Updated on
Summary
The United Nations (UN) opened its world food summit on Monday by stressing that a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger, with rising temperatures threatening farm output in poor countries.Government leaders and officials met in Rome for a three-day UN summit on how to help developing countries feed themselves, but anti-poverty campaigners were already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.The sense of scepticism deepened at the weekend, when US President Barack Obama and other leaders supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, though European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action.There can be no food security without climate security, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Rome summit. Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change, he said.Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in potential agricultural productivity if temperatures rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius, FAO says.Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed. With the world's hungry topping one billion for the first time in history, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation had called the summit in the hope that leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total -- its 1980 level -- from 5 percent now. That would amount to 44 billion US dollars a year, up from 7.9 billion dollars now, and compared with 365 billion dollars of support for farmers in rich countries.Demonstrators outside the FAO building demanded more action from the UN body and the leaders attending the summit.
