WATERLOO — More than one billion people on the earth are not getting enough to eat, and the food crisis only worsened in the wake of the global financial meltdown.
“Never before have so many people — and this is 1/6th of humanity — gone to bed hungry at night,” said global environmental governance expert Jennifer Clapp during a panel discussion Saturday at CIGI in Waterloo.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation hosted this weekend its annual conference, with the impact of the global economic crisis and the implications for international economic governance as this year’s focus.
During the panel discussion, Clapp and two other experts discussed the challenges for creating secure food supplies for all nations, especially poor developing countries where many people can afford little food.
In the midst of the economic turmoil affecting all nations, Clapp said now is the time to make changes for the better.
“It’s important to seize on this moment of crisis,” said Clapp, CIGI chair in global environmental governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
Clapp was joined on the panel by Jorge Braga de Macedo, economics professor at Nova University in Lisbon and former finance minister of Portugal, and Uma Lele, special advisor to the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation in India and former senior advisor to the World Bank.
“Agriculture provides a safety net for poor people,” Lele said.
Yet, foreign aid for agricultural expansion in developing countries has declined over the past two decades, she said, “because of a sense of complacency that we’ve solved the problems.”
The amount spent on agricultural development is now less than that dumped into emergency assistance.
Lele said struggling nations desperately need investments in research, technology and infrastructure to boost agricultural productivity and become less dependent on imported food. And international agencies need to work better together to provide that support.
Knowledge sharing is an area that needs a lot of improvement, according to Jorge Braga de Macedo, economics professor at Nova University in Lisbon and former finance minister of Portugal.
While much agricultural research is being done and technology developed, there’s little co-operation or sharing.
“We have not been able to deliver on solutions,” he said.
But boosting agricultural research and production is just the start, Clapp said. Broader changes in economic governance are needed because the global economy is tightly linked to food security.
A huge rush of investments in agricultural commodities drove up food prices. Developing countries relying on imported food suffered with the high prices, and getting credit became difficult in the midst of the market collapse.
“This has had a dramatic impact on people’s ability to eat,” said Clapp, adding that the poor typically spend 50 to 80 per cent of their income on food.
Creating a less volatile and more equitable global economy through financial regulation is essential in dealing with the food crisis and growing number of people worldwide not getting enough food, Clapp said.
“The situation of food insecurity is a very perilous one at this particular point of time.”