Millions eating food grown with polluted water, says UN report

from the Guardian

A study finds widespread use of waste water used for growing crops. At least 200 million people are at risk of disease from this use of waste water. The study from the UN surveyed 53 cities thought the word. - Kale

by John Vidal

Urban farmers in 80% of the cities surveyed were found to be using untreated waste water, but the study said they also provided vital food for burgeoning cities at a time of unprecedented water scarcity and the worst food crisis in 30 years.

The study from the UN-backed International Water Management Institute (IMWI), said the practice of using waste water to grow food in urban areas was not confined to the poorest countries.

"It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20m hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well," said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally.

"Nor is it limited to the countries and cities with the lowest GDP. It is prevalent in many mid-income countries as well", she said.

The report, launched today at World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, found the practice "widespread and practically inevitable".

"As long as developing countries lack suitable transport to deliver large quantities of perishable produce to urban areas, urban agriculture will remain important. In the face of water scarcity generally and a lack of access to clean water, urban farmers will have no alternative except to use … polluted water", write the authors.

The report found that few developing countries have official guidelines for the use of waste water in agriculture. Even if they do, monitoring and enforcement rarely happen and may not be realistic. As a result, though the practice may be theoretically forbidden or controlled, it is "unofficially tolerated."

Earlier in 2008, the UN's World Health Organization stated that a global environmental and health crisis was unfolding with more than 200m tonnes of human waste a year being dumped untreated in water systems, exposing hundreds of millions of people to disease.

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UN criticizes India over high child death rate

from the International Herald Tribune

More than 2 million Indian children under the age of 5 are dying every year. The UN says it's because of lack of basic care. - Kale

The report by the U.N. Children's Fund focused on the Asia-Pacific region but singled out India — home to 20 percent of the world's children under 5. It also warned that rising inequality between the rich and poor risked undermining gains made in other countries of the region.

While India has made steady progress in recent years, it's "not nearly enough," said UNICEF regional director Daniel Toole, calling on the government to invest significantly more money on health services.

Officials from India's Health Ministry and the Women and Child Welfare Ministry were not immediately available for comment.

In 2006, the last year for which there are full figures, some 2.1 million children under 5, or 76 children per 1,000 live births, died in India, the report said.

Much of this was caused by rampant malnutrition among mothers and children and resources not reaching the poorest segments of the population, it said.

Basic solutions like providing trained midwives or doctors — currently only present at about 30 percent of births — or information on caring for newborn, like keeping them warm, could make a big difference, said Mario Babille, UNICEF's head of health care in India.

The situation was compounded by discrimination against women and lower castes, it said.

"When a young girl is born in India her chances of survival are significantly less," said Toole. Female children were less likely to receive medical care or even have their births registered and this deep discrimination was causing a vicious cycle, he said.

"An unhealthy girl child is likely to be an under-nutritioned mother with low birth weight children," he said.

In traditional Indian society girls are seen as a financial burden, needing huge dowries when they marry that can cripple a family financially. Boys typically remain at home after marrying, helping to care for aging parents. Hinduism also dictates preference, with only men being able to light their parents' funeral pyres.

While other nations in the region have made even less progress than India, India was highlighted because of its huge population, which affects U.N goals of bringing down child deaths by two-thirds by 2015.

The report also singled out Afghanistan, Myanmar and North Korea where violence and international isolation were hampering efforts to bring down mortality rates.

But the report praised China, Thailand, Malaysia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Nepal who had made great strides in reducing child deaths.

Still, it cautioned against rising financial inequality.

"The divide between rich and poor is rising at a troubling rate within subregions of Asia-Pacific, leaving vast numbers of mothers and children at risk of increasing relative poverty and continued exclusion from quality primary health care," the report said.

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Reducing taxes for food

from IRIN

This subject was debated during the food summit last month. Past calls to cut taxes for chartable food purchases has met a lot of resistance. - Kale

The World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a call by the World Bank for a UN resolution to scrap taxes and export controls on food aid purchases, but experts say there is little chance of such a resolution being effected.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank Group, called on the UN General Assembly's 63rd session, coming up in September, to vote for a resolution to exempt humanitarian purchases from export restrictions and taxes.

A global food and fuel price crisis has not only pushed up the cost of food aid but made finding adequate quantities to purchase and transporting them even more problematic, as governments attempt to control food supplies to ensure that their people have enough to eat. Some have even imposed export bans or taxes.

Nicole Menage, WFP's head of Procurement, told IRIN that "the world is really riddled with export control measures now, which makes the already difficult task of buying food in the present highly volatile and thin markets even more of a challenge." WFP usually requires US$3 billion a year in voluntary contributions but needs $5 to $6 billion this year, and a similar sum next year.

More donors are giving cash instead of food. In an attempt to widen the sources of food supply, in 2007 WFP purchased in 82 countries, of which 69 were developing. The food aid agency's choice has become even "more restricted now" as a result of the export controls, "at a moment when, again, globally the availability of food is so much more limited," said Menage.

Besides the new export control measures, the cost and the process of getting export and import permits were also barriers to providing timely aid, said Richard Lee, WFP spokesman for Southern Africa.

But will it happen?

"The problem is that the UN General Assembly can pass a resolution to this effect, but it cannot enforce it if passed," said Christopher Barrett, who teaches development economics at Cornell University, New York, and is the co-author of the book, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role.

