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the environment by destroying thousands of acres of forest wilderness that in turn kills an insurmountable number of wildlife.

We must manage the world's biodiversity (organisms present in a given ecological community or system) in order to provide sufficient food for a world population that may reach 9 billion by mid-century. "Agriculture can promote biological diversity if it shows due respect for nature..." said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, President of the ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological diversity, which took place in Bonn, Germany from May 19-30, 2008.

As stated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, we grow one and a half times the amount of food we need to feed everyone on earth. Yet in lieu of growing food to feed our communities, industrial agriculture produces many crops to sell on lucrative world markets. These multi-corporations squeeze the life out of local farmers by forcing them from their land and leaving them cash-poor and unable to purchase what is grown in the fields around them.

Yet partial responsibility for our present world food crisis also lies in the calamitous changes of our earth's climate. Climate change in South Asia threatens to upset the stable monsoon pattern which farming has relied on for many years.

Admittedly, our food crisis has roots elsewhere as well. We witness the blatant corruption of governments, the hoarding of food, the expansion of the middle class in developing nations, the escalation of fuel prices, and the fact that the mismanagement of finances and weak trade negotiations merely reflect how political "grand standing" is allowed to run rampant.

THE SOLUTIONS

On December of 2008, the Asean Charter ratified a new charter that may be extremely effective in dealing with rising food prices and supply shortages in South East Asia. The EU-style community makes the bloc a legal entity and may create a single market within the next seven years. The new charter includes a common set of rules for investment, trade, environment and a variety of other fields. The members of this 10 country charter includes Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

The change in weather patterns on a global level will leave us no choice but to adapt our

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