These are frustrating times for people who work in the aid world. They spend years coaxing rich governments to cough up the tens of billions of dollars they've pledged to feed the world's poorest children, get them an education or keep their HIV-positive parents alive. It's a long, painful and often disappointing process.

And then, practically overnight, the same politicians conjure up hundreds of billions - seemingly out of thin air - to save the financial skins of their own banks and voters. Wouldn't you be angry?

There are obvious reasons behind the huge bailout we've seen in the last couple of weeks - not least that if the capitalist house were allowed to fall down, things could get a whole lot worse for everyone.

People in rich countries might end up on the streets without enough to eat. Social infrastructure - schools, hospitals - might start to crumble. Besides giving over-fed consumers a taste of what life's like for the 969 million people who live on less than $1 a day, it probably wouldn't do the world much good.

Still, even if you don't want Main Street to go to hell in a hand-cart, you can hardly blame relief and development experts for using the financial crisis as an opportunity to highlight the unfairness of the world's wealth distribution.

Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), argued at a seminar in London on Wednesday that the $30 billion needed each year to achieve world food security was peanuts compared with the several trillion mobilised to shore up the global financial system recently, or even the annual $250 to $300 billion in agricultural subsidies given to farmers in industrialised nations.

"The issue is not the availability of resources," he said. "We know what needs to be done, but we don't have the political will to give the priority needed to poor people around the world."

Diouf's frustration was palpable as he described how he'd sent out 26 teams to claw from donors the $22 billion he said they'd pledged around the FAO's June food summit for immediate and longer-term measures to alleviate hunger. "But I haven't received much money yet," he said glumly. Today's financial turmoil is unlikely to make it any easier.

It's still too early too tell how much damage the credit crunch could do to funding for humanitarian and development work. The World Food Programme (WFP) told me late last week they'd yet to see any evidence of governments snapping their wallets shut. But there's no shortage of alarm bells.

At Wednesday's seminar on the global food crisis, Simon Maxwell, director of Britain's Overseas Development Institute, pointed to some worrying signs. At a time when G8 countries are already falling 30 percent behind on their funding commitments at the 2005 Gleneagles summit, Maxwell said Italy had recently indicated it would cut its aid budget by around half, and U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate Joe Biden had hinted he'd also take the knife to aid.

Maxwell also warned that the European Union seems likely to backpedal on a plan to give 1 billion euros from its farm budget to help boost food production in poor countries, because national finance ministries were kicking up a fuss - particularly worrying for those working on hunger.

"The world food crisis is not as visible as the financial crisis, but we shouldn't forget about it," said Maxwell.

Only last week, the World Bank predicted that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people in the world by 44 million this year to reach a total of 967 million. We've also started heading in the wrong direction when it comes to the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of the world's population suffering from hunger.

"This is a pivotal point and we really have to hold the line because if that trendline reverses at the same time the population is growing ... the situation could get away from us and we simply can't let that happen," Nancy E. Roman, WFP's director of communications and public policy strategy, told me last week.

But how to make sure that world leaders don't allow the prospect of financial meltdown to distract them from dealing with desperate need beyond their own borders?

When I asked Diouf for specific ideas, he side-stepped the issue. "You will galvanise the political will, not the FAO," he said, pointing at everyone in the room. "Public opinion and its impact on political leaders is the responsibility of civil society and individuals."

Last week, I put the same question to respected development economist Jeffrey Sachs, who also advises the U.N. secretary-general.

"The point about ending poverty is that it is mostly about vision, coordination, management and modest financing; it's not about heroics. So with or without this crisis, we have the capacity to do remarkable things," Sachs said.

I'd like to think he's right. But how to make those "remarkable things" happen - especially at a time when most people feel like they're staring into a financial black hole?

Sachs came up with a promising way of presenting the need for action even in hard economic times, arguing that investing in agriculture in poor nations could bring financial benefits.

"Even with more unemployment in the richer countries, directed aid which employs our businesses to help build infrastructure in Africa for example can be part of an economic recovery," he said.

This echoes what a number of officials have been saying about climate change. Rather than making gloomy statements about how the financial crisis will weaken government's resolve to cut emissions and make greener policies - which, of course, it could - some people like EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas have been talking up efforts to tackle global warming as part of the solution.

"Fighting climate change means investment in energy efficiency, promoting renewable sources and providing incentives to stimulate the economy and contribute to growth," he told reporters in Warsaw on Tuesday.

WFP's Roman made a similar hard-headed case as to why cash-strapped donors shouldn't neglect hunger, based on the angry protests caused by soaring prices and food shortages in some 40 countries earlier this year.

"It's our job to make a forceful case to countries that in a time when you've got instability - and let's be frank you do have financial instability - you don't want to take decisions that will lead to instability of another sort - civil unrest - because you're leaving a problem untended that costs a small fraction of the amount," she said.

It may well be that the most effective - or perhaps the only - way to convince wealthy countries to keep their promises on poverty and development is to spell out to their governments, citizens and businesses why it's in their interests to do so.

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