"The sharp domestic political pressures that lead politicians to adopt such short-sighted and ultimately ineffective policies as export restrictions and export taxes will likely trump the gentle diplomatic pressure of UN member states," he commented.

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India lags behind Ethiopia in child nourishment

from the Gulf Times

India has been booming, but children there are still hungry. A report from a top UN economist explains. - Kale

Four in every 10 children in India are malnourished despite the country’s economy growing at an average rate of 9% a year, one of the world’s leading development economists warned.

Kevin Watkins, who edited the UN’s human development report, said that despite growing prosperity brought on by a sustained boom, child malnourishment in India is higher than in Ethiopia and well above the African average of 28%.

“India dominates the world hunger league,” he said. “Economists like to debate the factors behind India’s spectacular take-off. Perhaps they should be asking how a country can grow so fast with such a limited impact on child hunger.”

Watkins’s warning follows comments by Finance Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, who said last week that he wanted the country to become an “economic superpower”.

“I have no hesitation in saying that I do not envy China,” he said. “I want to emulate China. I want India to become an economic power, an economic superpower.”

When it comes to economic growth, India is a long way ahead of Bangladesh but when it come to child survival rates, it lags behind.

According to Watkins, an Oxford academic, Bangladesh has been cutting child deaths at a rate some 50% higher than in India.

If India, where there are about 1.1bn people, had matched Bangladesh’s record on child mortality since 1990 there would be about 700,000 fewer child deaths this year.
“Both Bangladesh and Nepal are far poorer than India, but India has a higher child death rate than either,” said Watkins.

Poverty has also been falling far more slowly in India than in other high-growth developing countries, such as Vietnam and Brazil. Watkins believes that part of the problem is that the benefits of growth have been “highly skewed”.

“While wealth has been flooding into urban areas and middle-class suburbs, it has been trickling down in small doses to rural areas, poor states in the north of the country, rural labourers and low-caste groups,” he said.

Watkins also criticised India’s public health system. He said that India’s children did not receive the basic medication they so badly need such as immunisation, drugs for treating childhood diarrhoea and nutritional supplements. “Fewer than half of India’s children are fully immunised and the share has barely changed in a decade,” he added.

Gender inequalities are also still rife in India, with boys getting access to food and medicine before girls, according to Watkins. “Being born a girl carries high risks: it raises the chance of premature death between the ages of one and four by about one-third,” he said.

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Myanmar cyclone damage estimated at $4 billion

from the Guardian

Estimates are now being made about the damage of the cyclone that hit Myanmar earlier this year. Along with criticisms of it's government. - Kale

By VIJAY JOSHI

SINGAPORE - Myanmar needs at least $1 billion over the next three years to put the survivors of Cyclone Nargis back on their feet, a U.N.-led report said Monday in the first comprehensive assessment of damage caused by the disaster that killed more than 84,000 people.

The May 3-4 cyclone caused damage estimated at $4 billion, said the report prepared by the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the military junta that governs Myanmar. Damage to assets was determined to be about $1.7 billion and loss of income was estimated at $2.3 billion.

The cyclone devastated large swathes of the Irrawaddy delta and the Yangon region, killing at least 84,537 people and leaving 53,836 missing and presumed dead.

ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan told a news conference the three parties involved in the report are seeking at least $1 billion in international aid for humanitarian relief efforts alone over the next three years to deal with ``a tragedy of immense proportions.''

``The task ahead is clearly enormous and will take a lot of time, a lot of effort,'' Surin said, flanked by the foreign ministers of ASEAN's 10 members and the United Nations' humanitarian chief, John Holmes. Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win was also on the panel.

Despite the grim statistics, the report makes no mention of the junta's limited action in the first week of the disaster, which drew worldwide criticism.

The junta initially refused to allow foreign relief workers in and pictures of bodies floating in the water amid reports that soldiers were standing by idly horrified people around the world. The junta was also slammed for failing to accept international aid quickly and even physically preventing them from going to the hardest hit areas.

The military government had also insisted on full access to international relief, holding up delivery for weeks while survivors waited in desperate conditions. ASEAN helped facilitate exchanges between international donors and Myanmar's governing military junta.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo, who chaired the news conference to release the report, refused to allow an Associated Press reporter's question to Myanmar's foreign minister about whether the junta felt that many lives could have been saved had it acted differently.

Yeo said that while ``political questions'' are relevant, the news conference was only about the assessment report.

Nyan Win said the junta hoped the international community will provide increased assistance.

``Even if we do not receive adequate assistance, we are determined to proceed with our limited resources,'' he said.

Members of ASEAN, the region's main bloc, usually stick to a policy of not interfering in each other's domestic affairs. But the group opened its annual meeting in Singapore Monday after issuing its strongest rebuke ever to Myanmar over the junta's failure to make progress on political reform.

ASEAN experts said the worst is still not over and the cyclone hit area remains in a state of emergency.

``People live in a very precarious condition now. If we fail to sustain the recovery efforts, they may face a second emergency,'' said Puji Pujiono, a recovery assessment specialist in the ASEAN team.

At a donor conference after the cyclone, participants demanded full access to storm-hit areas and an independent assessment of aid to ensure it was not being wasted or stolen.

``Both of those things are in place,'' Holmes said.

``It is important to have a report of this quality so that donors are sure their resources are being well spent,'' Holmes said, appealing to donors to ``continue to be generous.''

