Worthington Weighs in on Rome Summit
June 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm | posted by Sam.Worthington_President_CEO_of_ InterActionInterAction President and CEO Sam Worthington wrote this post from the first day of the FAO emergency summit in Rome on the food crisis.
The concern is the current global food crisis, affecting millions of people in both developed and developing countries all over the world. The scene is the FAO Food Security Summit in Rome.
After more than fifteen speeches on the food crisis by various heads of state, the themes begin to blur. Some talk about the need for a new North-South partnership based on solidarity between the world’s rich and poor. The idea that poor African countries, rich in water and arable land, would unite with rich dry countries in a partnership to address this food price crisis is interesting. If it had been proposed by a Gulf state, rather than the President of Benin, maybe it would become something more than another paper speech sitting outside the plenary room.
Some speeches were sadly very disconnected from reality. To hear President Mugabe talk about how his policies have contributed to food security reflected a significant cognitive disconnect. Western NGOs, he said, are causing all the political discontent in Zimbabwe.
Overall the speeches were quite good and reflected the world’s widespread recognition of the urgency of the food crisis and the timeliness of the high-level conference. They acknowledged that limited progress has been made since the 1996 World Food Summit, and that the world can’t continue business as usual. There is widespread recognition that issues with food distribution, price, access, and production could slow or even reverse our progress towards achieving the first Millennium Development Goal.
Behind all the words, there is a sense of overall commitment to address this crisis and to doing it in a way that is sustainable. Unfortunately, such a solution still eludes us. The fall of the government in Haiti, caused by food riots, left a void that concerns many conference attendees.
-Sam Worthington
Sam Worthington is the President and CEO of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international NGOs focused on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. More information about InterAction’’s response to the food crisis is available at: http://interaction.org/foodcrisis
June 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I appreciate the comment by Sam Worthington on the FAO emergency summit. What I saw in TV a week or two weeks ago when some 8 peoople have died in Kenya while striking aginst food price rise is shocking. There was also a similar demonstration in Indonesia. Theses seem to imply similar social instabilty will tend to mount and hence uprisings and demonstrations are enevitable in the near future, particularly in developing countries where the marginal proponsity to save is very low.
Furthermore, I wish I had details of reports presented in the summit and comment on some of the causes for global food short, other than the known reasons such as poor population policy and environmental degredation that lead to fast population increse and rainfall variablty respectively, that fule or trigger the recent sky rockating rise of food price. Regardless of what the reasons might be global integration and collaboration to boost food crop production through increased productivity, particularly in developing countries should be the main feasible short term strategy,
I would be greatful to anyone who forward or share me research output,reportes and comments regarding this issue.
The wesite above belongs to the university I am working at present. Anyone interested can browse the website and get my position in the university
Thank you