Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau
System risks
“Our green and pleasant land is transforming into a parched and increasingly unproductive one.”
I'm indebted to Tom Lancaster – land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit – who has commented on reports that the UK harvest is on track for a historic low after drought and heatwaves stunted crops.
This year will displace 2020 as the worst harvest since detailed records began in 1984. The ECIU believes the UK is on track for four out of five of its worst harvests to have occurred this decade.
It's not just the UK. The international food system’s resilience is in the balance.
Water levels in the Danube and the Rhine, the great rivers of Europe and arterials for food and fuel, are at record lows.
I've written about the possibility of a fifth food crisis in 20 years and the third this decade. It's fair to say we’ve had our wake-up call – and then some.
Ukraine and Russia are back on the brink of a 2022-style Black Sea embargo that drove food costs off the scale.
Foreign-flagged civilian vessels in Odesa, which handles most of Ukraine's grain shipments, are being attacked. A Ukrainian official revealed on Tuesday that the situation endangers exports of about half of this year's forecast total.
On top of this, the globalised danger to agriculture from Iran’s disruption of trade through the Strait of Hormuz is precisely what the food system does not need. The International Rice Research Institute says farmers in key markets such as Thailand are paying up to 50 per cent more than they did last year.
Add in, as a prime risk, the current El Nino impact. On Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that the strengthening system was “adding fuel to a planet already on fire”. “El Nino does not bring heat alone – it profoundly affects the world’s rainfall,” he said.
Ceuta breach
Critical issues have been exposed in the fallout from the rush of migrants into Ceuta, the Spanish North African exclave next to Morocco, late last week.
For Europe it has been a bruising episode, as the senior commissioner on a call with interior ministers admitted late on Tuesday.
The EU's Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner was speaking as the Spanish government issued assurances that the situation was under control.
Depends who you ask. The first assurance is that none of the tens of thousands of people involved in the breach succeeded in entering mainland Spain. “For the time being, Europe, I think, has definitely passed this test,” Mr Brunner told a news conference in Brussels. “People did not manage to enter the Schengen area and security at the border was resolved quickly.”
But Spain faces wider European fury, with an estimated 5,000 of the about 70,000 migrants who crossed from Morocco still in Ceuta.
Other EU nations accuse Spain of encouraging migration with a mass amnesty for undocumented migrants that was endorsed by a court ruling this summer.
That seems to have started this influx. “We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalisation of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible,” a letter organised by Italy and Denmark said.
For the two countries at the nub of the crisis, Spain and Morocco, Europe has a vulnerability to viral disinformation to fix as well.
London's finest
Home to the US embassy and gateway to the landmark Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms Lane is completing its sweep of high-rises with the launch of the River Park Tower development.
Modern apartment blocks offer an antidote to the heatwave-hit city's main talking point: the lack of air-conditioning in London homes.
River Park Tower is generating a strong Middle East marketing reception, according to the team behind the launch.
Three in five potential buyers hail from the region, with Kuwaiti buyers showing the highest level of interest, followed by those from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Powerful portraits
British artist Caroline de Peyrecave has completed a set of portraits for a coming exhibition in parliament: Empowering Her.
One of the subjects is the former Tehran hostage, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The collection aims to display the women as figures of seriousness and permanence.
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