He said the U.N. had appealed for $482 million in immediate assistance but is still short $300 million.

The report paints a dismal picture of the devastation caused by the cyclone, saying it is expected to wipe out about 2.7 percent of Myanmar's projected gross domestic product in 2008. Myanmar is one of the world's 20 poorest countries with some 32 percent of its 54 million people living below the poverty line -- meaning they don't earn enough to eat two meals a day.

The wall of water destroyed 450,000 homes and damaged 350,000. About 75 percent of health facilities were damaged, as were 4,000 or more schools.

About 1.5 million acres of farmlands and 60 percent of agricultural implements were destroyed. In mid-June, 55 percent of survivors had rations enough for only one day or less.

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UN chief calls for sharp hike in world farm output

from the AFP via Google



A farmer collects melons from his field in Djilakh, Senegal

The UN chief speaks out on the Global food crisis, during debate at the UN General Assembly. - Kale

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday called for a sharp hike in world farm output, warning that high food and fuel prices threatened much of the progress made in reaching global poverty-reduction targets.

Addressing a day-long debate of the UN General Assembly on the global food and energy crisis, the secretary general warned: "the double jeopardy of high food and fuel prices threatens to undermine much of the progress made in achieving the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs)."

And he noted that the effects of climate change, including increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures, more erratic rainfall and extreme weather events, were threatening water and agricultural systems, potentially triggering malnutrition and water shortages for millions of people.

"To reach the MDG on reducing poverty and hunger (by 2015), we need a Global Partnership for Food. Governments must be at the center, but we all have to work together," Ban said.

"We must act immediately to boost agricultural production this year," he added.

"We do this by providing urgently needed seeds and fertilizers for the upcoming planting cycles," especially for the world's 450 million small-scale farmers."

Ban said UN agencies were already doing so, but added: "with so many millions of people threatened by this crisis, all of us, including member states, need to do much more -- immediately."

He hailed the European Commission's proposal Friday to set a special facility worth a total of 1.5 billion dollars for a rapid response to the food crisis.

The secretary also outlined a broad strategy that would scale up food aid and other nutrition interventions, hike predictable financial support for food aid, exempt purchases of humanitarian relief food from export restrictions and set up a global reserve system for humanitarian food.

He said it was also high time "to reverse the dramatic and deplorable downward trend in agriculture's share in official development assistance (ODA) by rich nations. ODA for farming has fallen from 18 percent 20 years ago to just around three percent today, he noted.

Ban also urged the eight leading industrialized countries to improve fair trade and the free flow of markets by cutting their farm subsidies.

He said investment in farming and rural development must be significantly boosted and global food commodity markets strengthened to meet the needs of all countries and people, particularly the poor.

Ban also addressed the need to reassess subsidies and tariff protection for biofuel production.

"It is true that biofuels will need to remain a part of the equation in our fight against climate change," he noted.

"But we also need to establish an international consensus and agreed policy guidelines on ways to balance the development of biofuels with food production priorities."

France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, speaking on the behalf of the 27-member European Union, welcomed the UN chief's call for a Global Partnership for Food.

And he stressed the need to boost global food security through for greater coherence in trade, environmental, monetary, fiscal and legal policies.

Ripert said all stakeholders, international institutions, farm groups, enterprises, civil society, institutional investors and the banking sector, should be associated to this effort.

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UN Warns Global Food Crisis Will Push 100m People Into Poverty

from All Africa

BuaNews (Tshwane)

By Modern Bweema
Sharm-El-Sheikh

The United Nations (UN) has warned that the current global food crisis, compounded by a hike in fuel prices and climate change, will push more than 100 million people into poverty.

United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose-Migiro said on Monday at the official opening of the 11th AU Heads of State and Government Summit that this development risked reversing the positive steps made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Dr Migiro, however, noted that many African countries had made tremendous progress towards the achievement of the MDGs.

She said well designed and properly financed programmes had helped reduce child mortality, improve water and sanitation and expanded primary education in some African countries.

"There are numerous other examples that prove that the ambitious MDGs can be achieved.

"The careful plans crafted by African governments need to be backed by adequate and predicable donor financing," Dr Migiro said.

She, however, noted that donors had not yet delivered on their pledges made three years ago at the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most developed nations at Gleneagles, Scotland, to support African countries meet the MDGs.

She said inadequate donor financing and other constraints had made it difficult for African countries to reach some of the MDGs.

Support for Africa was not only a moral imperative but was also critical for global peace and security, she added.

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UN to press G8 on food crisis, climate change, poverty

from the AFP via Google

UNITED NATIONS, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he would press Group of Eight (G8) leaders at their summit in Japan next month to tackle the world food crisis, climate change and the flagging fight against global poverty.

On the eve of his departure on a two-week, three-nation Asian tour, the secretary general said the July 7-9 summit in the northern Japanese resort town of Toyako must face the three inter-related crises which demand "our immediate action."

He said that before departing, he would write to each of the G8 leaders to lay out his concerns about the global food crisis, the need "to act now" on climate change if a deal to cut greenhouse gases is to be reached by the end of next year, and the emergency of development.

"If ever there were a time to act, together as one, it is now," he told a press conference.

Ban said he would appeal to world leaders in Toyako "to deliver on the measures agreed to in Rome earlier this month to end the current food crisis and prevent a recurrence".

