By Ramesh Jaura
BONN, Apr 13 (IPS) - Germany's development ministry has initiated a process of intensive consultation with non-governmental organisations, researchers and scientists in a concerted bid to help ensure global food security.
The process was launched in Bonn this week at a workshop organised by the German ministry of economic cooperation and development (BMZ), in conjunction with two leading German Non Governmental Organisations - Confederation of Development Policy Organisations (VENRO) and 'Forum Environment and Development'.
The workshop was held nearly three months after Germany's development ministry declared 2000 the 'year of global food security'.
Making the announcement, Uschi Eid, Germany's deputy minister at the BMZ, said in January, "ensuring food security so that 790 million people in the developing world do not have to go hungry, will be a focal point of the activities of our ministry" this year.
The pledge was triggered by the nagging reality that 40 out of 100 inhabitants in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from seasonal or chronic shortage of food. A similar fate is shared by some 450 million people in South and Southeast Asia.
Addressing the workshop, Eid said: "The international community committed itself at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome to halve the number of those who hunger by 2015."
"The German government is very serious about this commitment. This has been reaffirmed (early April) by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the Euro-Africa Summit in Cairo," she added.
Underlining Germany's pledge, Eid announced that the cooperation and development ministry had decided to appoint a 'global food security coordinator' who will also be tasked with monitoring the situation in areas suffering from food scarcity.
The German cooperation and development ministry is of the view that appropriate measures taken in "the partner countries" - in regions affected by food insecurity - as well as "an intensive knowledge management" between governmental and non-governmental organisations would help alleviate the situation.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the number of starving people in the developing world has declined by 40 million, compared to 1990/1992.
Nevertheless, at the current rate of progress which involves a reduction of eight million undernourished people a year, there is no hope of meeting the goal the World Food Summit had set itself in 1996 - halving the number of those who hunger by 2015, says a recent FAO report.
The rationale being that in the first half of the last decade, only 37 countries achieved a reduction in the number of undernourished, totalling 100 million people. Across the rest of the developing world, the number of starving people increased by almost 60 million.
"Already now we have 790 million people who are affected by hunger," Eid told the workshop in Bonn, developing into a Centre of International Cooperation (CIC). Things would get worse when the global population increases by nearly one billion to 6.79 billion in 2010, and when 7.5 billion human beings are expected to inhabit the planet Earth in 2020.
Representatives of NGOs attending the workshop noted that, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), 97 percent of the world population increase takes place in the less developed regions.
The population of Asia is increasing by 50 million every year, that of Africa by 17 million, and of Latin America and the Caribbean by nearly eight million.
Africa has the highest population growth rate among all major regions (2.36 percent). Middle Africa, East Africa and West Africa have growth rates of 2.5 percent and more.
Europe, on the other hand, has the lowest growth rate (0.03 percent).
This lends urgency to the need to support rural development and provide for food security, deploying 'clean' technologies which take into account environmental considerations to protect the planet for future generations, said Eid.
The view was supported by VENRO representative Hans-Joachim Preuss and his colleague from Forum Environment and Development, Juergen Maier.
Workshop participants agreed on the pressing need for land reforms so that the farmers, who actually till the land, are freed from uncertainty regarding ownership. They also pleaded for empowering women to inherit land.
The two issues will draw the focus of an international conference next year in Bonn to which participants from developing countries are also expected.
Eid said it did not suffice to concentrate on technologies which increased food production. Rural development and food security should be built upon the potential of the people in the developing world.
Germany's deputy minister of economic cooperation and development also spoke of the need for a 'code of conduct' which ensured the people's right to food as a human right. At the same time, decentralisation and the rule of law were essential pre-requisites to food security.:
