UN - New Sri-Lanka war worse for hunger than tsunami - STWR

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UN - New Sri-Lanka war worse for hunger than tsunami

Return to war in Sri Lanka could have more impact on malnutrition than the 2004 tsunami, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday, with new violence already hitting aid programmes.

Since December, a string of suspected Tamil Tiger rebel attacks on government forces have stretched a 2002 truce to breaking point, and the WFP says it now has much more difficulty persuading trucking firms to take food to conflict-hit areas.

"All the signs look bad," WFP country director Jeff Taft-Dick told Reuters in his Colombo office. "It could deteriorate pretty fast. A resumption of fighting would have a more serious impact on malnutrition levels than the Indian Ocean tsunami.

When the ceasefire halted two decades of war in 2002, more than a quarter of children in the minority Tamil-dominated north and east -- scene of the worst fighting -- were stunted from lack of food. Half of all under-fives were underweight, twice the national rate.

While the conflict-affected east coast was seriously damaged by the tsunami, which killed about 35,000 Sri Lankans, many of those made homeless were in the richer south of the island. While WFP continues to feed 300,000 tsunami-affected, the majority of its work remains with 800,000 hit by war. No nutrition survey was conducted in 2005 because WFP was concentrating on tsunami recovery, but the agency believes school feeding and other food aid has reduced malnutrition since the war. If the fighting resumes, that would be jeopardised. "Up until December, when people asked if violence was affecting us I could say no," Taft-Dick said. "In the last month, we've had problems getting food up to the north -- some of that is problems with trucking groups who are now less willing to take certain risks."

The WFP was revising its contingency plans and might look at pre-positioning food in the towns of Vavuiya and Trincomalee on the borders of rebel territory in case of war, he said. Already, security fears have restricted staff movement. If conflict returns, as diplomats say it probably will if the two sides cannot at least agree a venue for crisis talks, feeding the hungry in the northern army-held Jaffna enclave and Tiger-held Wanni could be almost impossible. Some people are already said to have fled their homes, blaming fear of war or reported army abuses. Taft-Dick said the WFP had heard of 800-1,000 families fleeing into Tiger areas from Jaffna, and more from the port of Trincomalee. "It could be a big problem even to access people who have been displaced by the fighting," he said. "We would have to see if we had the resources to feed these people or whether we would need to come up with a new appeal."

Scientists have urged South Asian nations to cooperate to boost their economies by tapping growing global demand for agricultural products such as herbal medicines that are derived from biological resources and traditional knowledge.

The initial call came from Swiss Nobel laureate Richard Ernst, who suggested a South Asian Union, modelled on the European Union. It would promote peaceful interaction and scientific cooperation between member countries, while maintaining the region's distinct cultural and economic identity.

Ernst, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize for chemistry, suggested the move yesterday (4 January) at the Indian Science Congress in Hyderabad.

Later at the congress, a panel discussion on global science and rural development in South Asia highlighted the need for the region's countries to jointly address development problems using science. More than a billion people in South Asia earn less than US$1 a day, are malnourished and have no access to safe water, basic sanitation, shelter and literacy. Using technology to transform agriculture and create jobs is the key to progress, stressed both M. E. Tusneem, chair of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, and Mangala Rai, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

They pointed to the need for increased agricultural research and more partnerships, both between South Asian nations and between them and international agricultural research councils, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Tusneem told SciDev.Net that despite scope for scientific collaboration under the aegis of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), progress on agricultural and rural development has been too slow.

Nations could collaborate on disease and pest resistance; drought and salt tolerance; gene banks; improved seed production; post-harvest management; and efficient water use. SAARC countries would perform well in the key sectors of biotechnology and herbal medicines, suggested Palpu Pushpangadan, director of India's National Botanical Research Institute in Lucknow. "Biodiversity and traditional knowledge are two of the region's capital assets", he said. "We have tapped only a fraction of our vast library of genes and traditional knowledge." The region has a great variety of ornamental, medicinal, aromatic, as well as gum, resin and dye-yielding plants.

Pushpangadan said there was renewed global interest in natural products, especially herbal medicines. He said there was a need to improve processing capacity to add value to economically important plants at the farm level and get the finished products to global markets.

This article appears courtesy of SCIDEV.NET