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NEW DELHI: The biofuel policies pursued by the rich countries are
pushing millions of people in the developing world into poverty, an
Oxfam study said, according to the Hindustan Times Thursday.
Oxfam, a group of nongovernment organizations,
launched the report at a time when leaders of the industrialized
countries are to discuss policies to mitigate the impact of climate
change at a G-8 conference in Japan early July.
Quoting World Bank estimates, the study said the
price of food has increased by 83 percent in the last three years,
which is disastrous for the world’s poor people. “The lives of
about 290 million people are immediately threatened because of the
food crises,” the study said.
The study attributes 30 percent of the rise in
food prices to biofuels and said it has pushed 30 million people
into poverty already.
“Today’s biofuels are not solving the
climate or fuel crises but are instead contributing to food
insecurity and inflation, hitting poor people the hardest,” said
Rob Balley, the author of the report.
Blaming the rich countries for the crises, the
report said the subsidies for biofuels by the United States and
Europe are taxing food for poor in the developing world.
The report recommends that the richer countries
should freeze implementation of future biofuel mandates and
dismantle subsidies and tax exemptions to biofuels to save more
people from falling into poverty and accelerate the global food
crisis.
In the Philippines
Secretary Arthur Yap of the Department of
Agriculture welcomed the recent declaration by heads of governments
and other officials of 180 countries to consider the Philippine
proposal to develop the biofuels sector within the context of global
food security, saying such a united call will help reverse the
unparalleled international problems driven by a confluence of
factors, such as climate change and declining farm productivity.
In a press release Thursday, Yap expressed hope
that the proposal by these global leaders during the recently
concluded High Level Conference on World Food Security hosted by the
United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome for
industrialized economies and multilateral institutions to address
climbing food prices and tightening supply along with the challenges
posed by bio-energy and climate change, would soon translate into
concrete benefits for developing nations via food security and
higher farm growth.
The statement added that the secretary lauded
the call by these leaders for development partners to help moderate
unusual fluctuations in grain prices and assist countries in
building up their food stock capacities, as this dovetailed with his
proposal for a UN body to put up and manage a food reserve or global
stockpile for the benefit of both food-exporting and -importing
countries at this time of an unprecedented global food crisis.
-- With Xinhua
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