxfam and other organizations warn of a potential global food crisis, the price of political and personal inaction also rises. Order our free World Food Day 2012 resources, and consider holding a World Food Day Meal to celebrate the culture and community, power and politics of food.

US cotton field. The WTO granted Brazil the right to retaliate for unfair US cotton subsidies. Liliana Rodriguez/Oxfam America.

What do ketchup, shaving cream, and Viagra have in common?

They all could be targeted for retaliation by Brazil if Congress doesn’t reform the Farm Bill. US exporters of these products, and hundreds more, could pay higher tariffs or lose their patent rights if the Brazilian government imposes trade retaliation against the USA for violating WTO rules on farm subsidies. Brazil brought a legal case to the WTO complaining about US cotton subsidies in 2002. They won the case, proving that US cotton subsidies were huge and unfair. The USA never fully reformed the subsidies, so Brazil asked for, and was granted, the right to retaliate. Hence, the list of products (English version here).

It’s interesting to think about the political calculations underneath the products chosen. Creating a retaliation list is an exercise in practical political economy. How do you create enough economic and political pain on the United States to force a reform of cotton subsidies? Which industries or companies do you target? Do you try to target specific politicians by hitting products and companies that are from their constituency? Or do you try to gain some economic advantage by raising tariffs on some products? Certainly, there are domestic businesses in Brazil that are eager to hurt their foreign competition and lobby for tariffs in their sector.

The thing about raising tariffs is that it hurts the exporting producer, but it also hurts the importing consumer by raising prices and reducing choice. In order to hurt the US, Brazil also has to hurt some Brazilian consumers of US products.

According to the rules, Brazil can impose more than $800 million in retaliation. But $800m in new tariffs is painful for Brazilians also. So Brazil asked for permission from the WTO to retaliate in a different way. Brazil can suspend intellectual property rights on certain products. This is where the retaliation gets really interesting. Brazil hasn’t published a list, but has identified categories for intellectual property rights retaliation. Products could include patents and copyrights on medicines, agrochemicals, music, videos, and software. These products won’t face new tariffs, but Brazilian producers might be able to manufacture and sell these products without paying royalties or licenses.

Brazil was days away from imposing this kind of retaliation in 2010 when officials from the US Trade Representative’s office flew down to hurriedly negotiate a compromise. The agreement was that Brazil would postpone retaliation and the US would pay Brazil $147.3 million annually until a new Farm Bill was enacted.

So far, no new Farm Bill. Not even close. This week Congress will decide whether to extend the current Farm Bill by three months or by a year. Either way, Brazil will have to decide what the next step is. Brazil is once again preparing to retaliate. Brazil may alter the retaliation list and has convened a technical committee to review the list.

In Congress, a game of bluff and bluster is playing out around the Farm Bill. The issue is whether the leaders of the House Agriculture Committee can cajole or coerce the House Republican leaders to bring the Farm Bill to the floor of the House for approval. Time is running out before Congress goes on vacation, and as the calendar gets short, the chance of passing a new Farm Bill into law gets smaller and smaller.

 The Senate, having passed a version of the new Farm Bill, is waiting. The House Agriculture Committee passed a Farm Bill out, but it is stuck in limbo before it reaches the full House of Representatives. The Committee Chair, Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, and the senior Democrat, Collin Peterson of Minnesota are pleading and pushing to get time on the calendar. But House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has been coy. And the clock is ticking.

Speaker Boehner once sat on the House Agriculture Committee, but he’s no aggie. In the past, he’s taken on agriculture interests in the name of free-market principles and small-government budget thrift. He recently said, “we have a Soviet-style dairy program in America today” and has a record of voting against Farm Bills in the past.

The author sits on a pile of organic cotton produced in Mali with an Oxfam colleague. Cotton producers around the world complain about the US Farm Bill subsidies for cotton. Credit: Oxfam America

There’s a real question as to whether the Farm Bill has the votes to pass. The bill is unpopular among liberals, mainly because it cuts US food assistance programs for poor people. But the bill causes heartburn for many conservatives because it’s anything but a “free market” solution. A conservative think-tank says about the Farm Bill, “the conservative movement has united against these trillion dollar takeover bills that seek to expand the federal government’s role into nearly every sector of American life.”

With opposition across the spectrum, it may be hard to forge the 218 votes needed to get the Farm Bill over the line in the House. Even then, it will have to be negotiated and merged with the Senate version and then re-voted by the House and Senate. All before January, and with very few working days on the Congressional calendar.

