Thoughts about our food security
The word “globalization” was the star of political terminology in the eighties and nineties of the last century. We rarely found a political book or research dealing with relations between states in this period without any reference to “globalization” in one way or another.
Even the media and the economy entered the line. There is the cross-border media that has begun to take into account the needs and desires of the “global citizen,” and there is the economy, which has built its “supply chains” on the foundations of the new globalization, and that is why the World Trade Organization was established in the mid-nineties with its commercial laws that sometimes rob – in the literal sense of the word – independence The sovereignty of some countries and the rupture of their borders on purpose.
The phrase “the world has become a small village” was a constant daily part of our “audio,” to the point that we expected regions of the world with common interests to turn into separate versions of the European Union: a large country with new laws and no specific nationality under which several countries with different passport colors shaded.
We thought globalization would devour everything, from our cultural identities to our local dialects. Things were going this way until the Corona virus came, and it turned the world upside down, and every country in the world revolved around the center of its capital, closing its borders for fear of entering the virus, and striving in every way to secure its food and daily needs from its natural resources. The concept of an independent national state returned from the door, and globalization escaped from the window.
The situation remained in place for several months until countries gradually began to recover and at the same time restore international lines of communication between them. Globalization returned half a step from the door, but this time the nation-state did not jump out of the window, but rather remained “cautious and anxious, as if the wind was under it,” as Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi says.
Before globalization stretched its muscles again, military confrontations erupted between Russia and Ukraine, affecting global supply chains again, and thinking about “returning the national economy to the forefront and isolating it from global influences” became a preoccupation for all countries of the world. I had written months ago that the future might reveal the disappearance of the “state of geography” in its current form and the emergence of the “state of similar entities” in its place.
That is, after a hundred years or more or less, the world may witness states based on common interests without the availability of a “territory”!, as if there will be a state for artists and a state for athletes..and so on. But until that day, I think that it has become obligatory for the Gulf countries to create in their governmental systems bodies concerned with food security, which are responsible for drawing up strategies related to this very important vital aspect and putting them into practice.
I think that working within the global supply chain system is an important issue for the growth and development of the Gulf economies, but this does not preclude that there should be work in parallel to secure the near future in the event of a global crisis that has disrupted the movement of the international economy for many years. A food security authority for each country or a unified food security authority for the six countries, this is how we are assured of our future.
* Saudi writer
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