UN chief to chair first food task force meeting on Monday

"UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to chair the first meeting of the UN Task Force on the Global Food Crisis on Monday, the UN announced Friday.  It will bring together representatives from across the UN system to discuss a global response to rising food prices, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters at the UN Headquarters. [Xinhua]

Meanwhile, the secretary-general has sent out urgent letters of invitation to all heads of state of UN member countries to join him in next month’s meeting in Rome to discuss short-term and long-term strategies to address the global food crisis, she added. [Associated Press of Pakistan]

The UN chief said early this week that he would get the task force on the global food crisis “moving at full speed,” since an urgent response is required for the worldwide emergency….The group brings together the heads of key UN agencies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as experts from the around the globe. [Xinhua]

Ban urged countries to look at the food crisis not just in terms of what should be done in the short term but to consider dealing with its root causes -- such as trade practices that artificially increase prices.

Countries must "boost agricultural development, particularly in Africa and other regions most affected," he said. "I have called on leaders not to take measures that distort trade and push up prices." [Reuters]

Turkey completes its second succesful IMF deal

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $3.7 billion loan to Turkey, the last under a three-year accord that ended Saturday, and urged the country to keep government spending under control.

Turkey cut budget spending and inflation under the $10 billion loan accord, which aimed to reduce debt and curb state involvement in the economy. The Turkish government has signaled it will sign a new agreement with the fund that won't involve loans, without saying what kind of monitoring may be involved. [Bloomberg]

In related news… “The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said on Friday it had set out a timetable for Turkey to be approved as a country able to benefit from the development bank's investments.

Turkey, one of the EBRD's 63 shareholder members, applied for this status, called being a "country of operation", on April 24….

The EBRD will undertake a strategic review of the implications for the bank's existing activities of making the [Turkey] a country of operation," the official said.”   [The Guardian]

Bangladesh says will buy record amount of rice for stocks.

"Bangladesh will buy a record amount of rice from farmers this year at prices 55 percent higher than in 2007 to stimulate production and build emergency stocks, the farm minister said Sunday.  The government will build a stockpile of 3.2 million tons of rice, nearly double the previous record for emergency stocks, food and agriculture minister A.M.M. Shawqkat Ali said. [The China Post/Google News]

'We are confident this will make us immune from any food crisis caused by global commodity spikes or any natural disaster,' he said.

The minister said the government would set aside a record amount of cash in the budget to be announced in June to buy at least 2.5 million tonnes of rice from farmers, while another half a million tonnes would be imported from India.

'Besides, the United States, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have said they would give us some food aid,' he added. [Forbes.com/Google News]

Production in Asia is expected to rise to 605 million tons from 600 million tons, with particularly large increases in Bangladesh, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, the FAO said.

African production is forecast to grow nearly 4 percent to 23.2 million tons and in Latin America by 7.4 percent to 26 million tons, the agency said. Rice production is expected to be down in Australia, the United States and Europe. [Associated Press]

Meanwhile, Radio Australia reports: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says damage done to [Myanmar] rice crop could affect exports this year, putting more pressure on the global rice market… The FAO says the damage to rice, palm oil and rubber plantations means [Myanmar] will need to rely on imports of these goods in the coming months. [Radio Australia]

European Commission Backs Kyoto CO2 Trading Reform

The European Commission says it is standing by a call to overhaul U.N.-led carbon trading rules to make it more difficult for developing nations to earn offsets credits from cutting greennhouse gas emissions.At present, rich countries can meet their own carbon emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol by investing in clean energy projects in the developing world.

That scheme, called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), needs reform after 2012 when the first round of Kyoto expires, said Peter Zapfel, a senior official in the EU executive body's environment department."You have the CDM in one corner, which is voluntary, per project, with credits for everything you reduce," Zapfel said on the sidelines of a carbon markets conference in Germany. "And then in the other corner, you have ... the EU carbon market, which has several sectors under one arrangement, they're all mandatorily covered, and they actually have to reduce emissions and respect the cap before they can have free allowances." [Reuters News/Factiva] writes.

In another story,  [Thaindian News/Factiva] reports that “India will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Denmark for co-operation in the field of clean development mechanism   projects aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. A cabinet meeting [held] Friday, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, cleared the proposal Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters.   “The MoU will facilitate exchanging information between the two countries for clean development projects through their designated agencies,” Chidambaram said.

Clean development mechanism is one of three flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases   that binds industrialised countries to specific reduction targets. The Kyoto Protocol came into force February 2005.”

[Australian Financial Review/Factiva] also reports, “Indonesia, a significant carbon dioxide emitter, has launched Clean Development Mechanism - a green registration scheme that, through the Kyoto Protocol, lets rich nations like Australia balance out carbon emissions in the emerging world. According to Baker & McKenzie lawyer Paul Curnow, the scheme has 'huge potential in biomass, hydro-electricity and geothermal energy', while Federal Government climate policy adviser Ross Garnaut, writing in a recent discussion paper, singled out the globe's largest archipelago as being a potential source of credits.”

