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2 June 2008

The food price crisis: another ‘lost decade’ for development?

This week, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) convenes a High Level Conference on the food price crisis, which has already caused riots, deaths and put poverty reduction efforts back 7 years, according to the President of the World Bank. Spiralling oil prices and the credit crunch will only exacerbate this situation. Is this in danger of becoming another lost decade for international development?

In a new blog, ODI Director, Simon Maxwell, outlines four things the FAO Summit must deliver if the food crisis is to be allayed and the development legacy of the decade rescued.

Excerpts from the blog:

“A strong message that prices have begun to ease but that the food crisis has not gone away. This remains the most serious threat to nutritional welfare and the most serious reverse to poverty reduction since the structural adjustment crises of the 1980s. The 1980s were dubbed the ‘lost decade’ in development. The 2000s are now at risk of an identical tag.”

“How much more is needed? That’s the $64,000 question. The latest figures from FAO show that 22 countries are especially vulnerable, and that low income food deficit countries as a group are likely to spend an additional $20 billion on food imports during the coming year. Covering that would mean increasing aid by 20% at a stroke, at a time when many large aid donors are failing to meet the pledges they made at Gleneagles to increase aid. That deficit alone, needed to meet the health and education targets of the Millennium Development Goals, currently stands at $30 billion a year.”

“The Rome Summit must deliver a road-map for international action, leading through the G8 and the MDG Summit, and beyond. The UN will be in the spotlight next week. Will it act ‘as one’, to use the current jargon, or will the agencies engage in an all too familiar battle for leadership and resources? As Gordon Brown has rightly observed, the international system created at the end of the Second World War is hardly fit for purpose in a twenty-first century world of new and unexpected challenges. The food crisis of 2008 offers an opportunity to accelerate change.”

Notes to Editor:

1. First published on Guardian Unlimited, Comment is Free on Friday 30th May 2008
2. The Food Price Crisis: another lost decade for development? can be found at http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/02/5577.aspx
3. ODI is Britain's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. Our mission is to inspire and inform policy and practice which lead to the reduction of poverty, the alleviation of suffering and the achievement of sustainable livelihoods in developing countries. We do this by locking together high quality applied research, practical policy advice, and policy-focused dissemination and debate. We work with partners in the public and private sectors, in both developing and developed countries. In 2007, we were named Public Affairs Think-Tank of the Year

For further information, please contact:
Leah Kreitzman  on 020 7922 0431, email: l.kreitzman@odi.org.uk or
Sue Martin on 020 7922 0423, email: s.martin@odi.org.uk

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