by Steen Lau Jorgensen, Director, Social Development, & Roberta Gatti, Sector Manager and Lead Economist, Human Development Group              

Event Overview.The World Bank Lebanon Office has launched its Development Seminar Series for the 2008-2009 season with a workshop titled "The Food and Energy Crisis: Implications for Social Policy" that was held on September 19 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Beirut.

The Development Seminar Series aims to provide a platform for open dialogue and knowledge exchange on major development issues of relevance to Lebanon and the region. The series aims to bring together international/regional expertise and local stakeholders to actively engage in discussions of various topics such as the political economy of change, reform, macro-economy, fiscal and monetary policies, among others. The objective of these sessions is to elevate the dialogue level and address economic and technical policy issues. The series will address areas where the World Bank has a current and/or potential involvement, as well as areas with no World Bank involvement.

Steen Lau Jorgensen, Sector Director for Human Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Department of the World Bank, kicked off the seminar with a brief presentation (PDF), highlighting emerging international evidence that points to the importance of social policy as an essential complement to economic policy to build societies resilient to shocks. Jorgensen presented the expanding definition of comprehensive social policies and their meanings in traditional social sectors and other areas, such as labor markets, transport, urban development and finance. The presentation also approached the development paradigms often associated with comprehensive social policies, and provided brief examples of successful country approaches in South Africa and Latin America, citing the following social guarantees:

• Every citizen has the right to a certain minimum set of services: education, health, old age
  and disability support, water, housing
  
• Every citizen has a right to engage in debate and be heard
  
• Every citizen has a right to redress

Roberta Gatti, Sector Manager for Social Protection, MENA, World Bank, addressed the recent food price crisis in the MENA region. The overview highlighted MENA specifics related to food dependence consumption and malnutrition rates and the channels of impact of higher food prices on social stability and poverty rates. In particular, the MENA region is associated with:

• High share of staples in consumption
• High dependence on imported food
• Relatively high (for income levels) malnutrition rates
• Fragile social equilibrium: recent growth is widely perceived to be pro-rich
• Absences of well-targeted safety nets that meet social justice or citizenship test

Margins of Intervention. Gatti highlighted the possible role of social protection in reducing the impact of high and volatile food prices and the importance of having well established social safety nets in place to enable the poor to better manage risks. In particular, the implementation of effective safety nets:

• Has an immediate impact on reducing inequality and poverty, especially extreme poverty
• Enables households to make better investments in their futures
• Helps households manage risks
• Helps governments make or sustain sound policies.

Next, short- and medium-term dimensions for safety nets interventions in response to food price crisis were presented and examples of MENA countries’ responses were briefly explored.
Finally, the World Bank’s role in facilitating an effective response included the diagnosis and assessment of options, identification of policy guidance on short term priorities and policies to avoid to prevent problems in the long run, lending through GFPR and other mechanisms.

The workshop was moderated by Haneen Sayed, Lead Operations Officer, Human Development Department, and presentations were followed by an open discussion session with active participation from representatives of the public sector, international organizations and donors, academia and civil society organizations.