A quiet presence on the Farm Bill has been Brazil. For years, Brazil has been waiting for Congress to pass a new Farm Bill, with the expectation that the new legislation will bring the US into compliance with WTO agreements. Brazil won a legal challenge against US cotton subsidies and has the right to retaliate against the US. The US pays Brazil for their patience to the tune of $147m annually, which is a lot of money, but still less than the $800m+ Brazil is entitled to inflict on the US under the WTO rules.

Seeing that Congress likely won’t pass a Farm Bill this year, US trade and agriculture officials flew down to Brazil last week to make sure Brazil doesn’t rush into trade retaliation. They agreed to extend the current agreement for a few more months or until a new Farm Bill is passed.  

But Brazil is sharpening its sword. Because even when a new Farm Bill is finalized, there’s little chance that it will satisfy them and remove unfair subsidies for US cotton production. In June, Brazil reactivated a technical group to decide which US export products would be taxed if they retaliate and products for which US intellectual property rights would be waived. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall to listen in to the discussion of that group.

Judy Beals is the Campaigns Director at Oxfam America.

In the past six weeks, world leaders met not once, not twice, but three times to discuss and deliver global solutions to global challenges. The G8, the G20 and Rio+20 received scant media attention during this election year dominated by domestic issues. And while global summits generally deliver more snooze than sizzle, they continue to matter, bringing together heads of state to discuss and, at least potentially, to bring global attention, resources and commitment to the world’s poorest.

With nearly a billion people hungry (including 18 million people in West Africa facing a massive unfolding food crisis), increasingly erratic weather, and a weak global economy, the need for shared solutions to shared problems could not be greater. But world leaders failed to rise to the challenge.

Oxfam stunt before the G8

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G8 Leaders look lost looking for food security—signs for shortcuts and silver bullets distract them from the path. Photo: Oxfam America.

As host to the G8—or Group of 8—the US was perhaps best positioned to deliver substantial commitments, especially since President Obama had put global food security squarely on the agenda. But meeting in the secluded Camp David, Maryland, the world’s largest industrialized economies passed the buck. Instead, the G8 tried to fill the gap of their broken promises with a private sector initiative that simply cannot tackle the complex challenges of food insecurity. Only the US recommitted itself to an important initiative started three years ago at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila. On the bright side, some commitments were made to replenish the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a multi-donor plan that invests in developing country agriculture.

The G20—the group of the world’s 20 major economies—arguably delivered even less. Still relatively new, the G20 has been meeting at the head of state level since 2008 to discuss key issues in the global economy and to promote “strong, sustainable and balanced growth.” Despite opportunities this year to address drivers of food crises—including commodity price volatility and increased demand for biofuels—G20 leaders assembled in Los Cabos, Mexico were unable to move beyond internal disagreement over how to fix the Eurozone. The one bright spot was movement plugging the leak on hundreds of millions of dollars that drain out of poor countries into tax havens every year.

Coming 20 years after the first Earth Summit, Rio+20s ambitions were high to tackle ending poverty and achieving prosperity for all while living within the earth’s limits of fresh water, clean air, and fertile land. While the verdict on action by heads of state at Rio is rightly dismal—there too, at least if you looked hard enough, were glimmers of hope. UN General Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge was a welcome ray of hope. Even business leaders produced at least a few positive initiatives at the Corporate Sustainability Forum and the Business Action for Sustainable Development.

Overall, shockingly inadequate outcomes, given the scale and urgency of the challenges? Yes. But I bring a different view. We know that solutions DO exist—to bring about a small-scale agricultural revolution that can feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit this earth by 2050 without destroying the planet; to bring about a green energy revolution; to bring about a more just and sustainable global economy that benefits all of us.

What we face is something we CAN change: political will. And while there wasn’t anywhere near enough of it at Camp David, Los Cabos, or Rio, the growing insistence of civil society, north and south, especially young people, was undeniable.

Our supporters were there. People signed the G8 petition we delivered to President Obama, urging him to launch an ambitious food security partnership with small-scale farmers. Nearly half a million supporters tuned in for our G8 Twitter Town Hall, #G8chat . Before the G20 summit Oxfam supporters helped spread the word about what was at stake.Throughout the summits, our Twitter followers tweeted and retweeted via #DearG8, #TweetG20, and #Rioplus20 about progress (or lack thereof) that leaders were making on our key issues.

Our supporters became part of something that is gaining steam—a new awakening to citizen power—standing up, speaking loudly and clearly for our future. Social media is part of it, but members of our Oxfamily went further—holding events, signing petitions, making phone calls, speaking directly with elected officials, and insisting that their voices be heard.

And that’s exactly what we need to keep doing—building political will—holding leaders accountable and making sure the glitz of summits is matched by real commitments for poor people. GROWing a movement in the present, for now and for the future, like no other the world has ever seen. You can help us do that—by asking your friends, families and social networks to join our GROW campaign—by continuing to stand up, take action, and make your voices heard.

