The agencies laid out the problem:

Two interconnected problems must be tackled: the immediate issue of some high food prices, which can impact heavily on food import-dependent countries and on the poorest people; and the long-term issue of how we produce, trade and consume food in an age of increasing population, demand and climate change.

Among them, the agencies believe that groups they have helped create can:

facilitate coordinated policy responses by the major world producers and traders of key cereals and soybeans in the event of market upheavals.

Those solutions would mean cooperation from drought ravaged countries that range from the United States to smaller nations in Africa and from Russia to parts of China. These nations have never cooperated to bring down food prices, and they will not. The direct interests of each nation involve the financial situations of their own farmers and the inflation that high food prices can produce.

The problems are made even more complex because some farmers have received a bumper crop of profits due to high food prices or the pay out of crop insurance. In other nations, where farmers have no means to financially survive the effects of drought, many will be driven out of the business. Put briefly, the U.N. goal which is to ”both to reduce and to spread that risk” is founded on cooperation among interests that in many cases are opposed to one another. Feeding the world’s poor is not a priority of many farming interests. In many cases, the desire for profit is.

As part of the statement of the three agencies, they point out:

We are at risk because only a handful of nations are large producers of staple food commodities, and when they are affected, so is everyone else.

Those nations are affected, and what they can do for others is, in many cases, not a priority at all.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Waving children at the Chikondi and Mphatso Orphanage. © Jonathan Nicholson/Students for Kids International Project

Team 1; have been working at the Chikondi & Mphatso Orphanage since June 5^th.

In tandem with Nature’s Gift, Team 1 have started an intervention. The intervention was initiated by Elizabeth and Ross who said ‘The project is about knowledge transfer and in the spirit of giving a fisher a net, rather than fishes.’ Some of the Nature’s Gift partnership with SKIP will be advocating crop rotation, which will enable crops to be grown all year round.

A number of questions were raised by SKIP National and SKIP Glasgow about the nature of the intervention and about permaculture. The plans for permaculture were embryonic before the arrival of SKIP this year so we needed to wait until the volunteers had developed them further and put them into action. However, on June 27^th, the project was given clearance and will commence in the near future.

Team 1 have also been helping with jobs around the orphanage. Tony, who has carpentry skills, has started some roof repairs for the kitchen to allow better ventilation. Christina has been taking the lead on sex education whilst Tony and Elizabeth have been supporting the tooth brushing sessions.

Soon into this year’s SKIP Glasgow trip, Team 1 decided that an improvement to the children’s play area was needed. For this reason, Team 1 initiated a project to renovate the unsafe see-saw and do a couple of other improvements. Perseverance and patience was needed from the team was needed as both SKIP National and SKIP Glasgow had to give their approval and release the funds for the metal tubing, timber, paint and other materials. Local materials and builders will be used creating employment for local people as well as giving the day centre the added bonus of being not only a place of learning, but a safe place of fun too.

The basketball hoop has no net and three swings are missing, leaving only one to swing on. © Jonathan Nicholson/SKIP

The time for Team 1 at the orphanage is now coming to an end. They will be off to do as they wish, whether that is heading back to the United Kingdom straight away or, travelling around Africa some more to take in the sights. However, this is not the end of the SKIP participation as Bernice, Duncan, Jonathan, Lauren and Sarah (Team 2) will be taking over to consolidate the work of Team 1 and put in place their own program(s) as needed.

Farewell Team 1, have a safe journey home and thank you for your free time, wishing you all the best in the future.

More information

IFAD: http://www.ifad.org/

An IFAD report from 2008 about food prices in Malawi: http://www.ifad.org/events/gc/31/roundtable/food.pdf

An IMF report: http://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2011/africanfisc/pdf/masanjala.pdf

Malawi’s Agricultural Development Agenda: http://www.caadp.net/pdf/Investment%20plan%20-%20Malawi.pdf

Malawi’s 2011 Annual Economic Report: http://psip.malawi.gov.mw/reports/docs/Economic_Report_2011.pdf

Nature’s Gift: http://www.naturesgift.org/

A news report about irrigation farming in Lilongwe: http://www.demotix.com/news/760697/irrigation-farming-malawi

Indian pastoralist leaders hand over petition about Livestock Keepers’ Rights to Dr. Sadana of the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources

