December 16, 2008

Stakes have never been higher for the poorest says Church World Service

NEW YORK - An increased number of forced migrations, continued global food crises, shrinking water resources and other serious results of climate change represent the principal humanitarian and development challenges of 2009, global humanitarian agency Church World Service said today in a year-end assessment.

"The world is competing for diminishing resources and, unfortunately, both a worsening global economy and the pressures of global warming are sharpening that competition," said the Rev. John L. McCullough, CWS Executive Director and CEO, in a year-end assessment of trends that are expected to increase in the year ahead and well into the future.

"The converging scenarios already are posing major challenges for governments and non-governmental agencies alike."

CWS is among the humanitarian agencies arguing that the ongoing food crisis affecting millions of people throughout the world now is inseparable from other problems of climate change.

In the Horn of Africa, where 20 million are at risk of famine due to rising food prices and unremitting drought, people now are selling assets like livestock as a sign of acute food insecurity and migrating in search of food. The United Nations estimates that desertification could create forced migrations of more than 135 million people in Africa alone as climate change produces wider and more frequent droughts and water becomes increasingly scarce in dry land regions.

In eastern Africa's Rift Valley, annual droughts have long driven seasonal mini-migrations of herders into conflicts as they search for water in neighboring regions. In recent years, droughts and conflicts have increased.

In Africa and other water-threatened regions, Church World Service increasingly supports community-run water and clean water resource projects, from boreholes and wells to water conservation solutions like sand dams, rain barrel and cistern installations.

In Myanmar (Burma), some three million people have been forced to migrate within the country. Reasons driving the displacement range from conflicts to land confiscation for natural resource exploitation such as mining, to enforced agriculture policies and commercial monoculture - including biofuel crops, themselves a response to fossil fuel impacts on global warming - that supplant the capacity for local, nutritionally diverse food production.

Cyclone Nargis nearly obliterated what remained of the country's ability to produce food. CWS continues to work with farmers in Myanmar, helping to reclaim and expand community food production.

To lessen water and food crises, hunger and malnutrition, CWS urges immediate focus on:

-- For ongoing food security, building sustainable local agriculture capacities of poor farmers and promoting dietary diversity, especially the inclusion of animal source foods, vegetables and fruits

-- Expanding social protection of the most vulnerable populations - urban and rural poor and refugees - with special focus on acute malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies

-- Carrying out critical research on the global food crisis, focusing with transparent standards on the pros and cons of biofuel agriculture and on climate mitigation and adaptation measures including carbon trades

-- Eliminating agricultural trade barriers

-- Accelerating funding and support for community-level training, installation and management of clean water

Data show how "a little spent now addressing malnutrition can have a large payoff," McCullough said, calling the issue, particularly among the world's urban and rural poor, the most urgent of priorities, but one that can be "addressed quickly and pragmatically."

The agency also supports local agriculture approaches to lessen crop damage resulting from increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.

McCullough concludes: "The stakes have never been higher for the poor. Climate change is an encroaching catastrophe - one that we can clearly see. If as a global community we do not respond with urgency, compassion and fairness now, we will not be able to avert this disaster in the future. We will be accomplices in the devastation it has wrought on families worldwide."

The UN's High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that as many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 due to global warming.

CWS, with a 60-year history in fighting poverty and hunger, focuses its work on the problems of food, water and the effects of climate change under the banner "Enough for All."

A sustainable development, relief and refugee assistance agency, CWS works with local partners in countries worldwide and is supported by public donations, grants, and by 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches and communions in the United States.

To contribute to CWS hunger and poverty fighting programs, donate by phone at (800) 297-1516, or donate by mailing a check to Church World Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515, or online at: www.churchworldservice.org/donate

Media Contacts: Lesley Crosson, 212-870-2676 lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 24/7, 781-925-1526 jdragin@gis.net