18 June 2002

THE HUNGRY WILL HAVE TO WAIT

World Food Summit 2002

By Devinder Sharma

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much for you, apply the following test:

"Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away." --- Mahatma Gandhi

They came, they spoke and they lost. The Heads of State, who had assembled for the recently concluded World Food Summit 'five years later' at Rome, spoke eloquently about the scandalous 'scourge' of prevailing hunger, and yet provided only a diet of verbosity to the millions of hungry and malnourished. They spoke about the urgent need to remove global hunger and yet could not look beyond depressing figures that simply need to be juggled around in the fight against hunger. They came to draw global attention to mankind's greatest shame but in reality came to promote biotechnology under the garb of hunger and food insecurity.

After all, in an era of market economy, where contesting the next elections is the biggest challenge that confronts the political leaders all over the world and without exception, the Heads of State did not think even once before unabashedly promoting the commercial interests of the corporations. The hungry will, therefore, have to wait. And wait endlessly for another Mahatma Gandhi to emerge on the horizon and to single-handedly lead the march against hunger, poverty and inequality.

If only the Heads of State, who came for the growing ritual of meaningless Summits, had read Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman, there would have been hope and optimism emerging from the dark clouds of hunger and malnutrition.

For days before the Heads of State started arriving, the drafting committees were locked in the debate over defining a code of conduct for the 'right to food'. As if the "right to food" is a magical stick that makes the Supermen of the political hierarchy deliver food to the hungry and the desperately needed, the G-77 countries, the European Union and the United States fought relentlessly for and against it. Finally, the world’s only superpower succeeded in fostering its will over the rest of the world. The code of conduct was replaced by the word "guidelines", as the US had initially wanted, and the final draft was ready for the signatures of the Heads of State.

The right based approach to hunger and malnutrition was expected to challenge unwilling governments to change policies. At the same time, it aimed at giving the victims of violations the means to seek redress and claim "good governance" by giving them the power of political and economic participation. In addition, a code of conduct was also expected to allow civil society and the national judiciary to guarantee the right to food. Laudable intentions, indeed. But what the promoters of the right based approach, and that included the German government and the German NGOs, did not probably realise is that the "right to food" in a majority of the developing countries where hunger persists, is enshrined in their Constitutions. The code of conduct become meaningless when the governments all over the world, and that includes the United States, are more interested in pushing the commercial interests of the industry and the corporate empire than addressing the problems of hunger and inequity.

Take the case of India, where the shameful paradox of plenty fails to move the government to wage a war against hunger and malnutrition. And that too in a country, which alone has a third of the world’s estimated 800 million hungry and tragically over 65 million tonnes of food stocks rotting in the open. The country’s Supreme Court had last year directed the government to "devise a scheme where no person goes hungry when the granaries are full and lots being wasted due to non-availability of storage space." At the same time, the Court had asked the government to open the public distribution shops in the worst-affected States so as to make available the food to the poor and hungry.

The Supreme Court’s directive came in 2001. A year later, all that the government has done is to play around with figures and statistics in an effort to provide a neat cover for its undoing. Another document, in the form of a code of conduct for the 'right to food', is certainly not going to move the government into action. Nor will it provide the much-needed weapon for the victims of apathy and neglect to fight for their rights. If only the poor and hungry and a voice, no government could have dared to ignore their plight. The monumental task, therefore, cannot be achieved by yet another carefully worded document that comes from the FAO. It requires an instrument more powerful than the lack of political will that the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Mr Jacques Diouf, refers to.

To say that "the main underlying reason for the persistence of hunger is due to the lack of a political will, and as a result of this, the resources to fight hunger have not been mobilised to the extent required," is to brush aside the real causes for persistent hunger and abject poverty. What Mr Diouf needs to acknowledge is that it is because of the prevailing political will all over that hunger is multiplying. It is because the political will is in resonance with the forces that aim at exploiting the hungry and the poor, that the entire global system is directed towards extracting its "pound of flesh" from even the starving masses. Such a disgraceful system has its roots firmly embedded in the FAO and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research  (CGIAR). Over the past few years, both the respected global institutions, have deviated from their path of global good to global greed.

At the first World Food Summit, also held in Rome in 1996, the Heads of State had pledged to achieve the objective to half the number of hungry by the year 2015. This meant an annual reduction in the number of hungry by approximately 22 million. Even this has not been achieved, the FAO regrettably observed. And still, the 182-member countries, represented by some 81 Heads of State and high-level delegations, once again reiterated the commitment to reduce half the worldís hunger, which in other words means pulling out 400 million people from the hunger trap, by 2015. Even if the FAO and the international community fails to set the hunger agenda into motion, over 122 million hungry would have perished in any case by then. Perhaps that is what the Heads of State are hoping for as a face saving grace!

