Food Security, Food Sovereignty and Global Governance Regimes in the Context of Climate Change and Food Availability

Abstract

Global governance, as Henk Overbeek notes, was an initially radical (and hence marginal) concept when it first emerged in the 1970s, challenging the then-prevailing configurations of political economic power via proposals for a New International Economic Order, to be presided over by ‘humane and democratic institutions’ (Overbeek et al. 2010: 697–698). Following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the neoliberal counter-revolution, global governance became domesticated and then mainstreamed into a ‘euphemism for the global rule of capital’ (Overbeek et al. 2010: 697). As neo-liberal market ideology falters in the aftermath of the tumultuous events of 2008–2009, Overbeek detects the early signs of a Polanyian ‘double-movement’, in the form of a turn from ‘market-based governance to state-led government’, and he concludes by quipping that ‘the discussion about “global governance” [will soon become] a debate among historians rather than social scientists’ (Overbeek et al. 2010: 701–702).