There is no shortage of global initiatives in the livestock sector. There is of course the Global Agenda of Action towards sustainable livestock sector development - we wrote about it previously. But there is also the Global Alliance for a safer, fairer and more sustainable livestock sector that apparently was launched during a meeting at ILRI in March. Notable is the overlap in the big organisations that are involved: FAO, ILRI, and Worldbank. Others in the Global Alliance are IFAD, OIE (World Organisation of Animal Health), the African Union’s Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One wonders about the reasons behind these coalitions. And we also wonder why livestock keepers are not (yet) officially recognised or mentioned as a stakeholder group in these processes which include governments, research institutions, private sector and NGOs, but no representatives of the 600-800 million poor livetsock keepers in the world. The LIFE Network is of course working and advocating to change this and presented a statement to this effect in the 23rd meeting of the Commission on Agriculture, a body that is composed of government representatives, and that was asked to gives its backing to the GAA and its secretariat being hosted by FAO for the time being. The statement was also on behalf of CELEP, the Coalition of European Lobbies for East African Pastoralism. We are sure that this was taken note of and will continue to pursue the issue. In the next few weeks this blog will provide some more background information about “small-scale livestock keepers” and why they are so important to listen to. Watch out for the next post!

Rome, 2 April 2012 - The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the European Union (EU) have successfully completed the €20 million Food Facility (EUFF) Programme in West Africa. The Programme ran over a period of eighteen months, covering the West African countries of Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Senegal.

“Together with our partners, the Economic Community of West African States and the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics, we have improved the access to high quality seeds for smallholder farmers in the region and have trained them in production and farming techniques,” said Adriane Del Torto, IFAD’s project coordinator for the EUFF in West Africa, at a workshop held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. “This has supported more than 200 000 rural families to achieve higher yields, increase their income and improve their living conditions.”

The €1 billion EUFF was created as a response to the soaring food prices in developing in countries between 2007-2008, to fund projects that would improve  access to agricultural inputs and services, increase the agricultural productive capacity and address the basic food needs in the West African states.

“With the Food Facility, we have not only provided immediate relief but have sustainably contributed to improve the food security situation in West Africa,” said Didier Nils, Representative of the EU in Côte d’Ivoire. “By building the capacity of farmer organizations and seed producers and by introducing improved production techniques and seed varieties, we have ensured that the impact of our joint work does not end with the closing of the programme but continues in the long term.”

Building on existing IFAD-supported projects and considering national food security strategies, the funds provided by the EU for the West Africa programme, were among others utilized to introduce the ‘minisett technology’ in Ghana. This technology enables smallholders to produce yam seeds with less input and higher yields than traditional methods. In Côte d’Ivoire, the implementing partners established a process to produce certified rice and maize seeds to ensure use of quality seeds. In Mali and Senegal, the establishment of producer cooperatives helped to refill the seed stocks of rice in Mali and groundnuts in Senegal, meeting the increasing demand for quality seeds. Research and biotechnology institutes were involved in the programme and helped improve the quality and variety of seeds in Benin.

Press release No.: IFAD/28/2012 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested about US$13.7 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries through projects empowering about 405 million people to break out of poverty, thereby helping to create vibrant rural communities. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the United Nation’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 168 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Related articles

• Experts Meet to Discuss Remedies to Food Price Volatility in West Africa (resakss.wordpress.com)
• Gates announces $200M in agricultural grants; criticizes current efforts as outdated (bizjournals.com)

24-27.01.2012:

1. To obtain guidance in the conduction of a regional study on the role of water interventions to improve rural livelihoods in the East-, South- and Southeast Asia;
2. To discuss with the national consultants/partners on the methodology, data requirement and availability, structure of the report and timeframe of the national study; and
3. To officially “kick-off” the regional study on the above mentioned topic.

Participants for a group photo

More than 30 participants, who joined the workshop, were regional experts, national consultants/partners including experts from FAO, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and regional and international organizations from countries in the region and from Europe. The national study will be conducted in Bangladesh (Northeast Region), Cambodia, China (Hunan province), India (Jharkhand State) and Sri Lanka.

CEDAC was invited to conduct the national study in Cambodia with myself as Team Leader. The activities which will be implemented by our team are as following:

• Contextualize study methodology as applicable to Cambodian context;
• Literature review and data collection and analysis on water, rural poverty and livelihoods issues
• Implementation of national consultation workshop; and
• Report on water and its intervention on rural smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in Cambodia.

