Global food crisis is threatening to roll back even the slow social progress the world's 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have achieved so far, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said on Thursday.
Since most people in LDCs are poor and a large share of their income is spent on food, they have been hit hard by rising prices, the UN agency said in its 2008 Least Developed Countries Report.
Poor people can now afford fewer other products and increasingly buy lower-quality food, thus raising the danger of malnutrition. That, in turn, will have adverse consequences for health and education, the report said.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (R) gestures next to Archbishop Desmond Tutu during an anti-hunger event in Johannesburg July 16, 2008. African governments and overseas donors must do more to support small-scale farmers if the continent is to overcome a crippling food crisis, Annan said on Wednesday. According to the report, the prices of staples such as maize, wheat and rice have doubled in some LDCs since 2007.
This situation even resulted in food riots in eight LDCs between 2007 and the first half of 2008. The eight countries are Burkina Faso, Guinea, Haiti, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Somalia and Yemen.
The report said that despite their high economic growth rate in recent years, the total number of poor people is still rising in LDCs.
Overall economic growth rates of 7 percent and more in the LDCs in 2005-2006 should have provided an opportunity for substanital improvements in living conditions, the report said.
But three fourths of those living in these nations continue to survive on less than two U.S. dollars per day. Most people cannot meet basic needs for food, water, shelter, health or education.
According to the report, the share of the overall LDC population living in "absolute poverty" declined slowly from 44 percent in 1994 to 36 percent in 2005. But the level is still high and amounts to 277 million people.
"Absolute poverty" refers to those living on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day.
Slow progress in reducing poverty means the LDCs will not be able to achieve the first of the United Nations' Millennium Goals (MDGs): halving the proportion of those living on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day between 1990 and 2015.
The report also urged LDCs to diversify what they produce and sell on world markets to achieve sustainable economic development.
The 50 LDCs saw their values of exports climb by a collective 80 percent between 2004 and 2006 and recorded their highest rates of economic growth in 30 years, even surpassing the 7 percent target set by their governments and their development partners.
But their increased dependence on selling a few unsophisticated products -- primarily petroleum, low-technology manufactures, minerals, ores, metals and farm goods -- leaves them vulnerable to a reversal, the report warned.
Source:Xinhua
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