UN urges active response to food crisis

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By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-05 09:47

Any recovery from the current economic crisis will be incomplete if the related food crisis is not addressed, according to a new UN study.

For 583 million people across the Asia-Pacific region, the financial crisis has become a food crisis, according to a report entitled Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific, launched in Beijing on Monday.

"While the world's attention is very much on the economic crisis, food insecurity remains a real threat," said Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

"The current global financial crisis has both affected people's economic and social access to food in many countries of this region," said Dr. Amitava Mukherjee, Senior Economic Affairs Officer and Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Asian and Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery - a subsidiary institution of ESCAP - which launched the report.

While food prices have fallen from last year's spike they remain high, the report said.

Rising unemployment and falling incomes are putting additional pressure on the poor and vulnerable.

More worrying still is that, once the global economy recovers, the pressures that drove up food prices last year will return.

Despite the Asia-Pacific region's rapid economic growth, the region is home to the largest number of hungry people - 62 per cent of the world's undernourished.

The study identifies 25 countries as hotspots of food insecurity.

Long neglect of agriculture, reduced investment in agricultural infrastructure and research in the last two decades, the frequent occurrence of natural disasters, water scarcity, soil degradation and pest prevalence as a result of global climate change have had an adverse impact on food availability.