ADB to meet amid food crisis, growing poverty
30 April 2008
As the Asian Development Bank prepares to meet for its upcoming annual meeting, it faces criticism from shareholders concerned about its role and relevance in the region and by civil society over its handling of the global food crisis.
On April 30, Agence France-Press (AFP) reported that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is struggling to cope with the growing food crisis and criticism over its role and relevance ahead of its upcoming annual meeting in Madrid. The ADB has been accused by civil society of ignoring warnings leading up the crisis and also contributing to it by pushing loan conditions that many say unfairly pressure governments to deregulate and privatize agriculture -- leading to problems such as the rice supply shortage in Southeast Asia.
ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda warned the food shortage was hindering the institutions fight against poverty in Asia and that some countries may need aid to feed their hungry. Kuroda blamed the rise in food prices on higher energy and fertilizer costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations and price speculation.
Civil society representatives however, laid part of the blame of the food crisis on the ADB and other international financial institutions who they say neglected agriculture for "two decades." Representatives from organizations such as Focus on the Global South and the Asia Foundation told AFP that Asian farmers had been "drawing attention to the growing agrarian crisis for years" and that the ADB and others should have "should have seen this crisis coming."
The criticism over the ADB's handling of the good crisis comes after the United States, which with Japan are the Bank's two largest stakeholders, rejected the ADB's long-term strategic plan over concerns about ability to meet its goals. The United States in particular objected to ADB's focus on large loans to middle-income countries such as China and India rather than smaller loans to poorer nations.
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