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Author Dr. Ken Peters Addresses Food Insecurity and Climate Change in Eco Thriller, The Seed Sanctuary
By Andrea Marvin
After traveling the world for over 30 years and observing global issues firsthand, author Dr. Ken Peters is sharing with readers some of his deep concerns about climate change and how it’s significantly contributing to challenges such as food insecurity.
In his latest novel, The Seed Sanctuary, Dr. Peters explores the stark realities of our food system, focusing on Africa, where he lived and worked for many years.
The Seed Sanctuary centers around a biotechnologist who develops a super seed that supplies high crop yield to address global food insecurity from climate change.
European fascist national political parties set about to destroy the super seed and cause starvation among the poor migrating to Europe from Africa. A Mossad agent learns about this and bravely journeys to save millions.
The book is entertaining yet educational and will leave readers debating the state of politics and our collective approach to the climate crisis.
With a background in international economics and biotechnology, author Dr. Ken Peters has worked with foreign governments across the globe.
He has contributed to healthcare policies in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, and founded a NASDAQ Biotechnology company that focused on pandemic and endemic diseases.
While overseas, Dr. Peters has worked inside third-world hospitals during typhoid, Dengue and even Ebola outbreaks and has strategized with scientists about these types of issues the world faces.
His time living in places like Africa deeply impacted him, as he has seen the stark realities of our planet. To share the urgency of the climate crisis, he has now turned his focus to writing books.
An interview with author Dr. Ken Peters reveals his depth of knowledge around global issues and his call to action about one of the most significant issues of our time – climate change.
You have written several books. Tell us about your latest novel, The Seed Sanctuary.
It's five years from now, in 2030, and the story centers around a Mossad agent who stumbles on a plot to kill off millions of people in Africa.
The book opens with a wave of migration to Europe, all due to starvation emanating from the drying up of the rivers and all the water wells in Africa.
A group of scientists developed a super seed that would feed the African nations and stop the need for migration to save their lives. Globally everyone is quite happy about this except the right-wing fascists battling off massive migration into Europe.
I don't think I have to tell everyone what's going on in the world, from Germany to America to France to Italy - there's a right-wing populist isolationist movement.
Anyway, this group of scientists came up with a super seed that would feed the African nations and stop the need for this migration. Everyone is extremely happy in the world, especially those
suffering the burden of migration but the right-wing fascists are unhappy.
Their plan is to covertly contaminate these super seeds which would return African families to their countries only to see the seed would fail to sprout but causing enormous famine and death to the African continent.
He realizes that the fascists are planning this African genocide, and he makes it his mission to stop this based on family history of genocide. The story is set to climate change and food insecurity, which is relevant to what's happening in the world today.
Let’s touch on that a little bit. It sounds like there are some more significant underlying messages about climate change, food insecurity, and even politics. With that said, what are you hoping readers can learn from your book?
I'm hoping that readers see the future is upon them. This is not a matter of 2030 when the story takes place; the climate crisis is upon us. From the droughts, floods, and fires the world is experiencing, my idea is to wake people up.
The book is a novel with a good story and engages a woman to aid his mission ultimately bringing a romantic text inside the story. However, the broader idea is to wake readers up because this is not the future; the future is here.
There was a review done on me by Book Virals in the UK, receiving the Golden Crimson Quill award.
One of the things the piece said is: "Peter's novel Plunging readers into a near future, inviting them to imagine the consequences of failing crops and mass immigration to deliver an Espionage Eco Thriller that's not only refreshingly original and intelligent but resonates with haunting somberness."
In my book, I put together something that was a stark reminder of our planet's environmental challenges and a call to action to protect it. So, that was my goal.
I've had lots of adventures in my life living overseas. I'm so impacted by seeing nothing but tragedy from the fires, floods, droughts and emerging new virus strains from how deforestation is changing our weather patterns and climate worldwide.
What is something you notice in other countries that concerns you when it comes to climate change?
Staying with the book, I lived in Africa for six years, and I will tell you that although it's been 15 years since I left in 2010, Jordan's wells are drying up, and the rivers are diminishing in size.