During the workshop, I have made two brief presentations addressing the country setting, the water related issues, factors affecting smallholder farmers, government’s plan on irrigation, potential water interventions on rural livelihoods and methodological framework for the country level study. It was a real workshop, where 60% of the time was spent in group works, discussions and sharing of knowledge, expertise and experiences. It is important to note that among 14 million population, 80 % of Cambodians are subsistent farmers, 88 % of the poor are living in rural areas, 25% of the households headed by women, 26 % of the population live under the national poverty line (U$ 1/day), around 70% are under 30 years old, and ~ 150.000-250.000 new entrants joining the labor force each year.

In the group discussion

The outcome of this regional study will be a Publication on water interventions for improving smallholder farming and rural livelihoods, which will also address especially the linkage between water and rural poverty in Asia. The document could be a useful tool for policy makers and/or decision makers, researchers and all other stakeholders in defining policy and strategy to contribute to poverty alleviation in countries across the region. The study is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

As reference: similar study was conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa a few years ago. The results were edited by Jean-Marc Faures and Guido Santini, FAO Land and Water Division, and published by IFAD and FAO under the title: Water and the Rural Poor: Interventions for Improving Livelihoods in Su-Saharan Africa; Rome, 2008.

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) said the Committee aims to be “the most inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all relevant stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition for all. In its role as the cornerstone of the global governance of agriculture and food security, the CFS will be more effective in facing challenges to food security”.

I expected that now at least, when the price of food staples is rising the way it did in 2007, the FAO and its constellation of agencies and committees and task forces would quit moralising and get down to naming names and naming reasons for the rise in prices. After all, the FAO food price index is relied on by national governments, traders and commodity markets – all for different reasons of course. It’s absurd to imagine that FAO analysts cannot see the reason why those indices move.

But if you read FAO statements and press releases, it sounds as though the problems they are struggling to describe in real terms have nothing whatsoever to do with things like trade, speculative trading, hoarding, price gounging, dumping, trade rules, tariffs, embargoes and other instruments designed to beggar national neighbours and reinforce trading blocs.

The FAO still refuses to say that market forces – call it what you will, free market forces or speculative trade or consumerist economics – is very largely responsible for food shortages and food price spikes all over the world. If this 36th session of the Committee on World Food Security cannot, will not or dare not speak the truth, it may as well pack up and go home and save some money by disbanding.

As for the statements, sorry but we’ve heard it all before in varying shades of myopic optimism:

1) FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said “Global problems demand global as well as local solutions. The renewed CFS constitutes the required platform for debating global complex problems and reaching consensus on solutions.”

2) “This week marks the launch of a strategically coordinated global effort to draw on the combined strengths of all stakeholders engaged in the fight against global hunger,” said World Food Programme  (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

3) International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) vice-resident Yukiko Omura said: “Investing in small farmers — improving their access to land, to appropriate technology, to financial services and markets, and responding to their other requirements — is the most effective way to generate a broad-based movement out of poverty and hunger.”

Messers Diouf, Sheeran and Omura, set aside your prepared statements and summon up the courage to tell the countries which support the FAO the truth about global food prices. Tell them about the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and free trade agreements and the conditions attached to development aid. Help your agencies do their work by being honest about the problem.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Ghana on Wednesday strengthened their partnership by signing an agreement that will enable IFAD have a permanent office presence in Ghana.

IFAD is a United Nations multilateral funding agency with a focus on improving the lives of the rural poor. It has operated in Ghana over the last 30 years.

Dr Kanayo Felix Nwanze, President of IFAD signed the agreement on behalf of his organization, while Dr Kwabena Duffuor, Ghana’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning signed on government’s behalf. Mr Kwasi Ahwoi, Minister of Food and Agriculture witnessed the signing.

Dr Nwanze said the establishment of a Ghana country office provides the government with the opportunity to strengthen its partnership with IFAD and improve the implementation and performance of IFAD supported projects in Ghana.

Expressing satisfaction with how Ghana has implemented IFAD supported programme so far, he announced the 60 million-dollar support for the Rural Enterprises Programme which is expected to cover all the districts in the country.

The Rural Enterprises Programme is a project that seeks to boost entrepreneurship in rural areas; the first phase of the project which will end next was successfully implemented in 65 districts in the country.

Other programmes supported by IFAD are the Northern Region Poverty Reduction Project, The Roots and Tuber Improvement and Marketing Project, the Northern Rural Growth Project and the Rural Agricultural Finance Project.

