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Nobel Peace Prize recipient David Beasley is attending Global Business Forum in Banff this week, where the theme is adapting to an evolving world.
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For Nobel Peace Prize recipient David Beasley, what confronts an increasingly hungry world is food for serious thought.
Beasley, the former executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said a vicious confluence of war, climate change and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have put hundreds of millions more people in jeopardy of severe hunger.
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And Canadians won’t go unscathed, with food price hikes likely to hit an already inflation-weary population in 2024, said the man who stepped down from his UN post last April after six years.
“Food prices will spike in the next 12 months and poorest (in Canada) won’t have the money to pay for it,” said Beasley, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 for his and the WFP’s work in reducing global hunger.
“You could have food shortages in western nations next year, but for the poorest of the poor (elsewhere) it’s going to be hell on earth.”
Food banks in Alberta have recently reported record levels of use, driven by a rising cost of living.
Years of progress in reducing hunger worldwide have been swept away by what he calls “climate shock,” war that’s destabilized food production and distribution, and the disruptive effects of the pandemic.
Next year could be ‘catastrophic’
Six years ago, 80-million people were facing food insecurity globally. Today, that number is nearly 350 million, and world political and business leaders need to take immediate action, he said.
“If we don’t address global food insecurity quickly, we’ll face mass starvation, mass destabilization and mass migration,” he said.
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“The next 12 months will be absolutely, potentially catastrophic.”
The American is bringing his message of urgency to the Global Business Forum at the Fairmont Banff Springs Conference Centre this week, where the theme is adapting to an evolving world.
The forum Thursday and Friday also brings together experts on issues ranging from artificial intelligence to the energy transition, critical minerals and the Indian economy.
Beasley said he’s directing his warning to representatives of the business community gathered in Banff to galvanize it into collaborating with governments and deal with the grave challenge of world food insecurity.
Instead of exploiting food shortages to enhance profits, the private sector should be acting philanthropically for short-term relief, lobbying governments to action and engaging in providing long-term solutions, he said.
He said business has acted strategically in the past in ways that has reduced extreme global poverty to 10 per cent of the world’s population.
“I’m calling them out. If they engage, I have no doubt we can solve this problem,” said Beasley, whose WFP term had been extended a year due to the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war and the pandemic.
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“If you don’t do it from the goodness of your heart, you better do it for your self-interest.”
But those challenges are daunting, with climate change affecting food production in many countries, including Canada, where drought on the Prairies has reduced crop yields.
‘I don’t think our leaders realize how bad this is’
In other countries, such as some of those in Africa, drought has been accompanied by ill-timed rains, said Beasley.
“When you need rain, you’re getting droughts, and when you don’t need rain, you’re getting flash floods,” he said.
Conflict such as those in east Africa and Ukraine have further exacerbated the problem, said Beasley, perhaps most dramatically with food being weaponized in the war between Moscow and Kyiv.
His own agency helped broker an agreement in July 2022 to allow the transit of grain across the Black Sea from global breadbasket Ukraine.
After allowing the transportation of 32.9 million metric tonnes of food — much of it to the developing world — the pact collapsed last July when Russia opted not to extend it.
The destruction last June of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, widely blamed on Russian forces who controlled it, has also destroyed large tracts of productive land in Ukraine.
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“Before the war, Ukraine produced enough food to feed 400 million people . . . Russia’s been creating havoc in their farmlands and infrastructure,” said the former UN food chief.
But even more troubling, said Beasley, is the war’s disruption of the export of fertilizer from Russia, which produces most of the world’s supply.
“If you cut that fertilizer, you cut food production in half,” he said.
Alberta farmers already battling ‘extreme’ drought this growing season
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Food Bank scrambles to keep up with exploding demand
On Tuesday, the UN’s refugee agency said malnutrition and measles has killed 1,200 Sudanese children over the past five months in camps hosting families fleeing the civil war there.
All of this comes amid a backdrop of a UN-forecasted global population growth from the current eight billion to 9.7 billion by 2050.
The world has already witnessed dramatically accelerated migration due to climate change’s effect on food production and availability, said Beasley, something G20 countries can expect to deal with much more in coming years.
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Some of the longer-term fixes involve developing more irrigation infrastructure, he said, something that advanced significantly in recent years under the UN’s World Food Programme, said Beasley, a former South Carolina governor.
But a budget that was $14 billion last year has been virtually halved, he said, at a time when vastly more resources are needed to meet both immediate requirements and to build a system that has greater longer-term resiliency.
“Leaders around the world need to fund this crisis,” said Beasley, adding about $20 billion is needed to address the immediate challenges through food purchases and cash distributions.
“I don’t think our leaders realize how bad this is.”
BKaufmann@postmedia.com
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
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