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	New UN energy report says 1.5 billion people worldwide live in darkness by UNDP / WHO / IAEA   Nov 2009   With the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen just 13 days away, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has highlighted the need to ensure that the energy needs of developing countries are central to any new climate agreement, after a new report found that almost a quarter of the world’s 6 billion people live without electricity.   The majority of the 1.5 billion people who live in the dark are in the least developed countries (LDCs) of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report, The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries: A Review Focusing on the Least Developed Counties and Sub-Saharan Africa.   “Expanding energy access is essential to tackle global poverty. It needs to happen at the lowest cost and in the cleanest and most sustainable way possible to help developing countries establish a low-carbon route to development,” Olav Kjorven, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau for Development Policy, told reporters in New York at the launch of the report.   “Almost half of humanity is completely disconnected from the debate on how to drive human progress with less emissions and greener energy because their reality is much more basic than that: they carry heavy loads of water and food on their backs because they don’t have transport; they cook over wood fires that damage their health, not with electricity, gas or oil,” said Mr. Kjorven.   “We must ensure that the energy needs of these people are central to a new climate agreement,” he added, referring to the pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions that countries are hoping to achieve when they meet in the Danish capital in December.   Mr. Kjorven noted that two million people die every year from causes associated with exposure to smoke from cooking with biomass and coal – and 99 per cent of those deaths occur in developing countries.   In LDCs and sub-Saharan Africa, half of all deaths from pneumonia in children under five years, chronic lung disease and lung cancer in adults are attributed to the use of solid fuel, compared with 38 per cent in developing countries overall.   According to the report, to halve the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015 – the first of the eight globally agreed targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – 1.2 billion more people will need access to electricity and two billion more people will need access to modern fuels like natural gas or Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also called propane.   “We have to see Copenhagen as an opportunity. For a climate deal to work, it also has to be a development deal. Developing countries have to see that this deal would help them move forward, not slow down,” Mr. Kjorven stated.   The report was produced in partnership by the UNDP and the World Health Organization (WHO), with support from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Visit the related web page
	No food security without climate security by FAO & news agencies   Nov 2009   The food crisis is a wake-up call for tomorrow. At a time when the global population is growing, our global climate is changing. By 2050 we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and unpredictable.   FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told the gathering that there are "One billion hungry people, that is one of every group of six persons in the world, 105 million more than in 2008, five children dying every 30 seconds. Beyond these numbers this means suffering for each of these human beings," he said.   Brazil"s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the summit hunger is the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet. He said it does not kill soldiers, but innocent children.   Mr da Silva said that the developed world had to help rather than undermine the world’s poor. “They sabotage emerging agriculture in the poorer countries, wiping out their hope to create a bridge to development,” he told the conference.   A number of leaders said they worried that the gathering would merely reiterate old promises without leading to innovative change in fighting hunger.   “We end up leaving with a stomach full of promises and think we have found a solution,” Amadou Toumani Touré, the president of Mali. “Then, at the next conference, we start all over again.”   In the negotiations over a draft declaration from the three-day talks, richer nations succeeded in removing a goal to end world hunger by 2025 and declined to commit to increasing agricultural aid to nearly 20 percent of all international development aid, where it peaked in 1980 before gradually falling.   Diplomats from wealthier countries had argued that creating a deadline for eradicating hunger was unrealistic.   The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations had hoped the meeting would set an agriculture aid target of $44 billion annually toward helping farmers in poorer countries. To meet demand by 2050, agriculture output needs to grow by 70 percent, the organization said.   Leaders of industrialized nations meeting in Italy last July agreed to spend more than $22 billion on agriculture aid over the next three years, but not all of that constitutes new aid.   The Rome conference was prompted by a sharp rise in the price of basic commodities like rice and wheat that incited food riots in many countries in 2008, a crisis that Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, warned could easily be repeated.   Jacques Diouf, says he is not satisfied with the final declaration of the UN world food summit in Rome. He criticised the declaration - which vowed "urgent action" to boost food security - for not including exact targets to reduce hunger. Aid agency Oxfam also condemned the statement as "un-costed, unfunded and unaccountable".   Mr Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said he regretted the absence of a deadline for the total eradication of world hunger - referring to the UN Millennium Development Goal deadline of 2025.   "I thought it made sense to set that target, and I thought we would be discussing whether it should be in four years or five years or so on, not that we would be eliminating any target date in the declaration," he said. "I am not satisfied that some of the concrete proposals I made were not accepted. There was no consensus on this and I regret it."   FAO says that rising global hunger figures mask the fact that 31 out of 79 countries monitored by the Rome-based agency have registered declines in the number of undernourished people since the early nineties.   The report details factors underlying the success of four countries that have significantly reduced hunger, namely Armenia, Brazil, Nigeria and Viet Nam.   It cites four common factors to successfully reducing hunger. They are the creation of the right environment promoting economic growth and personal wellbeing; investment in the rural poor and outreach to the most vulnerable; ensuring achievements are maintained and safeguarded against threats; planning for a sustainable future.   Nigeria, for example, through its National Programme for Food Security, succeeded in more than doubling production and incomes of small farmers who practice rain fed agriculture by introducing improved technologies that enabled them to grow two or three crops each year instead of just one.   Mr. Diouf launched an online anti-hunger campaign, at www.1billionhungry.org. calling on the general public to sign a call for eradicating hunger. Visitors are asked to sign the petition to say that 1 billion people living in chronic hunger is unacceptable.   However, Mr. Diouf said that despite all the promises made, concrete action on hunger has been lacking. “In the absence of strong measures another global food crisis cannot be excluded,” he warned. Visit the related web page
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