Dr Nwanze said it important that government make agriculture a top-most priority in the country’s development agenda and stressed the need to focus on the whole value chain of agriculture and not just food production.

“Focusing on the value chain of agriculture means paying attention not just to growing of food stuff but also how to add value to the produce and the entire process involved,” he explained.

Dr Nwanze who had earlier toured selected project sites in the Eastern region, said what he saw on the field meant that Ghana was on track and urged the government to aim to get the utmost benefit from agricultural.

“It is not enough to move a farmer from earning one dollar a day to earning two dollars; farmers should be able to earn a decent income that would make their lives more comfortable.”

He however expressed concern about the slow rate of disbursement and expressed hope that the government would increase the rate of disbursement to make agriculture more efficient.

Dr Nwanze further advised government to channel the expected oil revenue into building infrastructure and the development of the agricultural industry.

Dr Duffuor assured the IFAD president that government will use the oil revenue to develop other sectors of the economy.

“With the exploration of oil in commercial quantities other sectors like the agricultural sector should even grow bigger, government intends to make the oil a blessing for the country and not a curse,” he said.

Dr Duffuor noted that gains made in the country’s economy could be credited to the agric sector and said agric created more jobs for the youth than other sectors.

Who Created the MPAT?
The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment (MPA) Project, which birthed the MPAT, was conceptualized in 2007, launched in 2008, and funded through an Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI) grant, IFAD-supported projects, and government entities in China and India. IFAD’s purpose in leading this effort was to develop  a new tool for rural poverty assessment. (22)

Why Was the MPAT Created?
Simply put, if policy makers, program designers, and government officials want to develop effective interventions to reduce poverty, they must understand its underlying causes, or why people are poor, in a holistic, context-specific way.  The creators of the MPAT assert that income-focused measures of poverty do not adequately capture the complexity of poverty.  Consequently, a multidimensional approach is more appropriate. The MPAT was designed to inform an understanding of rural poverty that will lead to effective action. (18)

Sounds Good, But What Does the MPAT Do Exactly?
The MPAT aims to provide an overview of what “human well being” looks like by identifying the constraints that mire people in poverty. In other words, the tool captures the dimensions of rural poverty, and by extension, the elements critical to its eradication. It also strives to reflect the 21st century challenges posed to today’s rural livelihoods, such as climate change and sociopolitical conflict. (26)

According to the creators,”The MPAT measures people’s capacity to do by focusing on key aspects and indicators of the domains essential to an enabling environment within which people are sufficiently free from their immediate needs, and therefore in a position to more successfully pursue their higher needs and, ultimately, their wants” [Cohen, in press]. (26)

Okay, And How Does It Do That?
The MPAT uses the MPAT Household Survey and the MPAT Village Survey to collect data on “the ten dimensions of rural livelihoods, highlighting where additional support or interventions are likely to be most needed.” (7) Responses from the survey data are given values that aggregate first into sub components, and then into ten larger components.  (20)  It is important to note that the MPAT is described as a thematic indicator, defined as “a grouping of indicators that measures values similar to a common theme or concept” rather than a composite indicator, which refers to “an amalgamation of different indicator values into a single value, or index, which seeks to represent those individual indicators.” (20) Why? Because one uses a thematic indicator to “understand a general construct, [without having] the values from each element blended together into one value.” (36) However, each of the  MPAT’s dimensions is its own composite indicator, even though they are not aggregated into a single index. (It goes without saying that I’ll have to return to this point when I present my version of MPAT vs. MPI: The Smackdown.)

The first six components of the MPAT are meant to represent critical needs, and as such are derived from Basic Needs theory (Streeten and Burki,1978, Streeten et al., 1981, Maslow, 1943). They are: food & nutrition security, domestic water supply, health & health care, sanitation & hygiene, housing, clothing & energy, and education.  (27-28)

The last four “go beyond immediate physical and cultural needs and address fundamental dimensions of rural livelihoods, life and well-being” as well as some the modern day challenges described earlier. (29) They are: farm assets, non-farm assets, exposure & resilience to shocks, and gender & social equality (29-30).

Because the MPAT is meant to provide an overview of rural poverty, it is necessary examine the underlying data and return to the field with context-specific tools to get the real story. (18) (Sound familiar?). To enable this, the MPAT survey can be customized to support additional data collection.

