U.N. Chief Urges Immediate Measures To Fight Food Crisis

New York, NY (AHN) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called for both immediate and long-term measures to check the growing global food crisis.

He also warned that the crisis could not only push millions of people deeper into poverty but also have larger political and security implications.

"The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions," he told a joint meeting in New York of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), according to a U.N. press statement.

Outlining five key themes, the U.N. chief called for building consensus around measures on development financing that would lead to more stable and predictable long-term resource flows to developing countries.

Middle-income countries need better market access to foster their comparative advantages as well as technical assistance and knowledge sharing to help address critical gaps in their development processes, he observed.

Ki-Moon appealed for increased investment and technology transfer from donors to help the least developed countries broaden their exports through diversification and economic capacity-building.

He called for "innovative and robust regulation to protect financial systems and sustain continued growth and expansion," warning that regulatory checks and balances have failed to keep pace with the "enormous growth" of recent years.

Long-term global economic growth and sustainable development is imperiled by climate change, he finally noted. "Developing countries need external assistance - especially better technology and increased financing - to rise to this challenge."