Posted on 04/14/2008 7:38:21 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
World Bank president calls for action as food prices cause rioting
Jenny Booth
The president of the World Bank has called for immediate action to deal with rapidly rising food prices that have caused hunger and deadly violence and threatened the economic stability of the world's poorest countries.
A doubling of food prices over the last two years was potentially pushing 100 million people deeper into long-term poverty, said Robert Zoellick.
“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,” Mr Zoellick said after a meeting of the IMF and World Bank’s Development Committee yesterday.
"This is not just a question about short-term needs, as important as those are. This is about ensuring that future generations don't pay a price too."
Mr Zoellick criticised a lack of urgency at the highest political levels in tackling the issue, which has provoked rioting in Haiti in which a UN peacekeeper and four other people died.
Gordon Brown has promised to raise the issue of skyrocketing food prices at the next meeting of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, but Mr Zoellick said that that would be too late.
“Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait,” he told a news conference, calling on governments to honour their promises to provide the UN World Food Programme with $500 million (£255 million) in emergency aid by May 1.
“It is critical that governments confirm their commitments as soon as possible and others begin to commit,” the World Bank president added.
"Prices have only risen further since the WFP issued that appeal, so it is urgent that governments step up."
The Prime Minister of Haiti has been deposed after a week of food-related rioting. There have also been protests in Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Rice prices have shot up 75 per cent in the past two months alone to reach historic highs. The cost of wheat has climbed by 120 per cent over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.
In developing countries, where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy, the problem threatens to increase malnutrition and hunger, and to reverse progress in reducing poverty and international debt.
Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Indian Finance Minister, warned that rising food costs could lead to worldwide unrest.
“It is becoming starker by the day that unless we act fast for a global consensus on the price spiral, the social unrest induced by food prices in several countries will conflagrate into a global contagion, leaving no country, developed or otherwise, unscathed,” he said.
“The global community must collectively deliberate on immediate steps to reverse the unconscionable increases in the price of food, which threatens to negate the benefits to the poor nations from aid, trade and debt relief.”
Douglas Alexander, the International Development secretary, said that Britain was willing to work with others to bring prices down.
“Now is the time for urgent action to tackle the crisis, which is affecting millions of the poorest people across the globe,” he said.
Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, warned governments against imposing price controls on food, which he said would probably backfire.
The World Bank predicts that food prices will remain high this year and next, and likely stay above 2004 levels until 2015.
One of the main factors behind the surge in prices is the increased use of crops for biofuels as an alternative energy source in developed countries.
Almost all of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to biofuels in the United States. As of tomorrow, all petrol and diesel sold in Britain will have to contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel from crops.
Other contributory factors are the growth in demand in Asia, and droughts in food-producing nations like Australia.
Delegates at yesterday’s IMF and World Bank meeting called on the World Bank to provide more money to help the poor deal with the effects of global warming.
Mr Zoellick convened 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.
I think that twin uptopia of our time will die in the process: greenie uptopia and financial uptopia.
Ping!
What’s an uptopia ?
So feeding food to machines instead of people contributes to starvation. Maybe people can start eating oil.
Al Gore Junior should return his PEACE prize. It’s ALL his fault.
Well maybe not ALL his fault but neither is global warming and global warming KOOKS own a greater share of the responsibility for food shortages than “man” shares for contributing to “global climate (sun) change”.
“The global community must collectively deliberate on immediate steps to reverse the unconscionable increases in the price of food, which threatens to negate the benefits to the poor nations from aid, trade and debt relief.”
What a bunch of idjits. Anybody watching what has been happening knows that all we have to do is drill and refine more oil.
Get the price of oil back to around $30 to $40 per barrel and the problem goes away.
Now they want to sit around and think about what to do.
It's a Utopia, but on a higher floor.
Duh.
Is oil halal? Is oil vegan safe?
Does it really come from dead dinosaurs?
< /s >
The UN will demand that we turn gasoline into corn...
It’s a utopia that won’t let redneck trash like us in :-).
This seem like a version of cold-war between the US and OPEC. If OPEC boosted production which cut the price of oil in half, suddenly the economics behind alternative fuels doesn't look so good. The harsh reality is, OPEC isn't about to do that and as such, the US isn't about to stop using corn as fuel.
My hope is that while oil prices are high, technology finds away to radically cut the world wide use of oil and within my life time, the OPEC countries return to their 3rd world ways. Solar, wind, corn, hydro, I don't care. I want it cheap, green and foreign oil-free. To the inventor go the spoils.
Seems like Somolia all over again. I bet if we just went to a Communist world these things would never happen. No way. The Soviet Union had plenty of food and....no....wait...I just can’t be this sarcastic with a straight face. Nevermind.
Kind of like a discriminating utopia.
Isn’t it illegal to discriminate?
So it’s an illegal utopia.
Don’t give them any ideas.
At least we know that Rhodesia is rolling in the cash as the breadbasket of Africa. < /sarc>
So, why aren't we??
Is it we are now growing energy instead of food??
Is it too many acres have been taken out of production??
Is it that corporate farms play too many high-powered financial games, whereas the good ol family farmer just wanted to feed themselves and as many others as possible??
I don't know, somebody in the know tell us!!!
Unintended consequences or collateral damage of the war on global warming?
It’s a near-perfect HEGELIAN DIALECTIC:
Manufacture some problems, (high energy prices, man-caused global warming HYSTERIA, etc.) which create secondary problems (starvation, high food costs, etc.) then global elitist run institutions step up and offer solutions to problems THEY created (GIVE US, YOUR INTELLECTUAL AND ECONOMIC “BETTERS” EVEN MORE CONTROL OF YOUR PUNY, MISERABLE — DID I MENTION BITTER — LIVES.)
It’s perfect and works every time.
Clearly, the end is near.
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