Why is the MPAT Built The Way It Is?
I’m glad you asked.  Essentially, it goes back to the reason why poverty reduction schemes are developed. It’s probably fair to say (or at least the MPAT creators think so) that most of these efforts are designed to help the poor help themselves out of poverty. In order to do so, it is necessary to create an “enabling environment” that will allow them to do so.  (24, 25) However, if people are struggling to meet their essential needs (Think Maslow’s hierarchy, y’all), then it’s difficult to address other challenges. The MPAT is meant to represent a “core set” of needs that once met, can serve as a platform to address others. In this sense, the MPAT is complementary to (but not based on) Sen’s Capabilities Approach. (25)

Great, But What’s the Real Value Add Here?
For me, this is the kicker. The folks who created the MPAT emphasized the importance of giving voice to the perspectives of the rural poor about their own poverty and translating this through a “quantitative lens”, i.e. the MPAT Household survey, in a way that would stimulate action.  (10-11, 36, 119) Additionally, the MPAT is both broad enough to reflect most rural livelihoods but specific enough to be provide useful information about particular contexts. (18)

Honestly, it’s times like these that I wish I were a development economist, or was really good friends with one. Any development economists out there want to be my friend? Sorry, that was a little desperate-sounding. In any case, if anyone has any additional light to shed on the MPA, I’m happy to be enlightened (as would Stephanie Jayne, I’m sure.) In the meantime, I’ll take a stab at comparing the MPAT and the MPI. Apparently, I like to live dangerously.

Source for Citations:

Cohen, A. (2009). The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool: Design, development and application of a new framework for measuring rural poverty

We are now seeing increasing pressure for private sector development in India – and the rest of Asia-Pacific. Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, an independent research unit concerned with water in India (they are based in Madhya Pradesh) says that this pressure is being mounted mainly by two influential international financial institutions: the World Bank and its regional partner, the Asian Development Bank. The World Bank gives funds, advice, training and technical assistance to governments and the private sector to implement privatisation.

Four entities allow the World Bank to undertake various functions. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) lends directly to the private sector and can even purchase equity in private companies. The Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) seeks to improve the quality of infrastructure through private participation. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) insures the private sector against commercial and political risk. The International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) takes charge of disputes between investors and states. The Bank also has some other mechanisms that promote its activities in India including Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Water and Sanitation for Urban Poor (WSUP), Water for Asian Cities (WAC) and others. The World Bank’s funding partners include the JBIC, AusAid, GTZ, USAID, DFID, UN-Habitat and the ADB.

More growth in large cities and towns, and urbanisation becoming a dominant land use pattern in more districts of India mean that the industrial, residential and municipal demands for water are rising quickly. India’s Central Pollution Control Board (an agency of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India) has released its ‘Observation on trend of Water Supply, Wastewater Generation in Cities and Towns’. Here are its main comments and highlights. I’ve left the language as it is – the import is what counts.

From The Economist's special report on water, 22 May 2010: Global water sources

“In decade of 90’s the growth of cities is observed is 33% while the growth of the decade in beginning of millennium is slowed down. Metropolitan cities is increased from 3 to 6 Nos. from 80’s to 2008. Class-I cities increase from 37 to 53 Nos. Class-II towns increase from 22 to 35. This trend indicates that all type of cities has grown in the decade of 90’s.”

Findings and Recommendations

• Since the cities are growing, the population is enhanced from 30 million to 48 million.
• Consequently water supply has been increased approximately twice in magnitude from 4,970 MLD (million litres per day) to 8,782 MLD.
• Sewage generation has risen 38%.
• Comparing the data of decades of 90’s to 2008, it is indicated that coastal cities and towns are not growing significantly.
• Treatment capacity of sewage in comparison to decade of 80’s to until now has increased almost double (93%).
• There are 498 Class-I Cities having population of 257 million and 410 Class-II Towns having population in India.
• Total water supply including all class-I cities and class-II town in India is 48,093.88 MLD.

The CPCB says that wastewater generation from all class I cities and class II towns is 38,254 MLD whereas the installed treatment capacity is 11,787 MLD, which means that no more than a maximum of 31% of total sewage generated can be treated. (If the question is ‘where does the rest go?’, the CPCB answers that too in its report.) “This evidently indicates ominous position of sewage treatment, which is the main source of pollution of rivers and lakes,” warns the CPCB report. “To improve the water quality of rivers and lakes, there is an urgent need to increase sewage treatment capacity and its optimum utilisation.”

