Media

Press Release

What the UN summit on world food security needs to achieve

29 May 2008

Next week's United Nations summit on world food security in Rome needs to achieve four key goals, according to Alex Evans, author of a Chatham House research paper on the international implications of rising food prices.

1. First, it must agree action to increase the humanitarian system's capacity to help more people. While the World Food Programme has now raised enough money to cover its immediate funding shortfall, continuing high food prices - coupled with the prospect of other risks including climate change and other 'scarcity trends' - will mean that the world's humanitarian agencies will continue to require higher than normal levels of funding as they scale up their operations.

2. Second, the summit needs to co-ordinate an easing of export restrictions in international grain markets. Recent months have seen 'positive feedbacks' as some food producers have reduced or suspended exports in response to domestic pressures, even as import-dependent countries have attempted to rebuild national food stockpiles. Both sets of measures have increased pressure on prices - a more harmonised approach is needed, to reduce volatility and ease pressure on prices.

3. Third, the summit must launch a strategy to boost agricultural production. As well as increasing overall food supply, the strategy should focus heavily on the needs of smallholder farmers - who account for more than four fifths of farms worldwide, and almost a third of the world's people. While high food prices should benefit them, the opposite has often been the case: many are net purchasers of food, and they have also been hit for rising costs of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser.

4. Finally, the summit needs to initiate work towards an international agreement on biofuels. Some biofuels have the potential to contribute to climate change objectives and benefit poor farmers in the process, but others can be deeply problematic for food security. Poor people and responsible companies alike share a stake in developing international consensus on the standards and safeguards that can ensure biofuels deliver their potential without harming food security for poor people.

Alex Evans said: "Next week's UN food summit is a crucial milestone on the way to the G8 in July and the UN Call to Action summit in September. Countries need to agree a mix of immediate actions to tackle the most acute needs - especially increasing humanitarian assistance and agreeing a phase-out of export restrictions on food - while also starting work now on long term needs, especially a global strategy for increasing food supply and working towards an international agreement on biofuels.

He added, "As policymakers work towards a 'Green Revolution' for the 21st century, they must ensure that it really is green. While the 20th century Green Revolution delivered extraordinary yield increases, it relied on intensive resource use - especially water, energy and fertiliser. A world of climate change and scarcer water and energy means that this time around, a much more resource-efficient approach is needed - above all in Africa, where farmers are least able to afford expensive inputs and where climate change will hit hardest."

Notes to editors:
Alex Evans is the author of Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development, a Chatham House briefing paper published in April 2008: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/papers/view/-/id/612/

He is leading a joint project on the international implications of rising food prices being undertaken by Chatham House and CIC, which will culminate in the publication in the summer of a strategic assessment for policymakers of the drivers, implications and policy requirements of rising food prices. He is also working in association with Chatham House's project, UK Food Supply the 21st Century: The New Dynamic.

Alex will be in Rome throughout the duration of the UN food summit, and is available for interview (contact details below).

Alex Evans is a non-resident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, where he runs CIC's work on climate change and global public goods. From 2003 to 2006, Alex worked as Special Adviser to Hilary Benn MP, then UK Secretary of State for International Development.

Prior to joining DFID in 2003, Alex worked in a range of other climate and energy-focused roles, including as the head of the climate and energy research program of the Institute for Public Policy Research (2002-3), at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a specialist on emissions trading (2002), as communications director at the Global Commons Institute (2000-2) and as a political consultant on climate and energy policy (1998-9). He also co-edits www.GlobalDashboard.org, the global risk and foreign policy blog.

For further information please contact:
Alex Evans
UK Mobile: +44 (0)7958 229 247
Email: alex.evans@nyu.edu

Sean Armstrong
Press Officer
Direct: +44 (0) 20 7957 5739
Mobile: +44 (0) 78 4985 3757

ENDS