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McGovern to lead off conference on hunger, Feb. 24-26
Posted February 18, 2005; 05:35 p.m.
Former U.S. senator and
presidential candidate George McGovern will deliver the keynote address at a
conference on world hunger Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 24-26, in Robertson
Hall.
The conference is titled "Trading Morsels,
Growing Hunger, Decimating Nature: Linking Food and Trade to Development and
the Environment." It will bring together an interdisciplinary group of
scientists, policymakers and practitioners to examine consumption, production
and trade in food commodities.
McGovern served as a senator from South Dakota from
1962 to 1980 and was the Democratic candidate for president in 1972. Throughout
his career, he has worked to improve the availability and the quality of food
worldwide. As the first director of the U.S. Food for Peace Program in 1961, he
was instrumental in founding the World Food Program. In 1998, he was named U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies in Rome and, in
2001, he was appointed the first United Nations global ambassador on world
hunger. In his book, "Ending World Hunger in Our Time," he lays out a
strategy to end global hunger by focusing on programs that feed and educate
poor children.
McGovern will speak at 7 p.m.
Thursday in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall. Seating for this event is
limited. The rest of the conference sessions will take place in 16 Robertson
Hall from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday and from 9 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Saturday.
Participants will take a
commodity- and region-based approach with in-depth and broad analyses drawing
linkages between what happens within and between countries with regard to the
environment and development. They will present cases focusing on how trade
arrangements affect these dynamics, linkages and outcomes.
Also as part of the conference, seven films will be shown
addressing issues of traditional and innovative organization of
irrigation and water use, a country disappearing due to global warming,
hunger and poverty, gender and farming, pesticide use and more.
The conference is sponsored by the
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies in conjunction with
the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs and the Center for Migration and Development. More
information is available on the conference Web site.