Topic: Global Food Crisis
Country: Sweden
Delegate Name: Christopher Foe
School: Forest Hills Northern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Sweden position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
The past couple of years have given us dramatic rises in food prices, resulting in what has been called a Global Food Crisis. Although the list of causes is very long, the most significant contributing factors include the rise of oil prices, world population growth, declining world food stockpiles, and the usage of food crops for the making of biofuels. As a member of the European Union (EU), the Kingdom of Sweden has great concern for this crisis and is an adamant proponent of progressive UN intervention into affected nations.
Because the global food crisis is creating such widespread devastation and disorder (in the form of mass hunger/starvation and political instability), Sweden strongly supports the prospective measures currently being deliberated in the UN. Humanitarian aid must be employed in order to ease the impact of the crisis in developing nations, the dip in agricultural production must be reversed, and, perhaps most importantly, global economic growth must be encouraged/stimulated in order to decrease the amount of poverty. However, according to the conclusions of the EU (of which the Kingdom of Sweden is an active member), action must be taken more swiftly, particularly in terms of humanitarian aid.
The EU believes that long-term, crisis-reversal procedures, though certainly necessary, are not the only tools that must be used when addressing this crisis. Fast-acting humanitarian relief packages are also important in that they soften the blow dealt by the crisis in the most severely affected regions. The EU has already started a program that will generate 800 million Euros in food aid and emergency aid throughout 2008 and 2009.
