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Campaigners issue warning on Cameron’s ‘hunger summit’

On Sunday, David Cameron will attempt to capitalise on the international presence in London for the Olympics to convene a ‘hunger summit’ – but campaigners have warned that the prime minister’s big business approach ‘risks entrenching the root causes of hunger’.

Political and business leaders and humanitarian groups at the summit are expected to announce a new target to reduce child malnutrition by the next Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. Former England football captain David Beckham has presented a letter to David Cameron urging him to tackle deprivation of essential nutrients early in a child’s life, which causes stunted growth.

The World Development Movement’s food campaigner Amy Horton said today:

“It’s great that David Cameron is using the Olympics to focus attention on the need to reverse the rising incidence of child malnutrition. But by promoting the role of big business in developing countries’ food markets, his approach risks entrenching the root causes of hunger.  

“Increasing the power of multinational companies over the world’s food is not going to improve child nutrition. Instead of corporate land grabs, we need local control over the resources on which food production depends. We need governments to be able to regulate international...

Rio+20: Stumbling towards a future we don’t really want

As I write, things inside Rio Centro, where the Rio+20 talks are taking place look bleak. Last Friday, after three long days of ‘preparatory committee’ meetings countries were unable to agree little more than a third of the draft outcome text. The decision was made for the UN to hand responsibility for drafting of a new version of the text to Brazil, as the host country, in the hope of finding a common pathway forward.

On Saturday night, just before midnight, a new Brazilian text was circulated. In an attempt to break the stalemate in the negotiations, and close the gulf between developed countries and the G77 group of 130 developing countries, this text had been dramatically weakened.

Pledges on increasing access to water end energy were watered down, and across the text, any meaningful language had been removed. Words such as “commit” has been largely stripped away and replaced with terms like “voluntary” and “as appropriate” – essentially enabling the statement to sound positive whilst in reality, amounting to little obligation for countries to do anything in terms of real action.

On the positive side, this new text has the potential to prevent a massive backtrack on some of the more positive principals of Rio that were agreed twenty years ago. Yet...

Regulators’ rules ‘too weak’ to tackle speculation on food

International financial regulators have called today for tighter controls on financial speculation in commodity markets, but anti-poverty campaigners the World Development Movement have branded the regulators’ rules as ‘too weak’, saying they will not tackle the growing hunger and poverty caused by speculation on food prices.

The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), representing regulators from 115 countries, has recommended rules to control the amounts that traders such as investment banks and other financial players can hold in commodity markets.

The Pope, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the UN special rapporteur on the right to food and are among those who have blamed financial speculation in commodity markets for contributing to spiralling global food prices. The prices of basic foods such as wheat have jumped by over 30 per cent in the past year, while rising prices pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty in the last six months of 2010 alone.

The World Development Movement, while welcoming the regulators’ view that controls are urgently needed, has said that the degree of flexibility in the rules recommended by IOSCO could make them ineffective....

‘Broken’ markets driving up food prices as bread soars

‘Broken’ financial markets are driving up food prices, reveals a new report released today, as inflation figures show UK consumers are now paying over seven per cent more for bread than a year ago.[1]

The report from anti-poverty group the World Development Movement shows how financial speculation on basic foods is driving spiralling prices around the world, which reached record levels earlier this year. The organisation claims the UK government risks condemning millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger by failing to back European regulation to curb excessive speculation.

In the last six months of 2010 alone, rising food prices pushed 44 million more people worldwide into extreme poverty.

Financial players including banks like Goldman Sachs and Barclays have taken over food markets, says the World Development Movement’s report, with the total assets of financial speculators in these markets nearly doubling from $65 billion to $126 billion in the last five years. Not a single penny of this has been invested in agriculture.

The report, ‘Broken Markets’, finds that:

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