Rome, November 17: A UN summit on world hunger drew fire on Monday, even from the head of the UN food agency, for failing to pledge new funds or set a timetable to beat the scourge affecting more than one billion people.
While a final declaration — rolled out on the first day of the three-day summit — vowed “urgent action” to boost food security, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf lamented the absence of concrete targets.
“I am not satisfied with the fact that there is no commitment regarding the calendar, amounts and conditions” in the declaration, Diouf said.
In particular, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation said he regretted the “absence of a deadline for the total eradication of hunger in the world,” referring to the UN Millennium Development Goal deadline of 2025. Reax: Pope slams ‘greedy speculators’
“A deadline had already been approved” but negotiations ahead of the summit here failed to reach a consensus on the issue, he said, adding: “I regret it.”
Matt Grainger of Oxfam was among activists who slammed the declaration, calling it “completely uncosted, unfunded and unaccountable.”
“They really had a chance here to come up with something really concrete,” Grainger told AFP, calling the summit a “massive wasted opportunity.”
Some 60 heads of state and government were attending the World Summit on Food Security, but leaders of the world’s wealthiest countries were conspicuous by their absence.
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his controversial Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe were among the participants.
Monday’s declaration outlined five “principles” including “direct action” to help the most vulnerable.
But no new financial commitments were contained in the document, which calls on wealthy nations to honour pledges of 20 billion dollars (13.3 billion euros) in aid over the next three years made at a Group of Eight summit in July.
Summit delegates vowed a “twin-track approach” to food security comprising direct action for the most vulnerable and sustainable “medium and long-term programmes to eliminate the root causes of hunger and poverty.”
Opening the summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “the food crisis of today is a wake-up call for tomorrow.”
By the time the world population reaches some nine billion in 2050, “we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable,” he said.
The UN chief added that the issues of climate change and food security are interlinked. “There can be no food security without climate security.”
His warning was echoed by President James Michel of the African island nation the Seychelles who told AFP that the two are “inextricably linked.”
Michel said “coming up with ideas at the FAO summit without tackling climate change makes no sense” and that the prospect of no binding agreement being reached at next month’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen was “a bit shocking.”
Also Monday, Pope Benedict XVI slammed the “greed which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were to be treated just like any other commodity.”
Lula, accepting an award from ActionAid for his efforts to combat hunger, said there had to be “political will” and criticised the apparent indifference of the international community.
“Many seem to have lost the capacity for indignation over such suffering,” he said.
Kadhafi warned against the rise of “new feudal lords” in Africa where multi-nationals are acquiring vast tracts of farmland. Reax: Kadhafi wary of ‘feudal landlords in Africa’
“In Africa, foreign investors buy farmland, transforming themselves into new feudal lords against whom we must fight,” Kadhafi said, adding that Africa’s most serious problem is the “monopolisation of seeds by companies that I would describe as diabolical.”
–PTI