Human security is a “new” dimension of security that is gaining more and more interest in modern studies. It points out that it is not necessary that only the state can be the subject of a threat, but that the citizens themselves can also be the subject of a threat.
Human security is defined “as a state in which people are freed from the traumas that burden human development. Human security means “first and foremost security from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from the sudden and harmful disturbances of everyday life, whether in homes, workplaces or communities.” (UNDP 1994: 23; Collins 2010)
Human security encompasses seven different areas: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, political and community security.
Through this article, I will briefly focus at food security and its connection to human security, and the impact of food on global change.
Since the beginning of humankind, food has been an existential need. With the development of humans and their needs, the very structure of food changed. The first detailed analysis of the connection between population growth and food production was done by Thomas Malthus. He was an economic analyst and philosopher who remained famous for his work “The Law of Population” in which he states that there was a disproportionate increase in population and the need for food production. However, his claims later proved to be incorrect.
At the annual level, a third of the world’s food is produced, i.e., one billion and 300 million tons of food, mainly due to excessive household purchases. According to a report by the UN Food Organization, about 88 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the European Union, or 173 kilograms per person, and based on that, it is estimated that the EU loses about 143 billion euros every year.
FoodCloud is a social non-profit association founded in Dublin in 2013 with the aim of connecting humanitarian organizations, communities in need of food with entrepreneurs with food surplus. The pilot program they worked on aimed to increase 14 shopping malls of one chain. In the five months that the project lasted, 27 tons of food or almost 60,000 meals were redistributed, which reduced the costs of humanitarian organizations to 30%.
Many human activities contribute to climate change. What many don’t know is that meat production significantly increases global warming. The two main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and methane, and cow farms produce millions of tons annually. A cow that produces up to 10,000 thousand liters of milk in a year, produces from 5 to 700 liters of methane every day. Which means if a cow that produces 700 liters of methane a day is proportional to the amount of greenhouse gas CO2 produced by a jeep that travels around 56 km a day.
We can now see how interesting human security is, and how important it is. Food will continue to be a pleasure that everyone is looking forward to, and we will see if it will keep causing us the problems as well.
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