These measures include a commitment by nations to remove export restrictions and levies on food commodities and cut agricultural subsidies, particularly in developed countries.

Ban said he would also propose tripling the proportion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from wealthy nations to developing countries for farm production and rural development.

"To overcome this crisis, we need nothing less than a second, green revolution," he said.

And noting that the international community was falling behind in its goal of achieving the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, he said: "If we are to deliver on this promised future, we must take steps today."

On climate change, the UN chief urged stepped-up bargaining to reach a new, historic deal in Copenhagen next year.

The treaty due to be hammered out in the Danish capital in December 2009 is meant to provide an action plan after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions expire at the end of 2012.

The United States, which snubbed Kyoto, and developing nations, which have no obligations under it, agreed at a conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate to craft the next treaty.

Ban said he would press the G8 leaders to agree "short- and medium-term targets" for reducing greenhouse gases.

He added that a fully funded and operational adaptation fund to help the world's most vulnerable nations cope with global warming must be in place by the end of this year.

The UN chief also warned that the combined impact of climate change and of the global food crisis were slowing and in some cases reversing progress made towards achieving the MDGs.

"In Hokkaido (the G8 summit) we must deliver on our commitments," he said.

"I will also seek increased funding for specific programs relating to infant and maternal health, community health projects and disease control, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases."

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UN says toxic waste exports on the rise

from The Miami Herald

By MICHAEL CASEY
Many poor countries accept toxic waste from abroad, such as old computers, rusted ships and pesticides, in a shortsighted bid to lift themselves out of poverty, despite the dangers to human health and the environment, a U.N. rights official said Thursday.

Okechukwu Ibeanu, a special rapporteur of the Human Rights Council, also told delegates discussing a convention on moving hazardous waste that rich nations must do their part to help developing countries build sustainable and environmentally sound economies.

"Many developing countries, despite sometimes knowing the dangers of the waste, continue to accept hazardous products and toxic waste due to poverty and the quest for development," Ibeanu said.

"Is it worth the short term monetary gain? Is it worth people falling sick ... precious water sources contaminated permanently?" he asked. "I believe that we need to think of a better solution to generate income and development."

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was created in 1989 as a response to "toxic ships" attempting to offload their cargo in poor nations. With measures allowing countries to ban imports and requiring exporters to gain consent before sending toxic materials abroad, it was seen as the best hope to end the mountains of waste that were reaching poor countries.

But almost two decades later, critics including environmentalists and African nations contend the accord has failed to stem the flow of toxic waste and keep pace with a rapidly changing trade that is increasing global in nature. They contend that insufficient funds, widespread corruption and the absence of the United States as a participant have undermined the pact.

Delegates over the next two days are expected to put forth a number of proposals to strengthen the convention, including a long-standing call to ban the export of hazardous waste, as well as proposals to factor environmental recycling into the mix. Others want to boost funding to the convention's 14 regional centers that provide technical support and training to poor nations.

They also will discuss measures aimed at better regulating the recycling of contaminated old ships, mostly in South Asia, as well as industry-supported guidelines on recycling old phones and computers.

Achim Steiner, executive director for the U.N. Environment Program, acknowledged that the convention has lagged behind the rapidly changing nature of toxic waste. He said the biggest challenge was finding a way to consume waste - the estimated 20 million to 50 million tons of televisions, cell phones, computers and home appliances that are sent to poor nations for recycling.

He said the international community was making progress, noting his agency was drawing up a waste strategy and had recently launched a project to implement a hazardous waste management plan for Abidjan, where a toxic spill in 2006 killed 10 people and sickened tens of thousands.

He also said developed nations had started programs to buy back outdated equipment, and that pressure from Greenpeace and other environmental groups had prompted major electronics and phone companies to start designing more environmentally friendly products.

But many delegates from the developing world want the Basel Convention to go further, arguing the only way to end the trade in toxic waste is with an all-out export ban on such materials.

An amendment calling for a ban was first proposed in 1995, but not enough of the convention's 170 member countries have ratified it.

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Petty corruption contributing to poverty in Asia

from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

By Corinne Podger for Radio Australia

Posted 2 hours 33 minutes ago

A major United Nations report says so called petty corruption is draining economic growth across Asia, and affecting people's access to basic services such as health and education.

It says this then perpetuates regional poverty.

The UN Development Program's report was launched in the Indonesian capital Jakarta by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Program spokesman Anuradha Rajivan has told Radio Australia's Asia Pacific program the report highlights corruption in daily life is just as serious as large scale corruption.

"Probably a better way to call it would be retail corruption, to give the impression of how widespread it can be, how persistent it can be and how it can affect daily lives of people," she said.

Ms Rajivan says this type of corruption cannot be measured in dollar terms but it can affect many people.

"There are dollar estimates, but they completely miss out on other dimensions of corruption, for example, the number of people that are affected," she said.

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World Bank, UN ask for more food aid for Africa

from Gulf Live

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA

YOKOHAMA, Japan - African leaders and international aid agencies implored developed nations Thursday to do more to help countries reeling from soaring food prices.

Wealthy economies should keep providing emergency aid to the most-affected areas, but also steer funds to long-term projects in research and technology that would unlock Africa's "vast untapped agricultural potential," they said in a joint statement released at an African development conference hosted by Japan.

