Why has the Global Food Crisis reached Emergency Proportions?
London, UK - 14th April 2008, 23:04 GMT
Dear ATCA Colleagues
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors
are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral.
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The mounting global food crisis pushed aside fears of a protracted
recession and systemic risk in the financial sector to become the top priority
for the world's economic leaders gathered in Washington, DC. Ministers representing
185 countries agreed over the weekend that soaring food prices threaten
global calamity and pledged to co-operate on a solution to save the world's
poorest people from starvation. However, that solution remains elusive.
The finance ministers and central bank governors who oversee the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank left Washington yesterday without a definitive
response to agricultural prices that have surged 48 per cent since early
2007, sparking a wave of hoarding, speculation and riots throughout the
developing world.
Food security has become a major concern in recent weeks as supplies of
basic commodities have dwindled in the face of soaring demand, triggering
riots and outbreaks of violence from Haiti to Indonesia. "The rapidly
escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency
proportions," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a joint
meeting in New York of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the
Bretton Woods institutions, the WTO and the UN Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD). "We need not only short-term emergency measures to meet urgent
critical needs and avert starvation in many regions across the world, but
also a significant increase in long-term productivity in food grain production...
the international community will also need to take urgent and concerted
action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications
of this growing crisis," Ban said.
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