So here’s to summits attempted and at least partially scaled. We have mountains still to climb. Looking forward to our journey together.

Are there more international laws on the trade of bananas than conventional weapons, like AK-47s?

The short answer is astonishingly, yes. The global trade in bananas or banana plants is governed by at least three binding global agreements and the non-binding, though strictly adhered to, Codex food code. The arms trade is not governed by any binding global agreements.

The long answer for those who need to know the details is:

1) Bananas: As agricultural products, the trade of bananas is governed by the World Trade Organization/Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture. The goal of this agreement is to reform trade in the sector and to make policies more market-oriented and improve the predictability of global pricing.

AK-47s: No WTO agreement includes arms within its scope. In fact, Article XXI of the GATT exempts “the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and to such traffic in other goods and materials as is carried on directly or indirectly for the purpose of supplying a military establishment.”

2) Bananas also fall under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the “SPS Agreement”). This Agreement sets out the basic rules for food safety and animal and plant health standards.

AK-47s: The arms trade is not governed by any legally-binding agreement covering all countries. While there are some international arms trade agreements, no global agreement is binding and most agreements are regional in scope and limited by significant gaps in coverage. For example, over 40 states are not part of any regional organization that maintains an arms trade control instrument.

3) Banana safety standards are set and governed on a voluntary basis by the international food code. The Codex Alimentarius contains recommendations for voluntary application but serves in many cases as a basis for national legislation and sets the standards for the SPS Agreement. While not technically binding, international commerce on food strictly adheres to the standards set out in the Codex.

AK-47s: There are no global standards on the arms trade in regard to when a particular arms transfer is or is not appropriate. Out of a total 154 countries that have reported, only 73 countries said they have basic controls on the export of AK-47s and other small arms.

4) Banana plants, as opposed to bananas, are also regulated by an international convention: the International Plant Protection Convention which aims to protect cultivated and wild plants by preventing the introduction and spread of pests.

AK-47s: Only 56 governments have indicated they have specific crimes related to the illegal international transfer or illegal manufacturing of small arms. And astonishingly some countries do not even have criminal penalties associated with violating UN arms embargoes. (See Beyond Viktor Bout by Oxfam for details.)

Does it matter?

The fact that the world’s governments have come together to ensure the banana trade is governed by some basic rules and have not done so on the arms trade is a great concern. It is beyond ridiculous that governments and corporations are far more constrained by international law when trading bananas than when trading arms.

I have to admit that while the comparison between the amount of international law governing bananas as opposed to arms shows how absurd it is that there are no controls on the arms trade, there are significant differences between global commerce on each that need to be raised.

The goals of international agreements covering bananas are to reduce trade barriers, establish uniform enforcement of contracts, and prevent contamination of the global food supply. The primary goal of the a potential Arms Trade Treaty is to prevent conventional weapons from making their way into the hands of human rights abusers and from being used to perpetuate conflicts and undermine development. It is thus not surprising that because the goals are different the means for addressing the issue are different. Up to now, the major arms exporting states have preferred to forgo international agreements and instead address the process of making arms deals and limiting arms transfers to dangerous end-users through domestic law and regional agreements.

Notwithstanding these differences, the reluctance by countries to add global regulations on the arms trade has resulted in a patchwork international regulatory system where some states have strong controls and others have next to nothing.

The patchwork of laws allows irresponsible dealers and governments to operate in the black holes of the international regulatory system and supply weapons to entities that would use them to commit war crimes and human rights abuse with impunity.

If governments can get together to ensure food is safe and the price of bananas is free from protectionist policies, they should be able to come together and forge an Arms Trade Treaty that would save lives and protect livelihoods.

Just back from Rio+20, where the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the draft agreement up for approval by heads of state has failed even the most pessimistic projections. Government negotiators have expressed their dismay and NGOs are widely condemning the event as a farce, or as Oxfam has put it: “Rio will go down as the hoax summit. They came, they talked, but they failed to act.”

Over at the Corporate Sustainability Forum (CSF) and Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) events on the margins of the official Rio conference, the mood was decidedly different. The four-day gathering attracted over 2,500 business leaders and sustainability experts to laud private sector progress and launch new initiatives. While government leaders were wringing their hands, here a stream of corporate executives took the stage to call for greener economies and respect for human rights. The panel themes I took part in are indicative—business and water risks in times of conflict, climate change resiliency measures for small farmers, the need for sustainability expertise on corporate boards, and stakeholder expectations of businesses with respect to the human right to water and sanitation (full CSF agenda here).