High oil prices, surging demand, flawed trade policies, extreme weather, growth in biofuel production and speculation have inflated food prices worldwide, trigging protests from Africa to Asia and raising fears of widespread malnutrition and economic instability.

"The record high prices of food and fuel are a painful pinch for those all over the world, but for those living on less than a dollar a day, it's devastating," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program. "By far, the region to be hit hardest by this is Africa."

The statement was issued by four groups — the WFP, the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Food and Agriculture Organization — who met earlier Thursday with African heads of state to reiterate their commitment.

World leaders will gather for a UN conference next week in Rome to discuss the food crisis, and the heads of the Group of Eight nations will meet in northern Japan in July. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has pledged to highlight the issue during the G-8 Summit.

Participants at this week's Tokyo International Conference on African Development, or TICAD, have warned that the crisis could make it even harder for the continent to work toward the Millennium Development Goals — a set of eight objectives for poverty reduction, education, health, gender equality and the environment that United Nations member states agreed to try to achieve by 2015.

"Africa's very impressive economic progress of the last eight years must not be derailed by high food prices," the statement said.

U2 lead singer and activist Bono, who has parlayed his fame to effectively campaign for debt relief in Africa, said in a speech to African and Japanese leaders Thursday afternoon that food security is inextricably linked with other development issues.

"I'm the least qualified to talk about (food), but it might be the most important thing that we're all talking about today," he said. "This is an area where the environment meets the re-greening of Africa meets good development to fight extreme poverty."

In addition to seeking more funding, the World Bank urged governments of advanced economies to not impose export restrictions or tariffs on food that could be funneled to relief agencies or countries facing severe food shortages.

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, speaking on the sidelines of TICAD, said taxes and bans that have been enacted by a number of countries recently were "exacerbating the problem."

Zoellick later met with Fukuda, who as president of the G8 vowed to help strengthen international response to the food crisis. Japan so far has pledged $100 million in emergency food aid and announced Tuesday that it would double its bilateral aid to Africa by 2012.

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UN summit to prevent mass starvation

from the Telephraph

World leaders will meet in Rome next week to discuss ways of preventing mass starvation and instability because of soaring food prices.

The summit, which is to be hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, is expected to hear arguments for the establishment of a global food fund and see pledges of food aid from wealthy countries to poor nations to ward off the food shortages.

Leader will also discuss the increased production of biofuels, which is blamed for a reduction in arable land available for food production, as farmers turn to growing crops for fuel. New international guidelines on biofuel production are expected to be discussed.

Britain is expected to argue for aid in the form of fertilisers and seeds to be distributed in time for planting for next season.

"Failure to reach a deal would hit the poorest hard. Literally tens of millions of people will be denied a chance to break out of poverty," Prime Minister Gordon Brown reportedly said last night.

The summit comes as food shortages and send the cost of food soaring sparking unrest in nations such as Haiti, Cameroon, Niger and Egypt, where riots have broken out. Food shortages and the related political instability are seen by some as a more pressing long-term challenges than terrorism.

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Food crisis has changed game on beating poverty: U.N.

from Reuters

By Robin Pomeroy

ROME - World leaders must radically change their strategy toward beating poverty now that hunger can no longer be staunched by cheap food, the head of the United Nations farm aid agency said.

At a food summit in Rome next week, the international community must recognize that poverty challenges have changed and agree to reverse years of neglecting poor farmers, said the head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

"They (governments and donors) have taken cheap, affordable food on the international market for granted. We no longer can do that and we have to realize it's a profound structural problem," IFAD President Lennart Bage said in an interview late on Monday.

Initially called to address the effects of climate change on food security, vast food price hikes that continued well into this year have shifted the summit's focus to what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a "global crisis".

Although not a donors' conference, world leaders are due to agree a statement on how to address food shortages and a task-force set up by Ban will issue an action plan.

Bage said a period of global abundance, which ran for 25 years from the early 1980s, had made some countries complacent.

"Many African leaders have said to me: 'Why should we use scarce resources for agriculture when there is abundant and cheap food available on the international market'.

"We were lulled into complacency that there's abundant and affordable food available -- that's not longer the case."

A range of factors have contributed to the price surges, including poor harvests in some exporting countries, record low stocks and rising oil prices driving up costs.

But the fundamental challenges of a growing population and rising demand for a richer diet in places such as India and China will not go away, Bage said.

"Never in any period in human history have so many people moved out of poverty as in the last 20 years.

"That's a good thing but we need to see to it that it's workable in an environmentally sustainable way. We need to re-engage in the very basis of human existence -- namely food."

IFAD runs projects aimed at giving long-term help to small farmers and is involved in countries worst affected by the food crisis, such as Haiti.

People died in the Caribbean nation in food riots that toppled the government in April and future harvests are threatened as people have had to eat seeds meant for planting.

Bage said success stories such as Vietnam, which has helped small farmers to the extent that the country is now a significant exporter of some commodities, such as rice and coffee, showed aiding farmers could work.

Such projects meant the world would be able to feed a population expected to grow by 50 percent by 2050 to 9 billion.

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UN meeting calls for urgent food price action

from Reuters Africa

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A food crisis sparked by rising prices risks derailing global efforts to reduce poverty and international action is urgently needed, world leaders and experts told a high-level U.N. meeting on Tuesday.

"Today 25,000 people will die because they did not get enough to eat," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a video message to a special meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council on the global food crisis.