The CPCB, which thankfully still has a reputation for straight talking, has advised India’s municipalities and town administrations to “set up a very thoughtful action plan to fill this gap in a minimum time frame”. The CPCB has suggested that large cities in which and from which the pollution problem is more severe, cities/towns whose effluents and sewage are polluting rivers and water bodies “will be required to be taken up on priority basis in first phase”. Why is the CPCB so insistent? Quite simply, it says there is an “urgency of preventing pollution of our water bodies and preserving our precious water resources”.

But even in the India of non-city and non-town landscapes, there are plans being hatched by the would-be water merchants. An indication of the mischief afoot comes from a report righteously entitled ‘Pro-Poor Financial Services for Rural Water: Linking the Water Sector to Rural Finance’. (If so many good deeds are ‘pro-poor’ nowadays how come the ranks of the do-gooders is only increasing?) Here is what it says: “Previous studies suggest that a considerable demand for pro-poor financial services for water in rural areas remains unmet. The number of potential microfinance clients in rural areas for investments in water supply is estimated to be 5.0 million in East/Southeast Asia, 10.3 million in South Asia, and 3.1 million in sub-Saharan Africa.” Those three numbers get to the heart of the matter.

The report continues: “Concerning microloans for rural sanitation, there are 17 million potential clients in East/ Southeast Asia, 30.8 million in South Asia, and 4.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa. In total, the potential demand for micro-loans in these three regions is estimated at US $ 1.5 billion in the case of rural water supply, and US $ 5 billion in the case of rural sanitation. The challenge is how to unlock this latent demand and turn it into an effective process.” The authors make no bones about it, the riches at the bottom of the water table is what they’re after. And who are the authors? The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (well-known as GTZ in Asia, and which I was surprised to learn is a GmbH), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and of course the World Bank.

Cover of The Economist's special report on water, 22 May 2010

The water merchants have their cheerleading squad in place in the form of a pliant media, and The Economist has obliged by bringing out one of its typically characterless ‘surveys’, as it likes to call them. It is a special report on water (the 22 May 2010 issue) and the subject is dealt with in the sycophantic manner that the weekly reserves for the captains of industry. “Yet even if it takes two litres of groundwater to produce a litre of bottled water, companies like CocaCola and PepsiCo are hardly significant users compared with farmers and even many industrial producers.” (Hear, hear, who needs those pesky farmers anyway?) “PepsiCo has nevertheless become the first big company to declare its support for the human right to water. For its part, CocaCola is one of a consortium of companies that in 2008 formed the 2030 Water Resources Group, which strives to deal with the issue of water scarcity. Last year it commissioned a consultancy, McKinsey, to produce a report on the economics of a range of solutions.” This transatlantic weekly, once upon a time British, puts in a word for big dams too: “Dams and reservoirs certainly need constant repairs and careful maintenance and do not always get them, usually because the necessary institutions are not in place.”

Who are operating as water merchants and what do they want? There are several North American / West European companies now in India: Ondeo-Degrement, Veolia Environnement, Saur of France, RWE/Thames Water of Germany and the UK Bechtel, Enron (US), Compagnie Generale des Eaux (CGE). Indian companies are going to either compete with them, or join them – Tata subsidiary Jamshedpur Utilities and Services Company (JUSCO), IVRCL Infrastructures and Projects, Mahindra Infrastructure Ltd., IL&FS.

Surat, Gujarat: Fishing boats near the mouth of the Tapi river

The foreign multinationals are involved in several projects across the country. Compagnie Generale des Eaux (CGE) is operating urban water supply project in Hubli-Dharwad in Karnataka. Veolia is operating water and wastewater plant in Nagpur in Maharashtra and it has also formed a joint venture with JUSCO. Ondeo-Degremont has won contracts to construct water treatment plants in Mumbai and Chennai and it is also operating a wastewater treatment plant in Delhi. Thames Water was involved in a leak reduction project in Bangalore while United Utilities and Bechtel are partners in the Tiruppur project. JUSCO has projects in Jamshedpur, Bhopal, Kolkata and Adityapur. IVRCL is working on a wastewater treatment project in Alandur, desalination in Chennai and solid waste management in Tiruppur. IL&FS is involved in various projects in Haldia, Tiruppur, Vishakhapatnam and municipal waste processing facilities in Delhi and Ajmer, Rajasthan.

