|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
at Catholic Relief Services Press Conference
December 13, 2002
Let me first say that there has been a recurrent cycle of drought and food crises in Africa for too long now. When I started in May of 1989 in AID in the first Bush Administration, as Ken just said, as the head of OFDA (Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance), there were food crises in a number of countries in Africa.
We know that developing countries, if they do the right policy framework and they invest in agriculture, can eliminate this cycle. India has increased food production from 50 million tons of rice, at independence, to 200 million tons, a 400 percent increase in the last 50 years through the Green Revolution. Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Prize in science for his work doing it. He is still active at 88 years old.
Bangladesh has gone from 11 million tons of rice to 23 million tons of rice by investing in agriculture.
We (USAID) have made a decision to reinvest in agriculture. Colin Powell and I approached the President. The President has endorsed enthusiastically this effort to increase by 40 percent our agriculture budget in AID. We proposed it over a two-year period. We have also increased our budget for Africa by 25 percent, which is the largest increase in the history of the program. There has been, actually, a stagnant budget for Africa since the mid-1980s.
If Congress approves what we have proposed for them for this Fiscal Year '03.it will exceed $1 billion. That does not include the humanitarian relief side, only the development program.
But unless we invest in agriculture in terms of resources and then get countries in the region to change policies to stimulate agriculture production, we are not going to be able to eliminate this terrible cycle. There have been no famines in India since independence, even though the food requirements there are more massive than any other country in the world, save China.
HIV/AIDS is a very serious problem, particularly in the Horn of Africa and in southern Africa. It is not as severe yet in Western Africa, and we are working to prevent it from spreading there. Our budget for HIV/AIDS worldwide from the Administration for this year has gone from a $1 billion last year to $1.3 billion this year -- should Congress approve what President Bush has proposed.
The President has proposed a $500 million, maternal-to-child-transmission program because women who are pregnant can transfer the disease to their children. And by administering Nevaripine we can cut the infection rate by 60 percent. And that is a $500 million program which we are just now beginning.
We have an extensive program that we've worked out with other donor governments and the Ethiopian government that began last December. It is a little late, but it did begin last December. There are eight points to it: I am not going to go through them all, but I just want to say President Meles Zenawi is in Washington today; he is meeting with President Bush on Thursday. I will be in the meeting. We are very concerned about what is happening there, but we are urging President Meles to take these eight measures in agricultural reform and accelerate them because without these reforms, we are going to have this cycle, year after year in Ethiopia.
We have made a commitment in the southern African drought of half a million tons of food. We have delivered 350,000 tons already; another 150,000 tons are on the way, for a total of 500,000 tons since January of this year. We have made a commitment of 278,000 tons to the Horn of Africa and, should Congress approve our budget increase. There is a $300 million increase in our budget for food aid in AID for this fiscal year--and that is up--it goes from above $900 million to about $1.2 billion. If Congress approves the budget -- I do not think any federal agencies have yet been approved this year-- we will be able to increase our commitments to the Horn of Africa significantly. We are very worried about what is happening in the Horn.
Let me just conclude by saying that this very press conference is very unusual. I do not think we have ever had a press conference with all the major food-aid NGOs, the World Food Program and AID in the same room. Not that we do not work together, but there is an unprecedented level of cooperation that is going on between the World Food Program (WFP) and the NGO community that we have never seen before, and I want to compliment both groups for the effort to work in an integrated fashion, because that can actually speed this effort and make it much more effective.
I also want to compliment Jim Morris for doing something that I did not think was possible, and that is to get a lot of other countries to give food. Sixty-two percent of the food that went to WFP last year went--came from the United States. We are, by far, the largest donor. This is worldwide, 62 percent. He has now gotten India to give food; China to give food; Russia, Algeria, the Vatican, Peru and Oman--I did not think he could get Oman, but he did. So I want to compliment the World Food Program for what we call non-traditional donors because we sort of feel we are basically a large bulk of what WFP does and we need to have other donors. I'm not criticizing anybody, but without the other donor governments in Europe, Canada, and Japan, we cannot do this effort to stop this famine.