Brown pledged to champion the cause of fighting poverty and hunger at an international level, including among the G8 group of industrialized nations that are the main donor countries.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said that even before the crisis, 830 million people faced acute food shortages, and rising food prices would push another 100 million people or more into deep poverty.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last month he was creating a high-level task force to address the food crisis.

Tuesday's meeting was part of that effort to coordinate policies and propose ideas ahead of a food summit in Rome next month.

Migiro said the task force would aim to find ways to meet emergency needs, including a U.N. World Food Program call for an extra $755 million to fund the rising costs of its current operations.

Speakers at the meeting said crucial to overcoming the long-term causes of the crisis is assistance for developing countries to boost local food production by helping small-scale farmers.

Economist and development campaigner Jeffrey Sachs said rich countries held the key to achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, a set of pledges adopted by U.N. member states to sharply reduce poverty and hunger by 2015.

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Food-crisis anger turns on UN bodies

from The Asia Times Online

By Thalif Deen

NEW YORK - As the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) readies for a summit of world leaders next month, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon on Monday defended the Rome-based UN agency, which has come under fire for its failure to help meet the growing challenges of hunger worldwide.

The harshest attack came last week from Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who described the FAO as a "bottomless pit of money, largely spent on its own functioning, with very little effective operations on the ground".

Asked to respond, Ban told reporters on Monday: "In view of the gravity and seriousness of the situation, I can understand and sympathize with the frustrations of many African leaders, including President Wade of Senegal.

"But I would like to underscore that since its founding in 1945, the FAO has been leading the international community's efforts to help promote the production and productivity [of food] and provide necessary humanitarian assistance to many people affected by food shortages."

Wade said the FAO, headed by Jacques Diouf of Senegal, should be merged with another Rome-based UN agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), to establish a single mega agriculture body. Some of the functions of the two UN agencies overlap. If such a body is created, he said, it should be located in Africa, not in a Western capital.

Wade was also critical of the extravagance of UN agencies and humanitarian non-governmental organizations. He said they "will use [aid money] on all sort of tricks - administration, trips and costs of luxury hotels for so-called experts, instead of on concrete actions on the ground."

Several factors are responsible for the food crisis, including the shortcomings of international organizations such as the FAO and other UN agencies, all of which failed to anticipate the gravity of the current disaster. The World Bank, a sister institution of the United Nations, also has to share some of the blame for the current crisis because of declining funds for agricultural research over the years.

Asked about the under-sourcing for research, World Bank president Robert Zoellick admitted his institution's failure but also singled out the shortcomings of governments.

"Yes, you know the international community goes through various phases of things," he told reporters in Bern last week. "The World Bank, and frankly the governments themselves, invested less in agriculture. We have a country-system based approach, where the countries are our clients and they decide where they focus it. So, as we ramped up things for HIV/AIDS and malaria and other projects, there was clearly an underinvestment in agriculture.

"I don't think it's really helpful to point fingers at this responsibility, that responsibility. The key question is, having recognized the need, and it's one that I focused on shortly after taking over the Bank, how do we try to deal with it at these various stages."

The FAO hosted the first major World Conference on Food in Rome in 1974, which proclaimed that "every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop their physical and mental faculties."

The goals of the conference included the eradication of hunger, the need for food security and the reduction of malnutrition "within a decade". But the goals were never reached.

In November 1996, the FAO hosted another five-day World Food Summit, which adopted a Rome Declaration on World Food Security and a Plan of Action to eradicate or minimize global hunger.

The current crisis, not surprisingly, has triggered a third Food Summit, also in Rome from June 3-5, where another elaborate plan is due to be unveiled by heads of state and governments.

Still, nearly 34 years after the first FAO conference, and dozens of UN resolutions and voluminous reports later, the developing world is facing another global food shortage, along with skyrocketing prices.

The price of rice alone, a staple in many Asian countries, rose to US$980 per tonne last week compared with $460 in March.

Speaking at the launch of the annual FAO report in October 2006, Diouf said "promises are no substitute for food". Calling on world leaders to honor their pledges, he said the 1996 World Food Summit promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015.

Still, there were more hungry people in the developing countries, around 820 million today, than there were in 1996. Far from decreasing, the number of hungry people in the world is currently increasing at the rate of four million a year, Diouf said. The World Bank has estimated that already some 100 million people may have been pushed into poverty as a result of high prices.

At a meeting of 26 heads of UN agencies in Bern last week, the secretary-general identified multiple causes for the current food crisis, including escalating energy prices; lack of investment in agriculture over the past years; increasing demand for food; trade-distorting subsidies; and recurrent bad weather.

"This crisis has multiple effects, with its most serious impact on the most vulnerable in the poorest countries," Ban warned.

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UN plans to establish food crisis task force

from CTV
CTV.ca News Staff

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Tuesday that he will lead a task force to deal with the global food crisis.

The first priority is finding US$755 million to meet the funding shortfall for the World Food Programme, he said Tuesday in Bern, Switzerland.

"We anticipate that additional funding will be required," he said.

However, the task force wants to look beyond just providing emergency aid for crises, he said. For example, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has established a US$1.7-billion plan to give seeds to farmers in the world's poorest countries.


The price of food staples has shot up around the world. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the development has left about 100 million more people in poverty in the past two years.

"This is not a natural disaster," he said.

