Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The number of chronically-hungry people is rising by four million a year as a result of drought, conflict and rising costs, according to the United Nations. "It's a perfect storm," said Peter Smerdon of the World Food Programme. These factors "all feed into each other." The cost of cereals has risen 50 per cent over the past five years, with recent increases driven, in part, by the demand for biofuels.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is calling for a renewed commitment to guarantee the right to food. The scourge of hunger lingers on," said Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, president of Tanzania, at a ceremony to mark World Food Day. "There are little signs of receding. Instead hunger seems to be on the ascendancy. Estimates of this organization show that more than 850 million people in the world still live in a state of serious and permanent undernourishment. Sub-Saharan Africa alone has 206 million people... almost a quarter of the continent's population." He pointed out that the world produced enough food to feed everyone. "Ideally, no one should starve or die of hunger in the world we live in. Strangely and sadly enough, many people do. This is not fair. This is not right," he continued.

Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, has launched a Global Humanitarian Forum, which will coordinate international efforts to counter the impact of climate change. "We need to get the world public to focus on the fact that climate change is not something down the line but is happening now, and that we have to work together to combat it," he said.

Forum board member Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and former UN coordinator for emergency affairs, warned that five to seven times more people now lose their livelihoods from natural disasters linked to climate change than they do from conflict. "The world is waking up to something very threatening but we're not acting really, there's no investment in this as of yet," he said. The first high-level meeting of the Forum will take place in June 2008.

Young Vivian, premier of the Pacific island nation Niue, has called on the developing nations to act to save his nation. "It is very serious because if they [the largest polluters] don't listen now, and we don't do something now, we are gone," he said. "That is for sure, and we are scared." "To get some action out of these big countries is impossible for the little island nations to make it happen," he continued. "I think if big countries can't make other big countries behave, what power have we got?" He was speaking at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga.

Bharrat Jagdeo, president of Guyana, has urged Commonwealth finance ministers to exert pressure on the forthcoming climate negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, by highlighting the economic basis of deforestation. Arguing that forests are cut down by people living in the area or engaged in agriculture and business to generate profit for national development, he said that "we must square up to this reality and recognize that the way to stop deforestation is to ensure that there is an economically viable alternative." He wants financial incentives, not only for re-planting but also for the preservation of pristine forest. Jagdeo recently offered to deploy almost all his country's rainforest "in the long term service of the world's battle against climate change."