Pakistan calls for action plan to make food affordable

UNITED NATIONS:Pakistan has called for a concerted plan of action that must include emergency actions, including humanitarian aid, to enable severely stressed developing countries to provide affordable food to their peoples.
“It (the action plan) must also provide inputs to ensure larger food production in the near term, inter alia, to ensure supplies and moderate prices,” Ambassador Munir Akram told a high-level forum on sustainable development in New York on Thursday.
Speaking in a debate on agriculture, food and Africa, the Pakistan ambassador also called for addressing the underlying policy issues which have led to this food emergency in the first place, including agricultural policies that maintained subsidies by the rich while eroding food security for the poor, and diverted food for fuel.
Adequate resources and application of existing and emerging technologies were needed to enlarge sustainable food production in developing countries, he said in his presentation before the Commission on Sustainable Development, a body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Munir Akram said the plethora of development challenges facing the international community, including the surging prices of commodities, a credit crisis in the world’s largest economies, a slowdown in official development assistance and the danger of a new wave of protectionism, were all exacerbated in the developing world by the impact of climate change.
Calling for further equitable action in the area of technology, Ambassador Akram went on to say that no developing country could be pressed to give up reliance on the carbon economy, which was essential to ensure growth, until alternative and affordable solutions were demonstrated and made available to them.
They needed access to, and indigenous application of, technologies, notwithstanding the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. They also needed help to deploy available and emerging technologies effectively and guaranteed access to future technologies.