Hellenic Forums Omogenia - YASOU - Hellenism: Global Food & Energy Crisis

World Bank calls for food crisis action
April 14, 2008

The World Bank has called for the international community to beef up its response to soaring food prices that have led to starvation and are threatening political stability in the developing world.

Many ministers gathered for the World Bank's annual spring meeting also raised concerns over the increased use of bio-fuels, which share much of the blame for the lack of food supplies, as an alternative energy source.

A joint statement by the ministers urged countries to meet a $US500 million ($536.88 million) aid shortfall at the World Food Program to help the world's poorest regions, where hundreds of thousands are threatened with starvation.

Global food prices have jumped 83 per cent over the last three years, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that the crisis had already toppled a government in Haiti and could push ever more people into poverty.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths," Mr Zoelick said. "It is as stark as that."

Many countries put the blame for the food crisis squarely on the increased production of certain bio-fuels that use food crops as an alternative energy source.

The United States, Europe and other regions have boosted their production of bio-fuels in recent years to reduce their dependence on imported oil and cut greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram called on industrial nations to cut off all subsidies for such bio-fuel production.

"In a world where there is hunger and poverty, there is no policy justification for diverting food crops towards bio-fuels ," Mr Chidambaram said. "Converting food into fuel is neither good policy for the poor nor for the environment."

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the World Bank's sister-lender the International Monetary Fund, acknowledged the impact of bio-fuels was a serious worry for many developing countries, and said that some ministers had labelled their production a "crisis of humanity" in informal talks.

"It shows how strong this concern is," Mr Strauss-Kahn said in a press briefing with Mr Zoelick after the bank's Development Committee meeting.

Mr Strauss-Kahn also warned that the food crisis threatened to derail all progress made in reducing poverty in Africa and other regions.

"All what has been done can be destroyed very rapidly" by rising food prices, he said.

Zoellick warned last week that the food crisis could set back poverty reduction in the world's poorest nations by seven years.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling said that a key element of Sunday's meeting involved how to "mitigate the negative impact of high commodity prices on the poor in particular."

He called for a "fully coordinated (international) response to the market turbulence and commodity prices."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week sent a letter to his Japanese counterpart urging that the food crisis be a central focus of the Group of Eight industrial nations summit in July, which will be hosted by Japan.

Hundreds of thousands of people are facing starvation, and 33 countries are threatened with social unrest, the World Bank said this week.

The World Bank on Saturday promised a $US10-million grant to subsidise food in Haiti, where a week of riots led to the sacking of the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.

Nigerian Finance Minister Shamsuddeen Usman called on the World Bank and international community to "urgently support" efforts to meet the food needs of the most vulnerable people, the majority of whom are in Africa.

>> http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.n...VJ?OpenDocument

World Bank calls for urgent action on food prices
April 14, 2008

Top finance officials from around the globe have called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless the cost of basic staples is contained.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the end of a meeting of the IMF and World Bank's Development Committee.

Mr Zoellick and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said the issue of skyrocketing food prices needs to be front and centre at the highest political levels.

While Mr Brown said he would raise it at an upcoming meeting of the Group of Eight powerful nations, Mr Zoellick said that would be too late. "Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait," he told a news conference.

Concerns about food costs took on new urgency as senators in Haiti ousted the prime minister after a week of food-related rioting in which at least five people died. There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso in Africa, and in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In just two months, rice prices have shot up around 75%, closing in on historic highs. Meanwhile, the cost of wheat has climbed by 120% over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.

The problem is most worrying in developing countries where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy. It threatens to sharply increase malnutrition and hunger, while reversing progress in reducing poverty and debt burdens among the poorest nations.

The World Bank has warned that food prices will remain elevated this year and next, and likely stay above 2004 levels through 2015.

One of the main factors behind the surge in prices is the increased use of crops for biofuels as an alternative energy source. Almost all of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to biofuels in the United States.

Other factors that have contributed to the rise are the growth in demand in Asia and droughts in food-producing nations like Australia.

Climate change also received heightened attention at Sunday's meeting - one of the few times that finance and development ministers have been drawn into the discussions.

The ministers called on the World Bank to mobilise financing to help the poor deal with the effects of global warming.

In Bali in December, countries agreed on a road map for two years of talks aimed at securing a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012.

Mr Zoellick on Sunday helped convene a meeting he called a "Bali Breakfast" that brought developing countries together to discuss ways to tackle climate change. He said he hoped it would become a regular event.

"The drive to address climate change won't work if it's seen as a rich man's club," Mr Zoellick said.

Reuters
>> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/04/14/1208025043970.html

--------------------------------------------

April 24, 2008

The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we'll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally.

The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and '06. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand has hit a limited supply, with the poor taking the hardest blow.

>> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734834,00.html

--------------------
Βρήκες ακατάλληλη στιγμή να με ανταμώσεις. Eγώ δεν έχω τίποτα, πάλι σου το θυμίζω. Mια καρδια μου έμεινε ♥ παρ’την, σου την χαρίζω. Δεν έχω όνειρο, ούτε φτερά για να πετάξω ...

Post Extras