The CPCB has outlined the water, sewage and pollution tasks for cities, but its worries are going to be transformed into “a challenge to unlock latent demand” by the multilateral lending organisations on the one hand and the global water merchants (together with their Indian partners). Already deficit in terms of civic infrastructure and struggling with yawning gaps in the provision of healthcare and education, India’s towns and small cities will pass the burden of water profiteering on to those who can’t afford it. They leave the rural districts to earn a living in the cities, when their water rupee gets squeezed down to the last drop, where will they go then?

French Red Cross Worker Kidnapped in Darfur

A French national, Gauthier Lefevre, was taken hostage while working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Western Darfur.  Mr. Lefevre was returning from a trip to upgrade the water supply of a remote village when his marked ICRC vehicle was stopped by gunmen.  There were several ICRC employees in the vehicle, but Mr. Lefevre was the only one taken hostage.  The identity  and affiliation of the kidnappers is unknown at this point in time.

USAID Signs Statement on Family Planning After Abortion

On Wednesday, USAID signed a consensus statement with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the International Confederation of Midwives, and the International Council of Nurses that emphasizes the importance of family planning in post abortion care.  Dr. Scott Radloff, the director of USAID’s Office of Population/Reproductive Health pushed for “universal access to post abortion and postpartum family planning” noting the “clear evidence that family planning and pregnancy spacing not only reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion, but also lower morbidity and mortality rates of women, neonates, infants, and children.”

UN Report Supports Lowering Barriers to  Remittances to Africa

The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development released a report arguing that restrictive laws and high fees prevent Africans around the world from sending money to friends and relatives in Africa.  Africa receives $300 billion in remittances each year, more than foreign direct investment and development aid.  Western Union and Money Gram control almost 65% of the places n Africa that payments can be picked up and can charge up to 25% of the amount sent.  The report claims that deregulating the industry to allow microfinance banks and other institutions to receive remittance payments would make it easier to pick up payments and reduce the cost of sending money by increasing competition.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced that he will lead a high-powered task force to coordinate the efforts of the United Nations system in addressing the global crisis arising from the surge in food prices.

The Task Force on the Global Food Crisis will bring together the heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes and the Bretton Woods institutions, as well as experts within the UN and leading authorities from the international community.

The group will have two coordinators – Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes in New York and Senior UN System Influenza Coordinator David Nabarro in Geneva – and expects to meet in the first week of May.

The announcement came after a two-day meeting of the Chief Executive Board (CEB) – which brings together 27 heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes – chaired by the Secretary-General in the Swiss city of Bern.

In a press communiqué issued following the meeting, the CEB called on the international community to urgently provide the $755 million in emergency funds needed for the UN to feed millions of hungry people worldwide, as the first of a series of concrete measures to be taken.

“We see mounting hunger and increasing evidence of malnutrition which has severely strained the capacities of humanitarian agencies to meet humanitarian needs, especially as promised funding has not yet materialized,” Mr. Ban told a news conference in Bern.

He warned that “without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale.”

Protests and riots have broken out in some countries over the rising cost of many basic foods, such as rice, wheat and corn. Mr. Ban noted that escalating energy prices, lack of investment in agriculture, increasing demand, trade distortion subsidies and recurrent bad weather are among the reasons for the surge in prices.

The food crisis “threatens to undo all our good work,” Mr. Ban noted later in the day in a lecture delivered in Geneva, the first of a series organized by the UN office there and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

“If not managed properly, it could touch off a cascade of related crises – affecting trade, economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,” he said.

In addition to the immediate priority of feeding the hungry, Mr. Ban emphasized the need to “ensure food for tomorrow,” by giving small farmers the support they need to assure their next harvest.

UN agencies are already taking concrete measures to address the crisis. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has proposed an emergency initiative to provide low-income countries with the seeds and inputs to boost production and is calling for $1.7 billion in funding.

In addition, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is making available an additional $200 million to poor farmers in the most affected countries to boost food production.

“I am confident that we can deal with the global food crisis. We have the resources. We have the knowledge. We know what to do. We should therefore consider this not only as a problem but also as an opportunity,” the Secretary-General added, as he called on world leaders to attend the High-Level Conference on Food Security, to be held in Rome from 3 to 5 June.

Past U.N. stories on this issue:
Soaring food prices jeopardizing UN’s ability to feed the world’s hungry