By Simon Tisdall
LONDON: Queues for petrol on British gas station forecourts appear to bear scant relation to ongoing killing, rape and mass refugee movements in eastern Congo. The unfolding humanitarian disaster in ungoverned Somalia likewise seems unconnected to Western taxpayers’ worries about falling mortgage lending and rising prices.
But as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out recently, it is those least able to cope who will be hardest hit by rocketing food and energy costs and a global economic slowdown. The world faced “the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale”, he said. In short, the poor will inherit the dearth.
Current developments in Congo vividly illustrate how interlinked these supposedly disparate problems are. And they offer clues to why, perhaps, the developed world should worry more about the unfortunates of North Kivu province and less about the motorists of British suburbia or the credit-squeezed homeowners of Peoria.
Despite an eastern Congo peace deal, which was signed in January, fighting is continuing in a country that has had more than its share. In a statement last month, 63 leading non-governmental organisations appealed for help. “Since the signing, scores of civilians have been killed, hundreds of women and girls raped, and many more children recruited into armed service.”
An estimated 1.1mn people are displaced in North and South Kivu, the joint statement said. “Malnutrition, cholera, malaria and other preventable diseases are taking their lives at an alarming rate ... This is a humanitarian catastrophe on an enormous scale.”
According to John Holmes, the UN’s humanitarian aid chief, the steep rises in food staple prices, plus factors such as higher fuel costs for transportation and farmers, are dramatically increasing the vulnerability of disadvantaged population groups such as those in the Kivus, whether or not they inhabit conflict zones. “Millions will eat less, millions will eat less well, millions will face extra nutritional stress,” he said.
That in turn could have “dramatic effects” on the mental and physical health of children, disease prevention and education because an ever greater proportion of income would be spent on food, Holmes said. At the same time, these pressures created social and political instability, sparking or exacerbating Congo-like conflicts over resources, land and water.
While countries such as France propose extra subsidies and protectionist measures to shelter their more affluent populations, belt-tightening is not an option at the end of the food chain. Economists say more than 1bn people live on $1 a day. In many developing countries, up to three-quarters of income is spent on food.
In El Salvador, for example, the poorest are eating only half as much as they did a year ago. At the same time, rice prices have reportedly risen 140% this year alone.
In Somalia, where the UN says 1.8mn people require humanitarian assistance and 700,000 people have fled the capital, Mogadishu, the agony of war, hunger and illness is being intensified by a protracted, devastating drought linked to global warming.
But this sort of problem is becoming the “new normal”. According to Holmes, nine out of 10 natural disasters are extreme weather-related. Rising sea levels, flooding, crop failures, famines and water shortages were creating 50mn more migrants every year.
Yet climate change is directly linked to the carbon-emitting, gas-guzzling, high-end consumerism of developed countries that now fret most about energy costs.
Solutions, whole or partial, are not entirely lacking. Ban wants to make a start at a food security summit in Rome this month and is calling on heads of state and government to rally round. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has no plans to attend. For the sake of both North Kivu and UK suburbia, he may have to think again, again. – Guardian News & Media