November 15, 2024 | 02:59 GMT +7
November 15, 2024 | 02:59 GMT +7
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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director General Qu Dongyu, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank Group (WBG) President David Malpass, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley and World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala issued the following joint statement calling for urgent action to address the global food security crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic, interruption in international supply chains, and the war in Ukraine have severely disrupted food, fuel, and fertilizer markets, which are interlinked. By June 2022 the number of acute food insecure people – whose access to food in the short term has been restricted to the point that their lives and livelihoods are at risk – increased to 345 million in 82 countries according to WFP. Making matters worse, around 25 countries have reacted to higher food prices by adopting export restrictions affecting over 8 percent of global food trade.[1] In addition, complicating the food supply response is the doubling of fertilizer prices over the last twelve months, reflecting record-high costs of inputs such as natural gas. Global stocks, which steadily increased over the last decade, need to be released to bring prices down. All this is happening at a time when fiscal space for government action is already severely constrained following the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the short term, climate change is structurally affecting agriculture productivity in many countries.
Avoiding further setbacks to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires short and long-term actions in four key areas: (i) providing immediate support to the vulnerable, (ii) facilitating trade and international supply of food, (iii) boosting production and (iv) investing in climate-resilient agriculture.
Previous experience demonstrates that it is important to support developing countries hurt by price increases and shortages to meet their urgent needs without derailing longer-term development goals. Assuring that the most vulnerable countries facing significant balance of payments problems can cover the cost of the increase in their food import bill to minimize any risk of social unrest is essential. Development financing should provide clients with viable alternatives to inward-looking policies such as export bans or blanket subsidies of fertilizer imports. Investments in scalable safety nets and climate resilient agriculture and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture are good win-win examples.
We call for countries to strengthen safety nets, facilitate trade, boost production, and invest in resilient agriculture. Country specific needs should be identified and defined through a country-based process that mobilizes investments from multilateral development banks to connect short-, medium- and long-term opportunities. And we commit to working together to support this process through the Global Alliance for Food Security, jointly convened by the G7 Presidency and the WBG, to monitor the drivers and the impact of higher prices and help ensure that investment, financing, data, and best-practice knowledge are available to countries in need.
(FAO.org)
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