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PARIS: France will double its emergency food aid this year, spending
60 million euros ($100 million), President Nicolas Sarkozy said
Friday, as he warned the world’s food crisis was breeding unrest.
“We must act urgently to strengthen food
security at a time when 37 countries are going through a very
serious food crisis,” Sarkozy told a major meeting on climate
change in Paris. “We cannot remain indifferent to the unrest among
those people who, in the developing countries, can no longer satisfy
their hunger.”
Soaring prices for basic grains such as rice,
wheat, soybean and corn have provoked protests and rioting in at
least half a dozen developing countries in past months, and has
toppled the government of one.
Last weekend, Haiti’s premier Jacques-Edouard
Alexis was ousted in a no-confidence vote after more than a week of
violent demonstrations over rocketing food and fuel prices that left
at least five people dead.
Protests have also erupted in Cameroon, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar and Mauritania. Last weekend,
10,000 garment workers rioted in Bangladesh near the capital Dhaka,
smashing cars and buses and vandalizing factories.
Sarkozy addressed his comments to
ministerial-level representatives from the world’s largest
developed economies and major developing countries, including China
and India.
Taken together, the 16 participants of the Major
Emitters’ Meeting (MEM) are responsible for 80 percent of the
greenhouse gases that drive global warming.
Climate change could be aggravating world food
shortages, as rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns
amplify water scarcity, especially in Australia, which is one of the
world’s breadbaskets, scientists say.
A measure championed to help reduce carbon
emission—biofuels—has also come under attack as a contributor to
the food crisis.
IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn
told French radio Friday that biofuels “pose a real moral
problem” and that a moratorium on biofuels made from food
commodities should be considered.
“The planet’s problem, which is very
important but which will not be solved with biofuels since hydrogen
engines will be much more efficient in the years to come, must be
balanced with the fact that people are going to die of hunger,” he
said.
The United States and Brazil have massive
programs for converting grains, sugar and soybeans into ethanol and
biodiesel that are then used as a substitute for fossil fuels
extracted from the ground.
UN Special Reporter for the Right to Food Jean
Ziegler on Monday told German radio that “producing biofuels today
is a crime against humanity.”
Other factors blamed for contributing to food
shortfalls include a growing appetite for meat among China and
India’s growing middle class.
-- AFP
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