Climate deal key to fight "devastating" hunger: U.N.

Silvia Aloisi and Daniel Flynn, Reuters 16 Nov 09;

ROME (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Monday that agreeing a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger, which Brazil's president described as "the most devastating weapon of mass destruction."

Government leaders and officials met in Rome for a three-day U.N. summit on how to help developing countries feed themselves, but anti-poverty campaigners and even some participants were already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.

The sense of skepticism deepened at the weekend, when U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, though European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action.

"There can be no food security without climate security," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit.

"Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change," he said.

Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the U.N. says.

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed.

The number of hungry people in the world topped 1 billion for the first time this year due to the combined impact of the global recession and high food prices in poor countries. A child dies of malnutrition every six seconds.

"Hunger is the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet, it doesn't kill soldiers, it kills innocent children who are not even one-year old," said Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called the summit in the hope leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total -- its 1980 level -- from 5 percent now.

That would amount to $44 billion a year against $7.9 billion now. Farmers in rich countries receive $365 billion of support every year.

WHERE'S THE MONEY?

But the summit declaration adopted on Monday included only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action.

Leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a U.N. Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 -- a deadline which most experts say is certain to be missed. They vowed to eradicate hunger "at the earliest possible date."

Last year's spike in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat sparked riots in as many as 60 countries.

Rich food importers have since rushed to buy foreign farmland, pushing food shortages up the political agenda -- but also raising fears of a new colonialism in poor countries.

"We should fight against this new feudalism, we should put an end to this land grab in African countries," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said at the summit.

Food prices have fallen back since their 2008 record highs but remain well above pre-crisis levels in poor countries. The FAO says sudden price rises are still very likely.

Group of Eight leading powers in July pledged $20 billion over three years in farm aid, in a big policy shift toward long-term strategies and away from emergency food assistance.

But FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said those were "still promises that need to materialize."

Apart from Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, G8 leaders skipped the summit, which looked more like a gathering of Latin American and African heads of state.

"At each summit we leave with our bellies full of promises," was the downbeat comment by President Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali, one of the world's poorest countries.

Gaddafi asks food summit to stop Africa "landgrab"
Reuters 16 Nov 09;

ROME (Reuters) - Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for an end to the purchase of African farmland by food-importing nations at a U.N. hunger summit on Monday, describing it as "new feudalism" which could spread to Latin America as well.

"Rich countries are now buying the land in Africa. They are cheating African people out of their rights. This is also going to happen in Latin America ... ," he told the summit, which was mostly attended by African and Latin American leaders.

"Small farmers are being bereft of their own land thanks to new feudal powers coming from outside of Africa and buying up land very cheaply," Gaddafi told the meeting at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.

"We should fight against this new feudalism, we should put an end to this land grab in African countries," he said.

High food prices which sparked a food supply scare in 2008 prompted countries like Saudi Arabia, China and South Korea to seek farmland abroad.

The FAO plans to draw up guidelines to try to safeguard the sometimes conflicting interests of local farmers and investors for the governance of land and other natural resources, and is consulting companies, farmers and independent experts.

French Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire said on the sidelines of the U.N. summit that "predatory" farmland acquisitions in poor countries should be halted.

But U.N. officials said investments in land could also benefit small farmers in the developing world.

"It is a wrong language to call them land grabs. Those are investments in farmland like investments in oil exploration," said Kanayo Nwanze, who heads the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development. "We can have win-win situations."

Earlier this year the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, said that since 2006 15-20 million hectares of land in poor countries had been sold or were under negotiations for sale to foreign buyers.

Supporters of such deals say they provide new seeds, technology and money for agriculture in economies that have suffered from under-investment for decades.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told the summit "private investment should be encouraged," both domestic and foreign, but rules were required "preferably within the spirit of a code of conduct on agricultural investment in developing countries."

(Reporting by Stephen Brown and Svetlana Kovalyova; editing by James Jukwey)

UN chief urges unity over hunger
BBC News 16 Nov 09;

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a "single global vision" from world leaders to address the problems of world hunger and pollution.

Mr Ban's comments came at the start of a UN conference in Rome aimed at stabilising world food prices.

He said the summit needed to co-ordinate closely with the UN climate meeting at Copenhagen in December.

The UN says one billion people are hungry and that food production must increase to feed a growing population.

The World Summit on Food Security comes a year after major rises in food prices caused chaos in many countries.

Mr Ban said both the Rome and Copenhagen summits "must craft a single global vision to produce real results for people in real need".

He called for a more co-ordinated approach to the issues, saying there "can be no food security without climate security".

"The food crisis of today is a wake-up call for tomorrow," said Mr Ban.

"By 2050, our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people. By 2050 we know we will need to grow 70% more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

"We must make significant changes to feed ourselves, and most especially to safeguard the poorest and most vulnerable."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.

'End greed'

FAO head Jacques Diouf told the summit that developing countries had made some progress in reversing the decline in investment in agriculture since prices hit record highs at the end of 2007.

But he said much of the money had not yet materialised and that amounts promised were not at the level needed.

Mr Diouf said the $44bn (£26.4bn) required for developing countries was far less that the $365bn (£219bn) that developed countries spend each year on subsidising their farmers.

He recommended that developing countries dedicate 10% of their expenditure to agriculture.

Pope Benedict XVI also addressed the opening of the summit, calling for an end to the "greed" of financial speculation on food prices.

He said hunger in the poorest countries should not be considered "a matter of resigned regret" and criticised unsustainable food production methods and aid practises which damage agriculture.

Critics say the summit may fail to set ambitious goals and have questioned whether it will be effective, as most of the leaders of the world's richest nations are not attending.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader from one of the G8 leading industrialised countries to take part.

Francisco Sarmento, of campaign group ActionAid, told AFP that the absence of other G8 leaders "doesn't signal they are serious about finding global solutions to hunger".

The BBC's David Loyn in Rome says the leaders attending the summit will try to keep the world focused on the consequences of the massive rise in food prices last year, which hit the poor hardest.

However, he says the summit is likely to be big on rhetoric but small on concrete actions.