LONDON (AlertNet) - The cost of food is rising and prices will likely remain volatile at a time when the number of hungry people globally has topped one billion, the head of the United Nations' World Food Programme said on Wednesday.
"Risk is the new normal when it comes to food," Josette Sheeran told a news conference. "We believe that the volatility in price and supply is with us for the predictable future."
Excessive market speculation has been blamed for sending food and crude oil prices to record highs last year. Food scares sparked riots in many developing countries and bans of exporting food which roiled the flow of world trade.
Since last year's record levels, prices of staple commodities like rice, corn and wheat have fallen, but market watchers believe new rises are all but inevitable.
Prices of 80 percent of the commodities in the developing world that are tracked by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation are higher now than a year ago, Sheeran said.
Price volatility has also caused WFP to change the way it tracks commodity prices: the agency now updates them every month compared to annually before 2008.
Although a global recession has caused a fall in food prices, prices have risen again over the past few months, said Alex Evans, author of the report "The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st century" published by British think-tank Chatham House.
"They are back right about now where they were in July 2007, at which point there was already a great deal of concern about food prices. Energy or oil prices have done a very similar trajectory," Evans told the news conference.
"I think the volatility risk ... is a particular problem for us because it can create a short-term policy, it can create panic measures," he said, referring to the export restrictions.
Sheeran and Evans were speaking at the launch of a WFP-commissioned report "Climate change and hunger: responding to the challenges" while leaders from 190 nations held talks in Copenhagen to try to clinch a new pact on fighting climate change.
Studies show that 24 million more children are expected to be malnourished by 2050 because of climate change, Sheeran said. She added that 70 percent of natural disasters globally were climate-related, up by 50 percent compared to two decades ago.
The number of people affected by climate change each year is forecast to rise to over 600 million, while the overall annual global cost of climate change is expected to be more than $300 billion, Sheeran said without elaborating on the figures.
The United Nations suggests providing $10 billion per year for poorer nations between 2010 and 2012 for urgent measures to adjust to climate change. Advocacy groups say between $50 billion and $160 is needed each year by 2030 to fund adaptation to global warming, with some projections reaching as high as $350 billion.
Based on a U.N. target, rich nations aim to spend 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product on foreign aid but few live up to that promise. Evans said much more aid was needed to tackle the additional risks posed by climate change.
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