Meanwhile, [Agence France Presse/Factiva] writes, “A senior Japanese official on Monday criticised calls to introduce a cap-and-trade plan for greenhouse gas emissions, saying that the country's own "sectoral" approach was gaining support.   Japan is hoping to shape the course of negotiations on a new climate treaty, which would cover the period after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations expire in 2012, when it hosts July's summit of the Group of Eight rich nations.  

Japan earlier this year launched a panel to discuss introducing emissions trading after the country's powerful business lobby, citing global trends, dropped objections.   But Takao Kitabata, the vice minister of economy, trade and industry, said Monday that emissions trading amounted to "a system about markets and money."   "It doesn't provide a prescription on what to do," he told reporters.   Kitabata, the ministry's highest-ranking bureaucrat, said Japan instead "can take the leadership" on the sectoral approach.”

Senegal offers investors tax breaks to boost farming

"Senegal, one of the world's top food importers per capita, offered foreign entrepreneurs tax breaks on Sunday to grow food in the West African country as its poor struggle to cope with high world prices. Senegal is one of several African countries hit by unrest in recent months over high food prices driven by unpredictable weather patterns, market speculation and demand for land and crops from the biofuels industry and Asian states.

Last month President Abdoulaye Wade launched a "Great Agricultural Offensive for Food and Abundance," known by its French acronym GOANA, to raise food production in the country at the western end of Africa's arid Sahel, south of the Sahara.” [Reuters]

Agence France Presse adds that “President Abdoulaye Wade's incentive-based plan is designed to boost production of staples such as rice -- Senegal recently flagged-up an import deal with India to cover the next six years, while developing its own harvests.”

“The GOANA programme aims to make Senegal self-sufficient in food by 2015, notably by irrigating and cultivating unused land near the Senegal river and ramping up production of rice, the staple food for millions of Senegalese.” [Reuters]

President Abdoulaye Wade's incentive-based plan is designed to boost production of staples such as rice -- Senegal recently flagged-up an import deal with India to cover the next six years, while developing its own harvests. [AFP]

Also in this edition; Briefly Noted…

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will name a new chief executive officer Monday, the Seattle-based philanthropy said in a statement. The chief executive will replace Patty Stonesifer, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who said in February she will leave the foundation in January 2009 [The Wall Street Journal].

A powerful earthquake hit central China on Monday, killing at least 7,600 and injuring 10,000 others as schools and other buildings collapsed throughout Sichuan province.

Details were still emerging, but official Chinese news agencies were reporting widespread damage, particularly in Beichuan County in northeastern Sichuan. [Washington Post]

Oil prices have fallen, after setting record highs every day last week. US light crude slid 53 cents to $125.43 a barrel in New York, while London's Brent crude fell 55 cents to $124.85. Last week, a mixture of strong demand, currency fluctuations, and continuing supply concerns, pushed US light crude to a record of $126.20 in New York. Oil producers group Opec and analysts have suggested that oil may climb as high as $200 a barrel, a level that could hamper the global economy. [BBC News/Factiva]

South Korean officials say they have killed the entire poultry population of Seoul to curb the spread of bird flu… The cull began just hours after the authorities recorded Seoul's second outbreak of the virus in a week. Bird flu has caused 240 deaths globally since 1993. Tests are being carried out to determine if the South Korean outbreak was the deadly H5N1 strain. [BBC News/Factiva]

Strong growth in Africa's gross domestic product is expected to continue in 2008 and 2009, according to Louis Kasekende, the chief economist at the African Development Bank (ADB).  Kasekende put Africa's overall growth rate at 5.7 per cent in 2007, and predicted that it would rise to 5.9 per cent this year, a rate that would remain steady in 2009.   He was speaking in Maputo at the launch on Sunday of the seventh edition of the "African Economic Outlook", a report on the health of the continent's economy compiled by the ADB, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). [All Africa News/Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)]

Pakistan is making all-out efforts for the protection of Ozone Layer and has, so far, implemented 32 projects for phasing out Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS). Iftikhar Ahmed, Technical Expert, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and Ozone Cell, Ministry of Environment, said while talking to The Nation here on Thursday [Asia Pulse].

China's inflation rate rose to 8.5 percent in April, staying near 12-year highs, the government said Monday, warning tougher measures were needed to handle the nation's most intractable economic problem [Agence France Presse].

Relief workers who are still prohibited from entering Myanmar warned that it could take weeks to reach many cyclone victims due to the nation's decrepit infrastructure. Such a delay will increase the number of people at risk and raise the possibility of unrest, they said. As many as 1.5 million people -- including more than 200,000 now believed to be congregating in temporary camps along Myanmar's coast -- face an increasing risk of epidemics of malaria, cholera and other potentially deadly diseases, aid workers said. [The Wall Street Journal]