The CSF’s official report directed to the UN General Secretary includes over 200 corporate and industry commitments and a variety of progressive public policy recommendations, including:

• “Make the Rio+20 conference the beginning of the end of all subsidies to fossil fuels and reorient subsidies towards clean and renewable energy”;
• Enforce human rights, labor, environmental, and good governance standards;
• Invest in agricultural productivity, particularly for smallholder farmers;
• Promote increased disclosure of integrated corporate sustainability information and require all public and private pension and investment funds (including sovereign wealth funds) to integrate environmental, social and governance factors into their operation.

Those recommendations were burnished by specific commitments, including calls by various CEO groupings for more transparency around environmental and social impacts (including a Natural Capital Declaration to “ integrate natural capital considerations into products and services”) and public commitments to water sustainability and access.

The social movements and NGOs gathered at the Peoples Summit across town dismissed these efforts out of hand. If anything, the more business talked the more “the people” objected. Friends of the Earth, La Via Campesina, Third World Network, and others delivered a petition to end “Corporate capture of the United Nations” and to resist market-based solutions as false promises that only serve to “further concentrate the control of corporations over land, resources and peoples’ lives.”

Among the corporate folks at the CSF/BASC events, there was a sense of frustration that business was being misunderstood by all sides – recalcitrant governments believing that stronger regulations and transparency are antithetical to business interests (and therefore being far too timid), and “radical” NGOs refusing to see anything good coming out of business-led initiatives. It’s easy to understand that frustration in the midst of all the clamor around new innovations and good corporate practice at the CSF/BASD, and there is no denying the fact that some business leaders are far ahead of governments in their public advocacy.

That said, for all the energy and promise of the CSF, there is a bit of a disconnect with the concerns of civil society. The explicit attention to human rights, transparency, and public policy engagement are welcome, but these discussions are too often separated from issues of accountability, power inequities, and political capture. Philanthropic initiatives and innovation still figure too prominently and are detached from core business practices and influence, as if a company’s good works could someone make up for harmful products, practices, or lobbying.

If your diagnosis is that we’re on the right course, but we’ve got to chip away at bad practices and scale up the good (and indeed the official theme of the BASD event was “scale up”), then there is much to cheer in the CSF/BASD events. If, on the other hand, your diagnosis is that we are going over a cliff and nothing short of major transformation will suffice—which is the implicit if not explicit diagnosis of all the major studies going into Rio+20—then we need to get to root causes quickly and avoid distractions.

Those root causes are not technological; they are fundamentally about power and politics. That’s not to diminish the good will and good efforts of many CSF/BASD participants, but to urge more focus on the real drivers of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation. There are reasons why governments are feckless and civil society is in the streets—and we won’t make much progress on sustainability until we address them.

What if world leaders had an opportunity to set the world on track towards a sustainable future, uniting development and environment efforts, but nobody really knew it? That’s the situation Secretary Clinton is facing as she sets out to lead the US delegation at the Rio+20 Summit next week.

While the world still produces more than enough food to feed everyone, there are more hungry people today than twenty years ago. Photo: Sokunthea Chor/Oxfam America

Since the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, progress towards achieving sustainable global development without exceeding ecological limits has stalled. While the world still produces more than enough food to feed everyone, there are more hungry people today than twenty years ago. Eighty percent of people live in areas with high levels of threats to water security, including 3.4 billion people in the most severe threat category. Globally, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 36 percent between 1992 and 2008, from around 22 to just over 30 gigatonnes.

It is vital that governments, and the US, in particular, demonstrate resolve at Rio+20 to get things back on track. While we know that binding agreements won’t be achieved or new significant sources of financing agreed to, governments can make progress towards addressing a series of critical development and environmental priorities. Here are three concrete outcomes that Secretary Clinton could help achieve at the summit:

1. Commit to establish a single set of ‘global development goals’ to guide development efforts of all countries in the post-2015 period that brings together environmental and social themes. These would build off the current UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

2. Develop high-level, time-bound goals towards achieving a sustainable, resilient, and equitable food system that provides sufficient, nutritious food for all through fair shares of limited natural resources, including land and water, along with a safe climate.

3. Provide concrete pledges of technical and financial support to developing countries to deliver sustainable energy access that puts poor people first and help cut greenhouse gas pollution, and a rapid phase-out of environmentally and socially harmful energy subsidies.

Oxfam is part of a large and growing movement of inspired citizens who are choosing to build an economy that serves the people and preserves the environment. We need the US government to support and lead the way towards this vision by re-focusing economic development so that poverty can be eradicated and economic growth no longer depends on rising volumes of natural resources.

On behalf of the Obama administration, Secretary Clinton can help jumpstart this shift and provide the leadership needed to secure broad-based international consensus around this agenda in Rio. Maybe if she does, more people will start to take notice.