Food and Energy Crisis
Thursday, 19 June 2008
CNAS 8:30pm CNAI 8:30pm(Singapore time)
Global food prices are skyrocketing along with soaring fuel costs - but are cartels, export curbs, science and subsidies offering a way out?
Is there a solution as the silent tsunami sweeps across the world?
Join Melissa Hyak and her guests as they explore the link between rising food and fuel costs, and their implications.
Panel members:
Dr Asanga Gunawansa
Assistant Professor, Department of Building, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore
The Problem
The recent skyrocketing cost of world food prices is stoked by rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather and the ever growing demand for food from countries such as India and China.
According to the World Bank price of rice has more than doubled during the period March - April 2008. Further, the World Bank estimates that food prices have risen by 83 percent in the last three years alone.
Unrest over the food crisis has led to deaths in Cameroon and Haiti, and caused hungry textile workers to clash with police in Bangladesh.
According to Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, rising food costs threaten to cancel strides made toward the goal of cutting world poverty in half by 2015.
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Joergen Oerstroem Moeller
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Over the last 200 years the world has lived in an era of plenty. There has been enough of food, raw materials, energy with low prices stimulating industrialization and energy intensive societies. Water has not been scarce except in a few places and clean environment was not included in economic calculations. All this turns around right now. We move into an era of scarcity. Food prices will go up with more people and more people having money to pay for better food, the growing economies need more raw materials, demand for energy is on a steep upward curve, water is beginning to be scarce in many areas including some traditional food export regions and clean environment is on the agenda under the name of global warming/climate change. Put on top of this that if we try to solve one of these problems others will aggravate. We can for example move for desalination, but that requires energy. What will it mean for solidarity inside our countries? The only way to manage the threat of environmental degradation is to devise new forms of international governance, how do we do that?
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Assistant Professor Davin Chor
School of Economics, Singapore Management University
The current rise in world food and commodity prices has raised fears that the world may be facing an impending food and energy crisis, in which the poor in many developing countries will likely take the largest hit. A confluence of several forces has been driving this upward trend, namely the strong demand from fast-growing developing countries, coupled with tight supply conditions in world markets. Neither of these fundamental forces is likely to let up in the short term, which means that we cannot expect prices to recede anytime soon. For the longer-term outlook, technological advances are likely to hold the key to reversing these recent trends. It is crucial that the OECD countries take the lead now to channel R&D efforts towards improving agricultural productivity and inventing more fuel-efficient technologies, as well as to ensure the swift diffusion of any new best-practices that are developed.
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