Americans need only to view how Colorado river flow is estimated to have a 20% decline and 31% expected over the next decades.
A stark example in South America is Ecuador. They depend on Hydroelectricity from rivers supplying water to their Dams and have to cut electricity as much as 14 hours daily.
This is public knowledge yet the majority of Americans and Europeans are not cognizant of it because everyone is focused on themselves and the matters of today. It seems to me there's no fixing the problem unless there's education on climate change and that's decades-long.
I see economic migration everywhere due to a reduction in arable farm land, changes in soil quality, deforestation resulting from climate change.
In Africa, they're all moving north and trying to gain economic asylum. They want life. Climate change impacts the whole world, which is a thread in the story throughout the book.
There's a growing awareness of climate change, but people are not doing enough about it. I tell my university students you can run, but you can't hide.
Climate change has increased poverty and migration whether in Africa or South America or south east Asia, you can live in a gated community and think you can escape the problem, but climate change is not going away.
Why, in particular, did you decide to address food insecurity?
From droughts to floods, climate change is changing the rules of agriculture. Living around the world for 30 years you can't help but observe human nature and evolution.
What I see today is that most people are migrating to America because of economics and the desire for a better life.
But in Europe, there are a tremendous number of failures in farming, and it has just created more populism and isolationism bringing with it fascist leaders using fear of the intruders to bring them to power.
So climate change also brings economic and political issues. As political Isolationism grows and its roots are in food insecurity. With an ever increasing global population comes greater requirements for agricultural production.
These rising political figures and isolationism restrict trade between countries to only exacerbate global food supplies.
How do you see climate change impacting the food system in the future? Do you see prices go up; do you see what we eat changing?
I feel that prices will go up. I did a lot of research for the book. If you look at what's happening, climate change patterns are emerging with huge droughts in places like India, Africa and South America along with deforestation.
When these regions experience droughts followed by significant rain that follows, massive floods tend to occur. Economists then look at what rebuilding will cost and find that we're just accelerating the cost of life.
I'll put it in one global summary – climate change is accelerating the cost of life because we're unable to produce food.
I'm an economist, and I've lived around the world. When you visit places, it's not the same as living there and being with people, getting swept up in their culture and you come to understand their issues.
What's next for you?
I have many other books, but I'm continuing this story with one more novel called, The Red Sea Rendition. It focuses on the six countries surrounding the Red Sea, from Sudan to Jordan to Egypt to Somalia or Eritrea all suffering water shortages.
Their water resource issues are a current reality - I did a lot of research for this issue as well.
In this novel, the Israelis by 2030 have truly become the Pariah of the world, and a new political party takes over in Israel seeing that with their technology they could bring water to all of the Arabs surrounding the Red Sea, where they would no longer be the Pariah of the world but a savior to these Arab nations.
They build this giant desalination plant south of the Suez Canal to supply water to these countries. Near completion, Islamist radicals seek to sabotage the plant.
Is there anything else you would like our readers to know?
While The Seed Sanctuary is a great and entertaining book, it's a book that talks about the future, and I think it wakes people up to the fact that you can’t ignore climate change and its resultant food insecurity.
There are a lot of nonfiction books, but sometimes they're a bit droll. I tried to check off all the boxes with history, facts and vivid descriptions in this novel. Aside from it being an eco-thriller, the story is an engrossing narrative of what's going on in the world.
Author Dr. Ken Peters has written numerous other books, including The Cure, a novel about European colonialists who tried to alter an HIV vaccine that would cause waves of death throughout Africa.
His other books include Cuba’s Nuclear Pinata and The Hajj Intercept.
He has been highlighted in the Wall Street Journal and healthcare journals and is a recipient of the Dx Health Care Awards.
Dr. Peters is a visiting professor at the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs at Florida International University, lecturing on Macroeconomics and Government Policies.
Further, Dr. Ken Peters has been a guest scholar numerous times at the University of Shanghai, lecturing on International Economic Development.
His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books & Books, Gardners UK, and BookBaby.com
For more information: AuthorKenPeters.com.
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