Oxfam Warns of Soaring Food Prices

Climate change will drive up prices of wheat, maize and many other foods traded internationally, Oxfam warns. Photo courtesy: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images

Climate change's impact on future food prices is being underestimated, Oxfam warned in a report on Wednesday.

The development charity predicts that massive price spikes will be a devastating blow to the world's poorest people who today spend up to 75% of their income on food.

Its report, Extreme Weather, Extreme Price, suggests extreme weather events such as droughts and floods – made more likely by global warming – could drive up future food prices. Previous research has tended to consider gradual impacts of rising global temperatures, such as changing rainfall patterns.

I sponsor 4 World Vision children - a girl in Sierra Leone (the world's poorest nation), 2 boys in Democratic Republic of Congo (2nd poorest nation in the world), and a girl in Bolivia. The two boys are already suffering with food insecurity, food shortages, and lack of food options. One of my boys says he enjoys the two meals he gets a day; but, hates the famine. This young man is only eight. He shouldn't be worried about food at this age. None of them should - nor should their parents have to spend most of their meagre income to feed them when families have so many other places to spend their money raising a family.

Neither of the two boys had a birthday celebration this year as all their money goes to food. The only remembrance of their birthdays was the parcels I sent to them. This year, I am sending all four an extra monetary donation to help keep their tummies full for another year. The girls (Sierra Leone & Bolivia) seem to be doing better; but, the situation is not good.

Oxfam's research, commissioned by the charity and undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies, examines the impact of extreme weather scenarios on food prices in 2030. It warns that by that date the world could be even more vulnerable to the kind of drought happening today in the US – the worst in 60 years – with dependence on US exports of wheat and maize predicted to rise and climate change increasing the likelihood of extreme droughts in North America.


Watch Heather Coleman discus findings from the new Oxfam report. Video courtesy: Climate Desk

The research claimed that:

• Even under a conservative scenario another US drought in 2030 could raise the price of maize by as much as 140% over and above the average price of food in 2030, which is already likely to be double today's prices.

• Drought and flooding in southern Africa could increase the consumer price of maize and other coarse grains by as much as 120%. Price spikes of this magnitude today would mean the cost of a 25kg bag of corn meal – a staple which feeds poor families across Africa for about two weeks – would rocket from around $18 to $40.

• A nationwide drought in India and extensive flooding across south-east Asia could see the world market price of rice increase by 22%. This could lead to domestic spikes of up to 43% on top of longer term price rises in rice importing countries of such as Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

• Climate shocks in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to have an increasingly dramatic impact in 2030 as 95% of grains such as maize, millet and sorghum that are consumed in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to come from the region itself.

As well as affecting the world's poorest, such rises will also hit those on the lowest incomes in the UK, who already spend up to half their household budget on food, the report notes.

Oxfam's climate change policy adviser, Tim Gore, said: "Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns hold back crop production and cause steady price rises. But extreme weather events – like the current US drought – can wipe out entire harvests and trigger dramatic food price spikes. We will all feel the impact as prices spike but the poorest people will be hit hardest."

He said the world needed to wake up to the drastic consequences facing our food system of climate inaction: "As [greenhouse gas] emissions continue to soar, extreme weather in the US and elsewhere provides a glimpse of our future food system in a warming world. Our planet is heading for average global warming of 2.5–5C this century. It is time to face up to what this means for hunger and malnutrition for millions of people on our planet."

The report comes as UN talks aimed at tackling climate change are due to close in Bangkok on Wednesday with little sign of progress, while tomorrow the Food and Agriculture Organisation is due to publish further information on how the worst US drought in 60 years is impacting on global food prices.

New Sanitation System Being Tested in Haiti

Resident of an IDP settlement in Port-au-Prince receives a week's supply of biodegradable plastic bags being tested as toilets. Photo courtesy: Oxfam IRINnews

“Flying toilets” are common in slums worldwide: Residents unable to reach a latrine due to crowding, distance or insecurity, defecate in a plastic bag and then sling it over the rooftops. But in Haiti, aid teams are testing a specially treated bag designed to turn human feces into compost within weeks.

This is the first time the biodegradable single-use Peepoo bags are being tested in a post-disaster humanitarian response, according to Andy Bastable, public health engineering coordinator with Oxfam, which is evaluating the product at settlements of displaced people in the Delmas area of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

To date the Peepoo, which includes a chemical to break down waste for use as fertilizer, has been used in slum areas in Bangladesh and Kenya. Critics of the approach say by itself it does not resolve issues of privacy or hand-washing - essential in sanitation solutions - and there is no consumer incentive to use the bag.

An NGO project director working in urban sanitation who preferred anonymity said while the potential benefits are there in general public health terms, for the individual who can use any plastic bag for free it makes no difference.

The aid worker, whose work includes sanitation interventions in Nairobi’s largest slum, Kibera, said the product was “a lovely idea” but “a bit of a joke”.

At some sites where displaced people are living in Port-au-Prince, pit latrines commonly used in post-emergency situations are not feasible because of concrete or tarmac surfaces, a high water table or landowners prohibiting the digging, Oxfam’s Bastable told IRIN. One option in such settings is raised latrines, but US$20 per day per toilet to desludge gets quite expensive, and truck access to many of the sites is difficult, he said.

At one camp on a rubbish dump, International Rescue Committee workers dug nearly two metres and found no soil - only compacted garbage, said IRC’s Melissa Winkler.

Oxfam’s Bastable said: “We started thinking - what has been people’s sanitation practice before? Can we take what they do normally, systematize it and make it safer?”

For many in Port-au-Prince the odour-neutralizing bags, with gender-segregated stalls, hand-washing stations and bins regularly emptied by aid workers, are an improvement. Sanitation conditions were poor in Port-au-Prince before the 12 January earthquake and many people defecated in plastic bags, dumping them wherever they could.

Haiti is one of the few countries in the world where sanitation coverage for urban dwellers decreased between 1990 and 2006, according to the UN Children’s Fund and World Health Organization.

Excerpt from an Oxfam information sheet in a trial of the Peepoo composting toilet bag technology in Haiti. Photo courtesy: Oxfam IRINnews

Wilna Sinvry, 42, lives with her two children at the Delmas 31 camp, where residents received pictorial instructions on how to use and dispose of the bags. “Before the earthquake I would usually go in a black plastic bag and I would have to wake up at four in the morning to dump it in a ravine.”

Camilla Wirseen, Peepoo project director and one of the founders, said while Haiti is no longer in the initial response phase, Peepoo trials in Port-au-Prince will give useful information about the viability of the method in disaster response settings.

“It is a toilet we’re talking about, but it is also an entire sanitation system,” she told IRIN. “In disaster response situations, how would the bags be distributed, for example - airdropped if need be? With accompanying containers or without? How would collection happen? If it is a difficult to access area, could we dig a hole for disposing of the bags?”

Oxfam is finalizing its evaluation report, according to the NGO's Deepa Patel in Port-au-Prince. Recommendations include that storage requirements (such as temperature) must be spelled out and there should be a further study of cost effectiveness.

Oxfam and the NGO SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods) are also piloting compost toilets and other "ecological sanitation" techniques in Haiti.

Via IRINnews