So far, $475 million has been pledged in emergency relief, but Zoellick said that that more will be needed. "This crisis isn't over once the emergency needs are met," he said.

Jennifer Parmalee, a WPF official in Washington, told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday that her agency will be looking mainly to traditional donors, including Canada, "which was our third-largest donor last year."

The WPF's cost of obtaining food has gone up by 55 per cent just in the last nine months, she said, adding the world humanitarian community considers this the worst food crisis in 40 years.

Helping Afghanistan

World Food Programme officials inspected an emergency food distribution centre in Afghanistan and met with Afghan leaders on Tuesday. The WPF calls Afghanistan one of the countries in Asia most vulnerable to rising food prices.

In March, the WFP began a $77-million program to reduce suffering among members of high-risk groups:

* Households headed by women;
* Families with nine or more children;
* Disabled male heads of families; and
* Those internally displaced by the country's violence

The program helps 152,000 people in Kandahar province, where Canada's troops operate, and 317,000 across southern Afghanistan.

However, a total of 717,000 people receive some degree of food help in Kandahar, through initiatives such as food-at-school or food-at-work programs.

About one million Afghans live in Kandahar province.

Wheat is a staple in the area. In recent weeks, the price had doubled or even tripled, creating what the WFP calls "food insecurity," reported CTV's Paul Workman.

That essentially means children going hungry, he said.

"They've also noticed that prices have also started dropping -- by about 30 per cent -- since this program was initiated," Workman said by e-mail.

The WPF's Tony Bambury said Tuesday in Kandahar that Canada provided $25 million to his agency late last year and has donated $10 million to the emergency appeal, making it one of the larger donors.

Bambury worried what might happen when the program runs out in June.

Roots of the global crisis

On Sunday, the World Food Programme's John Powell told CTV's Question Period that skyrocketing food prices hurt poor nations the hardest.

"In Canada, Australia or here in Europe, typically, a family will spend 10 to 20 percent of their income on food," he said.

"If you're a poor person in a developing country, we're talking about 60 to 80 percent of your income being spent on food. That's a huge difference and a hugely difficult position that these people find themselves in."

To pay for food, people do the following, he said:

* Take their children out of school;
* Skip medical care;
* Cut back to two from three meals per day; and
* Shift to less nutritious food

These steps are particularly hard on the very youngest poor children in these developing nations, Powell said.

"It tips these people already on the razor's edge of survival right into the abyss," Parmalee said.

A variety of factors has been blamed for the crisis:

* Speculation by investors trading in food commodities;
* Unpredictable weather and climate change;
* Rising oil prices; and
* Growing demand from the increasingly affluent middle classes of China and India

The crisis has sparked violent protests in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

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UN Holds Food Crisis Talks in Switzerland

from the Voice of America

By Lisa Schlein

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is heading emergency talks aimed at tackling the growing crisis caused by soaring food prices around the world. Participating in this two-day high-powered meeting in the Swiss capital, Bern, are the President of the World Bank, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and the Heads of nearly 30 United Nations aid agencies. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon says the steeply rising price of food has developed into a global crisis. He says the U.N.-sponsored meeting in Bern must find solutions to a problem that is increasing poverty, hunger and instability in the world.

The United Nations estimates about 100 million of the world's poorest people cannot afford to buy food. Because of the spiraling costs, the World Food Program says its original budget for this year is not enough to feed all the hungry. It is appealing for an additional three quarters of $1 billion to meet the extra expenses.

The U.N. refugee agency says millions of refugees and internally displaced people will be particularly hard hit by skyrocketing food prices. Spokesman, Ron Redmond, says most of these people are totally dependent on food donations from the international community.

"This kind of dramatic price increases can also trigger instability, particularly in poor countries and this is of great concern to UNHCR as well, because we are already seeing this happening in several countries," said Redmond. "Of course, the possibility could be eventual increased displacement should it trigger further conflict and instability in those countries."

The Food and Agriculture Organization warns sharp rises in cereal prices have left 37 poor countries in an emergency situation. This has sparked food riots in many countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Senegal.

The meeting in Bern will also address the impact of climate change on food production and explore ways to help poor countries adapt to these changes. The growing controversy over bio-fuels is also on the agenda.

Critics argue that the cultivation of crops for bio-fuels is taking good land away from food production and causing prices to rise. Some people are calling for a moratorium on the production of bio-fuels.

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Food crisis adds to global security worries: UN

from the National Post

ACCRA -- Higher food prices risk wiping out progress towards reducing poverty and, if allowed to escalate, could hurt global growth and security, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.

Opening a UN trade and development conference in Ghana, Mr. Ban pledged to use the full force of the world body he heads to tackle the price rises, which threaten to increase hunger and poverty and have already sparked food riots in Asia and Africa.

"I will immediately establish a high-powered task force comprised of eminent experts and leading authorities to address this issue," Mr. Ban said, after a group of the world's 49 least developed countries called on Saturday for such a team.

The UN head warned the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting that huge increases in prices of staple foods such as cereals since last year could erase progress made towards goals set by the U.N. of halving world poverty by 2015.

"The problem of global food prices could mean seven lost years ... for the Millennium Development Goals," he said. "We risk being set back to square one."

Steps by several countries to ban exports of rice and wheat or introduce incentives for food imports also threatened to distort international trade and aggravate shortages, Mr. Ban said.

