Feeding the World in the 21st Century
The global population will approach 10 billion by 2050, while the effects of climate change, and competition for land and water, will reduce agricultural productivity. Should we panic… or not? Caitlin Welsh will address common misconceptions about global food security – for example, that people starve because there’s not enough to eat, and the world can’t produce enough food to meet growing demand – and highlight real challenges to feeding the world in the 21st century. She will explain that feeding the world’s hungry is not only a humanitarian concern; it’s necessary to global peace and security and economic growth. Finally, she will address challenges in Erie, explaining that meeting global goals on hunger and malnutrition reduction requires taking action right here at home.
Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global food security challenges. She brings over a decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20 across multiple summits. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State’s Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. As a presidential management fellow, Ms. Welsh oversaw a portfolio of agriculture-related grants at the U.S. African Development Foundation. Ms. Welsh also lived and worked in Morocco’s breadbasket region as a Peace Corps volunteer, witnessing the complex causes and effects of food insecurity and working to improve lives through education.
Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania and speaks Arabic and French.
