The Hindu Business Line : UN bid to defuse world food crisis

Soaring food and commodity prices have already resulted in outbreaks of violence in many poor and food-starved countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean; and the adoption of measures by the world community to defuse the alarming crisis brooks no delay.

The crisis has pushed an estimated 100 million people or more into deep poverty, on top of the 850 million already facing acute shortages of basic food needs. It is doubtful, though, whether the High-Level Conference being held in Rome on June 3-5 at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is the best way of going about it.

For one thing, the unwieldy gathering of Heads of State and Government, Ministers of FAO’s member-countries, as well as heads of UN agencies and select inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations will hardly be conducive to resolving the thorny issues in any business-like manner.

For another, the agenda placed before the participants is an incongruous jumble, including in its cluttered sweep not only the causes and consequences of high food prices, but also climate change, bio-energy and trans-boundary pests and diseases, not forgetting relevant aquatic species.

It is inexplicable why, in a Conference on food security, climate change should come in for such an elaborate examination with reference to biodiversity, fisheries and aquaculture, water resources, disaster risk management, gender-sensitive adaptation and overall mitigation.

The Conference will also take stock of global bio-energy policies and their nature and rationale. Just note the bewildering litany of topics to be taken up under this head:

Integration and coherence of policies between national and global levels and between public and private sectors;

a common methodology for life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions;

internationally agreed standards for addressing the global environmental impacts of bio-energy production;

guidelines on the estimation and reporting of GHGs, World Trade Organization rules, and avoidance of trade barriers;

policies for linking food and bio-fuel production;

expansion of the knowledge base regarding issues of certification, compliance and the cost of their application;

considering bio-fuels in the context of the total energy mix;

and the integration of local, regional or international policies that affect the agricultural sector and the rural economy.

Ringing Declaration

Long before the Conference was scheduled to meet, an Informal Open-Ended Contact Group held 10 meetings to produce a draft Declaration which, expectedly, is a smorgasbord of generalities with no precise pointers for specific lines of remedial action.

The outcome is highly predictable: Every participant will read out the prepared speech he has brought with him, and go home after passing the ringing Declaration prepared well in advance of the Conference purportedly containing ‘strategies and responses’ but, in essence, traversing ground already covered in numerous previous conclaves of like nature!

This is the problem with international organisations. Their knee-jerk reflex at sighting a problem is to spend millions of dollars on setting up umpteen task forces and expert groups and on hosting a vast assemblage of high-profile plenipotentiaries, whose presence is largely ceremonial.

The World Bank Group has, by contrast, come out with a simple and practicable ‘New Deal’, envisaging safety nets such as school feeding, food for work, and conditional cash transfers; increased agricultural production; a better monitoring of the impact of production of bio-fuels; and action on the trade front to reduce distorting subsidies and trade barriers.

It has also created a $1.2-billion rapid financing facility to speed assistance to the neediest countries and jacked up overall agricultural lending to $6 billion over the next year.The UN Secretary-General and the FAO Director-General too could have similarly drawn up a crisp and compact policy paper with the help of a small knowledgeable group for circulation to member-countries.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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