Hunger: The ‘silent tsunami’
Hunger: The ‘silent tsunami’
The Windsor Star
June 18, 2008
Dr. Keith Martin
Food is one of life’s necessities and access to it is truly a matter of life and death. So it was shocking that in the face of the global food crisis the international community did nothing at its recently completed food summit in Rome to address the long-term structural challenges that have contributed to this humanitarian crisis.
It was also tragic Canada failed to send a single minister to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s meeting despite the fact the dramatic rise of food prices is creating widespread malnutrition and civil unrest in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The implications of this “silent tsunami” are far reaching and affect 2.5 billion who live on less than $2 a day. For example, malnutrition, especially in children, produces permanent, intellectual, cognitive and physical disabilities. This affects their ability to learn and in the end work, creating a human economic deficit that is entirely preventable.
So what can Canada do to promote a co-ordinated response to relieve this crisis?
A plan of action should:
1. Enable farmers in developing countries to get the high-quality seeds and fertilizers they need to increase output. This alone could double or even triple food production for the world’s 450 million subsistence farmers in the developing world.
2. Call for an emergency meeting of the WTO to complete the Doha Round of negotiations. We should then push further to remove price-distorting tariffs and non-tariff barriers for trade, export and farm output restrictions. The OECD estimates that a 50 per cent reduction in tariffs and other trade-distorting support for agriculture would generate global welfare gains of $44 billion a year.
3. Compile best agricultural practices, and work with NGOs and developing countries to share these practices with those in need.
4. Call for a significant overhaul of the Food and Agricultural Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Both of these organizations have failed miserably in fulfilling their mandates to ensure global food security.
5. Provide an assessment as to whether biofuel production can be beneficial for the environment without compromising access to affordable food. We should then halt those aspects of biofuel production that damage our environment and compromise access to foodstuffs.
6. Call for an emergency meeting of the IMF to determine how to curb the unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups that are responsible for no less than 60 per cent of the increase in fuel prices, and a significant part of the staggering 184 per cent increase in commodity prices we have seen over the last five years.
Canada can take a leadership role to go beyond food aid and help to tackle this crisis. Although aid is urgently needed to address the immediate threat posed by higher food prices to the world’s poor, money alone is not enough. Significant structural changes are urgently required internationally on many fronts. What is unacceptable is our government’s myopic disinterest toward this global challenge that ultimately affects us all.
Dr. Keith Martin is MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca and Liberal opposition critic for International Development
Hunger: The ‘silent tsunami’
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
