Calls for structural support from the ADB and other institutions were made in Hanoi this week by island states and other low-lying Asian nations where food supply problems are being exacerbated by global warming.
On top of rising production and transport costs, that affect all countries, freak weather conditions and rising sea levels are exacerbating food supply problems for Pacific islands and other coastal countries.
Odo Tevi, reserve bank governor of Vanuatu, said that as food import prices rise, the population – of under 250,000, mainly rural, residents – is forced to cut back on other consumption items.
The remote, volcanic archipelago in the Pacific is forced to import most of its food resources from Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere. And Vanuatu is in a reasonable good position compared to other islands such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, Tevi said.
“For other Pacific islands, climate change affects their weather patterns, their infrastructure and their agricultural yields. Fields get flooded and roads get washed away and not replaced.”
Tiofilusi Tiueti, the secretary for finance and national planning for Tonga, another Pacific Island state, told Emerging Markets that climate change is a serious problem. “We are low-lying, so a lot of our island is close to sea level. Climate change affects our crops, and therefore also our food security.”
The ADB could help more, Tiueti said. “We’d like to see the ADB help with food security as well as [...] infrastructure projects.”
Bangladesh minister of finance, Abul Maal Muhith, said that his country – with a much larger population but climate challenges as severe as those in the Pacific islands – needs to aim for full food security.
“This is an absolute priority for us,” he said. “We need to give people a level of security. We need to give people legal entitlements here, ensuring that we have maximum food prices, or pre-determined and fixed food prices.”
Food costs comprise up to 50% of household budgets in Bangladesh, and political leaders are watching food price inflation with concern. It rose by 11% year-on-year in March, according to figures from Bangladesh Bank. That compares poorly with core (non-food) prices, which rose just 4% year-on-year in March.
With Asia’s population set to rise to 5.5 billion or more over the next decade, regional political and economic leaders and thinkers need to find a way to ensure that everyone has enough to eat at a reasonable price. Food-surplus nations need to find a way to help food-deficient countries without holding them to financial ransom.
And this problem, particularly for frontier nations from tiny Pacific islands to subcontinent nations such as Bangladesh and Bhutan, is being aggravated by that other scourge of poorer and more structurally enfeebled nations, climate change.
Fan Shenggen, director-general of the International Food policy Research Institute, said: “In the long-run the impact of climate change will make food production more vulnerable and more stressed.”