This is a book that inspires faith in a world that is witness to tremendous poverty and growing intra- and inter-state inequality. Even if its findings remind us how far we have to go to give meaningful effect to the right to food for everyone, its contributors surely represent the kind of individuals Margaret Mead had in mind when she issued her famed edict: that we should ‘never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has’.

Wenche Barth Eide and Uwe Kracht have assembled a group of experts to deliver an impassioned and highly informed collection of essays on food, human rights and development. Building on their 2005 publication that focused on Legal and Institutional Dimensions and Selected Topics (Volume I) on the same subject, Eide and Kracht's Volume II offers a careful and thoughtful analysis of many Evolving Issues and Emerging Applications. In the first section on the ‘Evolving Conceptual Debate’ a series of papers introduce the reader to the progression, tensions and gradual interface between human rights and economics (development), social anthropology (normative systems that govern society) and political science (to give but one example, ethics and international affairs), unearthing the relationships these disciplines have with factors integral to human rights and development. Other contributions to this section delve into existing paradigms such as the right to development or the tripartite typology of state obligations—widely employed by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—to present detailed analyses of what these models offer when applied to the right to food in today's development climate. In Section I of this book, the reader is offered valuable historical contexts, institutional mindsets and an awareness of disciplinary biases. It provides, in sum, a chronicled examination that explains where we as a community of scholars have been, and where it is we need to go on questions of international development and human rights.

Section II evaluates the ‘Emerging Implementation in Specific Countries’ of the right to food. In-depth coverage of the rights-based approaches to access to food, food and nutritional security, and access to justice in the realisation of socio-economic rights are explored critically. Key issues such as poverty, empowerment, vulnerable groups, conflict and the role of culture, civil society, international organizations, and legal and regulatory frameworks are addressed in varying degrees within country studies on Uganda, Brazil, India, Sierra Leone and Mali. Section III considers the ‘Application and Promotion’ of the right to food through the lens of selected topics and actors: securing water, land and food by means of women's initiatives in Zimbabwe; investigative casework and advocacy by the FoodFirst Information and Action Network; the human rights work of the UN's Standing Committee on Nutrition; and practical lessons on implementing the right to food drawn from comparative domestic policy analysis on food and nutrition. Among the value of these various contributions is the insight into the diverse issues to which any consideration of food, human rights and development gives rise (e.g. non-discriminatory access, malnutrition, ethics, food labelling and marketing, institutional arrangements, monitoring) presenting a strong justification for interdisciplinary analysis and responses to the problem of the widespread non-realisation of this right. Second, despite the particular approach and focus each contributor to Sections II and III has favoured, true to the book's claims all have systematically situated their work within the contextual and normative narrative of human rights.

In ‘Looking to the Future’ Section IV provides the content of a comprehensive system for human rights-based development monitoring at the country level. It also offers a valuable appraisal of the negotiations and implications of the 2004 FAO Guidelines on the Right to Adequate Food and a rigorous overview and assessment of the UN's ‘Action 2’ programme aimed at developing the capacity of the organization to strengthen human rights in its national development and humanitarian processes. A welcome addition here would have been a chapter dedicated to the human rights dimensions of current climate change strategies, particularly in light of the recent surge in global food prices. The last two chapters suggest that the way forward must include—on a far wider scale than is currently being undertaken—cross-disciplinary education and training to prepare properly future professionals for work on food and nutrition as a human right.

The editors tell us in their introduction that this volume ‘is neither a textbook nor a reader. It is a unique collection of new and innovative contributions from committed persons …’ This description may be underselling its many applications and potential audiences. It is true that it does not fit neatly into either of those categories but could find use within both of them and more. The accumulated knowledge contained in this book will enrich the human rights lawyer, the economist, and students of several disciplines. But perhaps its most valuable contribution is the way in which it both looks backward to educate the academic or practitioner, allowing him or her to harness the gains of the human rights movement and apply it towards much needed implementation of basic socio-economic rights, while at the same time looking forward to assist us in better formulating our collective actions.