On Climate Change's Margins, Biofuels Cause Food Price Rise for Poor, Bloomberg and WFP Agree

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, February 11 -- The subsidy for corn ethanol "raises food costs in the United States and around the world," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Inner City Press on Monday, saying that inevitably "people die" from increased food prices. Outside a UN climate change event, Bloomberg specifically criticized the "last energy bill" passed by Congress and signed by President Bush as having this impact. Video here, second question. He said that while subsidized corn ethanol does not generate more energy than it uses, sugar ethanol does, and yet "we tariff it."

            The head of the UN World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, asked by Inner City Press about the more global impact of biofuels, said they "present an opportunity and a challenge to the most vulnerable." While some farmers in Africa, she said, as happened before in Brazil, can grow income-producing crops on land not appropriate for food, it has an effect on global food costs. "It's the pricing of foodstuffs at fuel prices," she said, calling it "the new face of hunger."  Asked what the UN can or should do about the issue, she said that WFP for now is just trying to raise awareness about the rise in food prices. "When I was on  the High Level Panel" on the UN's so-called systemwide coherence, she said, she coined a phrase, "Nothing gets between WFP and a hungry child." But might biofuels?

            Ms. Sheeran also agreed to answer questions about the use of French and now Danish ships to defend WFP food deliveries to Somalia. It's not ideal, she said, but "an environmental where ships are taken and people are killed" left WFP down to one company to do business with when Ms. Sheeran took the reigns at WFP.  Inner City Press asked, what company? "The one that did it," Ms. Sheeran answered.

            She said that while WFP is managing to deliver needed food inside Kenya itself, reports that she reviews daily show continued threat to Kenya's status as a delivery hub, for WFP, for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Southern Sudan. Things are piled up at the port, she said, leading to a search for a back-up. Asked where, she said Tanzania, adding that it too is almost at full capacity.

UN's Ban Ki-moon visits biofuel harvest in Brazil

            Ms. Sheeran has yet to hold a press conference at UN Headquarters since the controversies that surrounded her nomination by the Bush administration in late 2006. While her answers Monday were appreciated, regular question-and-answer with the heads of UN funds and programs is need now more than ever.

A footnote on Q&A: while Mayor Bloomberg took a dozen questions in the UN's second floor hallway, it appeared to some that the first question was a plant. Bloomberg pointed at a correspondent in the back, who asked if he had been surprised that New York City was using tropical hardwood for park benches. Bloomberg launched into his announcement of the day, prefaced by "for those of you who don't know," which obviously did not include the first questioner he selected. He praised the UN's recent cooperation on fire safety and security. We'll have more on this.

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These reports are also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

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