"If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others ... and become a multi-dimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," he told the conference.

Meanwhile, the United Nations' food envoy told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday global food price rises are leading to "silent mass murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world.

Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, an Austrian newspaper told Kurier am Sonntag that growth in biofuels, speculation on commodities markets and European Union export subsidies mean the West is responsible for mass starvation in poorer countries.

Mr. Ziegler said he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who think that hunger is down to fate.

"Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time -- just as (Karl) Marx thought. It is rather that a murder is behind every victim. This is silent mass murder," he said in an interview.

Mr. Ziegler blamed globalization for "monopolising the riches of the earth" and said multinationals were responsible for a type of "structural violence."

"And we have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this," he said.

Mr. Ziegler said he believed that one day starving people could rise up against their persecutors. "It's just as possible as the French Revolution was," he said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has warned that rising food prices could push at least 100 million people in low-income countries into poverty.

West African countries such as Ghana have been among the worst affected by rising food prices caused by factors including poor harvests, record fuel prices, growing demand and tight international supplies. Countries throughout the region, from Mauritania to Cameroon, have witnessed food riots.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor expressed hope the conference would allow developing countries to strengthen economic cooperation and trade, and increase pressure on rich countries to end agricultural subsidies which worsened poverty in Africa.

"Ghana and other African countries are subject to the vagaries of global markets, which leave them with no control over the prices of their own commodities," he said, giving China and India as examples of developing countries that had learned how to benefit from trade and globalization.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva joined both Ban and Kufuor in appealing to all countries to wrap up negotiations for a global trade pact intended to boost the world economy and promote development.

Known as the Doha Round, the negotiations launched in 2001 have stalled and missed past deadlines but momentum has built up in the past two months.

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Farm aid and fair trade key to food crisis: U.N.

from Reuters

By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA (Reuters) - Increased aid for agriculture and the abolition of rich-nation subsidies are key to finding a long-term solution to rising world food prices, the head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said on Saturday.

A doubling of the price of major cereals on international markets since mid-2007 has sharply increased the risk of hunger and poverty in developing countries, and has already sparked food riots in parts of Asia and Africa.

UNCTAD boss Supachai Panitchpakdi said a disproportionate amount of aid had been spent on governance initiatives in the developing world in recent decades while agriculture had been neglected, leaving some poor countries which were once net food exporters reliant on expensive imports.

"We will be jumping from one crisis to another unless the international community can address the major issue of a restructuring of the allocation of international aid," he told a news conference on the eve of an UNCTAD summit in Ghana.

Panitchpakdi said that between 2003 and 2005, $1.3 billion of development aid was spent on governance initiatives in the world's poorest countries, compared with just $12 million on agricultural development, which he described as "more than disproportionate".

This decade will be the first in recorded history in which more people in the economically active population of the least developed nations will seek work outside the agricultural sector than within it, exacerbating the problem, he said.

"People are moving out of agriculture into urban areas, most of them cannot find work. We have less support coming out of the agricultural population and more mouths to be fed," he said.

"The productivity gap has been increasing and at the moment there is no end in sight."

GLOBAL TRADE, FUTURES MARKETS

While urgent action was needed to provide food aid to pockets of the world where there were shortages, a longer-term solution needed to take into account that there are also areas of food surplus around the globe, Panitchpakdi said.

The former World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief said finding agreement at the delicately poised WTO agriculture negotiations and eliminating rich-nation subsidies was a vital part of addressing those inconsistencies.

"We need to be able to move towards, as early as possible, a conclusion of the Doha development agenda, particularly in the area of agriculture," he said.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has said the WTO could tackle the systematic distortions to the international market for food arising from tariffs and subsidies, but could do nothing to fix the immediate crisis.

"Much has been said that the elimination of distortions might result in some increases in food prices," Panitchpakdi said.

"But the net effect will be that the elimination of the subsidies and agricultural distortions would afford for the first time the opportunities for farmers in poor countries to be able to look forward to getting realistic prices so that they can go on with the expansion of their production."

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Food costs endanger U.N. poverty efforts

from the Los Angeles Times

The secretary-general pledges to tackle the global issue, starting with a task force.
From Reuters

ACCRA, GHANA — Higher food prices risk wiping out progress toward reducing poverty and, if allowed to escalate, could hurt global growth and security, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday.

Opening a United Nations trade and development conference here, Ban pledged to use the full force of the world body he heads to tackle the price increases, which have already sparked riots in Asia, Africa and Haiti.

"I will immediately establish a high-powered task force comprised of eminent experts and leading authorities to address this issue," Ban said Sunday, a day after a group of the world's 49 least-developed countries called for such a team.

He warned the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development meeting that huge increases in prices of staples such as cereals since last year could erase progress made toward goals set by the U.N. of halving global poverty by 2015.

"The problem of global food prices could mean seven lost years . . . for the Millennium Development Goals," he said. "We risk being set back to square one."

Steps by several countries to ban exports of rice and wheat or introduce incentives for food imports also threatened to distort international trade and aggravate shortages, Ban said.

"If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," he said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has warned that rising food prices could push at least 100 million people in low-income countries into poverty.

West African countries such as Ghana have been among the worst affected by rising food prices caused by factors such as poor harvests, record fuel prices, growing demand and tight international supplies. Countries throughout the region, from Mauritania to Cameroon, have witnessed food riots.

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