Global food crisis: The World Bank warns of ‘human catastrophe’
The world is facing a "human catastrophe" from soaring food prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, warned the president of the World Bank, David Malpass.
In an interview with the BBC, he said that record rises in food prices would push hundreds of millions people into poverty and lower nutrition, if the crisis continues.
The World Bank calculates there could be a "huge" 37% jump in food prices.
This would hit the poor hardest, who will "eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling".
Malpass, who leads the institution charged with global alleviation of poverty, said the impact on the poor made it "an unfair kind of crisis... that was true also of Covid".
"It's a human catastrophe, meaning nutrition goes down. But then it also becomes a political challenge for governments who can't do anything about it, they didn't cause it and they see the prices going up," he said on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington on Wednesday.
The price rises are broad and deep, he said: "It's affecting food of all different kinds oils, grains, and then it gets into other crops, corn crops, because they go up when wheat goes up".
Malpass called for the release of food from large global stockpiles to help address the worsening food insecurity crisis.
He welcomed moves by India to sell food from its stockpiles and said similar steps by advanced economies would be helpful in adding to available supplies.
He said he expected the current food security crisis to last at least months and perhaps into next year.
He discouraged countries from subsidising production or capping prices.
The World Bank chief also warned of a knock on "crisis within a crisis" arising from the inability of developing countries to service their large pandemic debts, amid rising food and energy prices.
"This is a very real prospect. It's happening for some countries, we don't know how far it'll go. As many as 60% of the poorest countries right now are either in debt distress or at high risk of being in debt distress," he said.
"We have to be worried about a debt crisis, the best thing to do is to start early to act early on finding ways to reduce the debt burden for countries that are on have unsustainable debt, the longer you put it off, the worse it is," he added.
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