It is here that the global greed comes into focus. While the boring speeches continued in the main plenary, the United States was busy pushing its own commercial interests. The US secretary of agriculture, Ann Veneman, had made no secret of her intentions when she said: "Biotechnology has tremendous potential to develop products that can be more suited to areas of the world where there is persistent hunger," adding, "there is no food safety issue whatsoever." It was primarily for this reason that the US had all along wanted strong language in the final declaration in favour of genetically modified food as the key to solving hunger and malnutrition.

No wonder, the US announced a US $ 100 million programme to develop genetically modified crops and products tailored specifically for the needs of the developing countries. Now before you ponder over the real motive behind this benevolence, what emerges crystal clear is that having attained the unique status as the world’s only super power, the focus is now to emerge as the world’s only food basket. The entire research and aid development programmes, ably backed by the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), are aimed at building the US into a food power - so that the rest of the world becomes completely dependent upon America for its food needs. This can only be achieved by ensuring that first the trade rules are so framed that the benefits should mainly percolate to the American farm sector and secondly, by gradual destruction of the capacity of the developing countries ­ the majority world - to go in for food self-sufficiency.

Biotechnology is the only tool that can usher in the great hunger divide - between the rich industrialised countries and the poor developing economies, between the heavily subsidised OECD agriculture and the subsistence farming of the Third World, and between the seed rich countries of the North and the gene rich nations of the South. The stage has been clearly set for a major confrontation on the food front. With the political leadership in the developing countries lured by the green bucks and succumbing to arm-twisting and pressures, biotechnology is certainly set on a smooth path to destroy livelihoods in the South. By the time the negative impact is felt, the damage would have been done.

Biotechnology only aims to force peasants and marginal farmers off their meagre land holdings. Biotechnology only aims to bring in an era of novel foods and functional foods so as to provide the hungry with a choice. But what it forgets is that given a choice, all that the hungry needs is simple food. By refusing to address the immediate crisis on the hunger front, the Summit failed and failed miserably. Except for the decorative part of the final declaration, the Summit failed to spell out the initiatives on how to immediately tackle prevailing hunger and malnutrition, on how to ensure that the tragedy of Malawi and Zimbabwe, which are still deep in the quagmire of famine and starvation, are not repeated elsewhere. It failed by turning a blind eye to the plight of over 320 million hungry in India, who continue to stare with dry eyes at the mountains of food surpluses being eaten by rats and pests.

The onus doesn’t only rest with the Heads of State. The FAO and CGIAR are equally responsible for the food debacle. If only the FAO/CGIAR refuses to chant the biotechnology mantra, if only the two global farm research and development organisations refuse to toe the research agenda of the western countries, and if only these institutions were to reiterate their commitment to the farming communities and sustainable farming practices in the developing countries, the onerous task of feeding the world without destroying the resource life-line could have been easily achieved. With good science now being replaced with "sound science" as advocated by the industry, the poor and hungry will have to wait as they cannot add to the corporate profits.

If only the political leadership, the industry, agricultural scientists and the civil society had followed Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman, the world would not have been a witness to mankind's greatest shame - hunger, and that too at times of plenty. It is time the FAO/CGIAR adopt the talisman as their directive principal, it is time the Heads of State were to understand the meaning of the talisman, the world would then see the beginning of a bright future. There is no need to wait for another Mahatma, the need is to follow what the Mahatma said. And then, there would be no need for another World Food Summit. We have had enough. #

Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Responses can be emailed at dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in

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Green Oscars

from PR WATCH's 'Spin of the Day'
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/index.html

The Global Greenwash Oscars - http://www.earthsummit.biz/

"What's good for big business is good for the earth," proclaims the EarthSummit.biz web site, which is spoofing corporate greenwashing in the buildup to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, scheduled for August of this year. EarthSummit.biz is accepting nominations for "Green Oscars" -- "the world's premiere awards for those acting green" -- to "dramatize the lack of real progress by the world's governments at two Earth Summits in holding corporations accountable for their environmental and social behavior."

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US Media: White, Male, Republican, Corporate

http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/power_sources.html
 
A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed on the nightly network news in 2001 were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican. Big business, too, was overrepresented.