By Alina Haddad
27 May 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The United Nations held a special session on the global food crisis last week, initiated by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In a meeting that lasted three days longer than scheduled, UN affiliates, member states, political leaders, NGO representatives and experts gathered to assess the current situation and propose solutions to increasing global food insecurity.
Food prices are at near record levels. The food crisis now affects 850 million people, and kills 25,000 a day. Over that past year, the price of rice has increased 74 percent, and the price of wheat has skyrocketed to 130 percent of its original cost. People who once ate two meals a day can now afford to eat only one. The food crisis is driving millions of people into poverty. Everywhere, families are cutting back. They are forced to limit their spending on education and health in order to minimally feed themselves.
England’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, called on member states to respond with one voice. “The world needs international institutions fit for purpose to deal with the challenge of the 21st century. The world needs to build consensus,” he said, speaking by video link.
ECOSOC President Léo Mérorès stated the UN’s concern and response to the food crisis. “ECOSOC, as the main body for coordination of economic and social issues in the United Nations system, stands committed to making its contribution,” he said.
Causes of the food crisis were described as numerous and “complex” by speakers at the ECOSOC conference. Dr. Joachim von Braun, Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), described the causes in an interview with MediaGlobal. “The main reasons that led to the food crisis are neglect of agriculture worldwide, including by many Least Developed Countries, and the high growth in demand is due to high economic growth. High oil prices add to the cost of agriculture and bad weather in some countries have triggered the crisis,” he said, adding, “The current crisis was avoidable.”
According to Mérorès, the crisis could not have come at a worse time for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Their economic gains are already threatened by globalization. “The global food crisis not only affects the health and survival of millions around the world—it also threatens the political and economic stability of governments in those areas where hunger and malnutrition are most acute,” Mérorès said.
Rising food prices are putting an upward pressure on worldwide inflation. This hurts food-importing low-income countries the most. Inflationary pressures are causing the economies of the LDCs to slow down, complicating their macroeconomic management.
“This is a new global environment that we are living in. It is a very crowded planet in which the marginalized can find themselves being pushed off the planet, off the cliff, and where we’re going to have to mobilize the best of our resources, the best of our technologies, and the best of our human spirit to find ourselves through this successfully,” said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The food crisis has pushed basic costs of living past the means of the poor in the Least Developed Countries, where many people live on one dollar a day or less, and many are small farmers. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in her remarks that Djibril Yipene Bassolet, foreign minister of Burkina Faso, “spoke of the food crisis as a greater threat, by far, than terrorism.”
According to Bassolet, in whose country half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, “it makes people doubt their dignity as men.”
“If now addressed swiftly it can be mitigated. But not with a few appeals and not only with emergency aid, which is certainly needed now. Large investments are needed to make the poor countries and their poor people resilient against the current and future food crises. That is investment in agriculture growth in the small farm sector of developing countries and improved nutrition and social protection,” von Braun, the IFPRI Director-General, told MediaGlobal.
The food crisis is diminishing health, education, social stability, and governance, and affecting the progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals. As calculated by the World Bank, the crisis will drive 100 million people or more into deep poverty. This signifies seven years lost in the fight against global poverty and hunger.