Food Summit 'Follow Through' Urged
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 (OneWorld) - As world leaders meet in Rome to discuss the current global food crisis, calls are growing for immediate and practical actions to address the plight of millions of poor facing hunger and starvation across the world. "Now the real issue is implementation," said Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington, DC-based think tank that has produced an enormous amount of research on food-related issues. Though pleased with the UN decision to convene the three-day summit on the food crisis, like many other independent analysts von Braun warned that hunger and starvation would increase manifold if world leaders failed to match their words with deeds.
Addressing the conference in Rome Tuesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said over 850 million people around the world were short of food before the current crisis began. That number, according to Ban, is now likely to increase by a further 100 million. In the past few months, food shortages and rising prices have increased malnutrition and spread starvation where food was already scarce, and spawned angry mobs from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh. Analysts blame the escalation of the food crisis largely on rising fuel costs, erratic weather patterns, the widespread diversion of food crops for biofuels, and, paradoxically, rising incomes in poorer countries, which have increased food demand and diminished global reserves. "The threats are obvious to us all," Ban told world leaders. "Yet, this crisis also presents us with opportunity. While we must respond to high food prices, it's important that our longer-term focus is on improving food security -- and remains so for some years." Crisis Presents 'Historic Opportunity' Ban, who established a high-level task force last month to address the current crisis, thinks that in order to meet the growing demand for food, world production needs to grow by 50 percent. "We have an historic opportunity to revitalize agricultural production," he said.
In order to tackle the food crisis at home, some countries have put limits on exports and imposed price controls. Noting this trend, Ban said such such measures would only distort markets and raise global food prices further. The UN chief stressed the need to speed up efforts and act together to overcome the current crisis. "Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made." The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which is hosting the summit, is calling for countries to look for "innovative and imaginative solutions," especially between countries that are technologically-advanced and those whose economies are largely based on agriculture. 'Priorities' and Financial Commitments "The problem of food insecurity is a political one. It is a question of priorities in the face of the most fundamental of human needs," said FAO director-general Dr. Jacques Diouf, who appealed to world leaders for $30 billion a year to boost agriculture in order to avert conflicts over food.
IFPRI's von Braun noted that countries were reaching a near consensus around several key steps, especially "the need to expand emergency aid and social protection; calm the markets with sound trade, reserve, and regulatory policies; change the biofuels policies that spur high food prices; and invest much more in agriculture." He cautioned, however, that the capacity to respond effectively would not "come cheap" and significant investment would be required. "The cost of not responding -- more humanitarian emergencies, increased malnutrition, food price inflation, and destabilization -- is much, much higher," he added, emphasizing that significant progress "depends not on good intentions, but primarily good follow through." At the Rome summit, Ban said he hoped world leaders would further strengthen their commitments to address the food crisis when they meet in New York during the UN General Assembly session starting in September. "We must leave this conference with a sense of purpose and mission, knowing that we are allied in our determination to make a difference," he said. "Only by acting together, in partnership, we can overcome this crisis. Hundreds of millions of the world's people expect no less." OneWorld TV: Food Crisis Appeal from Sierra Leone
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