G20: Economy may overshadow food security, ag agenda
November 03, 2011 | 12:05 AM | Filed in: Food security Agricultural development
By JERRY HAGSTROM
CANNES, France — President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in this seaside resort on the Mediterranean within a few hours to join other leaders of the G20 countries for their annual meeting.
But there is concern that the global food security and agriculture development agenda will be pushed aside by the need to focus on the European financial crisis, particularly Greece.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Global food security has been a key issue at G20 meetings since the food price volatility crisis in 2008, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has emphasized agriculture to an unusual degree during France’s year-long presidency of the G20, which ends after this meeting.
Sarkozy summoned the agriculture ministers of the G20 countries, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to try to come up with agreements to reduce excessive volatility in agriculture prices that affect people in developing countries.
A number of those agreements, including one for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to better monitor world food supplies, went forward. But it is unclear, for example, what will happen with a proposal for the U.N. World Food Program to establish physical food reserves in certain areas where there are often food crises.
Sarkozy also proposed that the G20 address the issue of the impact of speculation on volatility in energy and food prices, but finance ministers have been reluctant to take up that issue.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates is scheduled to be here, and has said he will remind the leaders that they have not fulfilled their promise two years ago to spend $22 billion on agricultural development and food security. White House officials told reporters earlier this week that they expected his message on development finance to be broader than that.
Lawrence MacDonald, Center for Global Development
Lawrence MacDonald, a vice president of the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, wrote this week, “It’s G-20 time again, and once again the attention of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies will be largely preoccupied with shoring up the financial sectors in countries that are home to the world’s top billion.”
“This is unfortunate but under the circumstances not entirely unreasonable,” MacDonald wrote. “Financial crises in the rich world can have far-reaching consequences for poor people in the developing world, including weak demand for developing-country exports, sagging tourism and remittances, and tighter credit, which among other things makes it harder to finance trade.
“Addressing the crisis in Greece, and Europe more broadly, is in everybody’s interest. Whether the G-20 can help to stabilize the global financial sector and get the world economy growing remains the most important question for development,” MacDonald wrote.
Posters urged students in the university town of Aix en Provence to travel to Nice and Cannes this week to protest the policies of the G20 countries. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)
At recent G20 meetings, there have been protests focused on food availability and prices in the poorest countries in the world, but the protests Wednesday in Nice, a nearby city, focused on broader issues of fairness between the developed and developing worlds, and that seems likely in protests and new conferences scheduled here today by non-governmental organizations.
The International Trade Union Confederation, Public Services International, Oxfam and National Nurses United, a group representing nurses in the United States and other countries, has scheduled a news conference here this morning to promote a financial transaction tax “as the emergency medicine for what ails the global economy,” the groups said.
British actor Bill Nighy, who has been very involved in the Robin Hood Tax Campaign in the United Kingdom, is also scheduled to join the group.
National Nurses United, joined by the AFL-CIO and community activists, including participants from the Occupy Wall Street movement, are also scheduled to protest outside the Treasury Department in Washington today to press Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a “meaningful financial transaction tax,” the group said in a news release.
ActionAid, another non-governmental group, noted that a pilot emergency reserve program for West Africa is on the agenda.
“The G20 can reduce the volatility in food prices by finding options for buffer reserves to control prices and, as a preliminary step, by supporting the emergency reserve program for West Africa,” said Soren Ambrose, international policy manager of ActionAid, in a news release.
CANNES, France — President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in this seaside resort on the Mediterranean within a few hours to join other leaders of the G20 countries for their annual meeting.
But there is concern that the global food security and agriculture development agenda will be pushed aside by the need to focus on the European financial crisis, particularly Greece.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Global food security has been a key issue at G20 meetings since the food price volatility crisis in 2008, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has emphasized agriculture to an unusual degree during France’s year-long presidency of the G20, which ends after this meeting.
Sarkozy summoned the agriculture ministers of the G20 countries, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to try to come up with agreements to reduce excessive volatility in agriculture prices that affect people in developing countries.
A number of those agreements, including one for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to better monitor world food supplies, went forward. But it is unclear, for example, what will happen with a proposal for the U.N. World Food Program to establish physical food reserves in certain areas where there are often food crises.
Sarkozy also proposed that the G20 address the issue of the impact of speculation on volatility in energy and food prices, but finance ministers have been reluctant to take up that issue.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates is scheduled to be here, and has said he will remind the leaders that they have not fulfilled their promise two years ago to spend $22 billion on agricultural development and food security. White House officials told reporters earlier this week that they expected his message on development finance to be broader than that.
Lawrence MacDonald, Center for Global Development
Lawrence MacDonald, a vice president of the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, wrote this week, “It’s G-20 time again, and once again the attention of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies will be largely preoccupied with shoring up the financial sectors in countries that are home to the world’s top billion.”
“This is unfortunate but under the circumstances not entirely unreasonable,” MacDonald wrote. “Financial crises in the rich world can have far-reaching consequences for poor people in the developing world, including weak demand for developing-country exports, sagging tourism and remittances, and tighter credit, which among other things makes it harder to finance trade.
“Addressing the crisis in Greece, and Europe more broadly, is in everybody’s interest. Whether the G-20 can help to stabilize the global financial sector and get the world economy growing remains the most important question for development,” MacDonald wrote.
Posters urged students in the university town of Aix en Provence to travel to Nice and Cannes this week to protest the policies of the G20 countries. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)
At recent G20 meetings, there have been protests focused on food availability and prices in the poorest countries in the world, but the protests Wednesday in Nice, a nearby city, focused on broader issues of fairness between the developed and developing worlds, and that seems likely in protests and new conferences scheduled here today by non-governmental organizations.
The International Trade Union Confederation, Public Services International, Oxfam and National Nurses United, a group representing nurses in the United States and other countries, has scheduled a news conference here this morning to promote a financial transaction tax “as the emergency medicine for what ails the global economy,” the groups said.
British actor Bill Nighy, who has been very involved in the Robin Hood Tax Campaign in the United Kingdom, is also scheduled to join the group.
National Nurses United, joined by the AFL-CIO and community activists, including participants from the Occupy Wall Street movement, are also scheduled to protest outside the Treasury Department in Washington today to press Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a “meaningful financial transaction tax,” the group said in a news release.
ActionAid, another non-governmental group, noted that a pilot emergency reserve program for West Africa is on the agenda.
“The G20 can reduce the volatility in food prices by finding options for buffer reserves to control prices and, as a preliminary step, by supporting the emergency reserve program for West Africa,” said Soren Ambrose, international policy manager of ActionAid, in a news release.