We have a commitment. We made it at the World Food Summit in Rome and also at the WSSD (World Summit on Sustainable Development) with Colin Powell. The Administration is committed not to allow any famines on our watch. The President has said that; I've said it; Colin Powell has said it, and we have got an active program to do that. But we cannot do this alone. We need help. Thank you very much.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: We are working in a very cooperative way with the Congress, and their staffs are being helpful. I want to make that clear now. The President has asked the Congress to approve the budgets for this fiscal year which began October 1 before the State of the Union Address in January, which I think is the last week in January. So, we hope to have our budget, at the latest, by January.
We are now spending at a level equal to last year's spending and that does not include this $300 million increase in our Title II account. And it is slowing the level of commitments we can make. The congressional staffs know that. They are being very helpful, but there are other issues that are not connected to this that deal with federal spending generally, and the budget resolution and that kind of thing.
But they are aware of it, they are being helpful and I think, actually, the Senate actually increased the amount we requested by $20 million, not hugely, but if we get what we asked for, we will be well on our way.
We also have the Emerson Trust, which is a reserve account. We have used that for the southern African drought, and we may have to use that for the Horn of Africa, depending on what other donors do. The estimates on the crop are going to be in in the next few weeks.
There are three different scenarios for the Horn of Africa. Depending on which one is confirmed by this crop assessment, we will have to make some decisions and what we do with the Emerson Trust.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: I am not quite sure what you mean in terms of our cooperation with USDA. I understand there is a serious crisis. They are being very cooperative. Our staffs actually sometimes go over and help them process paperwork when the paperwork gets backed up because the volume is so enormous right now. And, so, there is no problem in terms of any of the processes moving or working in a constructive way. Ann Veneman and I talk--she is a good friend of mine, the Secretary of Agriculture--and we are both committed to this as is the President and Secretary Powell.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: Almost scandalous. Let me first say that some countries have accepted it without any problem. Malawi has no restrictions on it. Mozambique says they want it milled before it is distributed because they do not want to plan it. Zimbabwe has just put more restrictions in the last week on this. And I have to say the Zimbabwean government is slowly but surely putting policies in place that are going to cause a famine no matter what we do.
We are trying very hard. It is a predatory, tyrannical, and corrupt government. There is no other way of saying it. They are putting policies in place that are starving their own people to death. Matabeleland, right now, is on the edge--the precipice of a massive famine. And that is an area that did not vote for Mr. Mugabe in the last election and they are being punished for that.
In some areas, people have to show their party card to show that they support and are members of the ruling party to get fed, which is an outrageous, an egregious violation of all international standards in terms of the distribution of food in crisis. We are very disturbed by this. These macroeconomic policies are also exactly what we do not need in Zimbabwe. Half of the crisis in southern Africa is in one country.
Zambia accepts no GMO food, whether it is milled or not. But the crisis in Zambia is far less severe than it is in Zimbabwe.
I have to say the thing that is disturbing to me is the timing of this. We have been eating GMO corn or bio-tech corn for seven years in the United States and we have been using it in our programs for seven years. We did not invent this right now. I find it odd that these groups are, all of a sudden, raising this issue in the middle of the worst crisis in more than a decade. The timing could not have been more disastrous. If they wanted to raise this, it should have been in a year where there were good crops and where we had no problems at all. To put poor people at risk in these countries - when people are dying or going to die if we do not get this thing moving, is terrible. Poor people are the ones always at most risk in a famine. And when you put the HIV/AIDS crisis on top of that in southern Africa, it is a disastrous situation.
So governments need to make their own decisions, but they need to understand there are consequences to it. I offered the heads of state in those countries wheat. We do not grow genetically modified wheat or sorghum or rice in the United States, only corn and soybeans in terms of what our food basket is. They rejected them all. They said, "well, we do not like to eat this food." I said," well, if you do not want GMO (genetically modified) corn, then these are the other options and if you do not want the other options, what is it you want us to do? We are making an offer of assistance, but we have limits." They rejected rice, they rejected substantial amounts of sorghum and they rejected wheat which we have an abundance of. It is not GMO. And so we have made the offers. We have gone as far as we can go.
I have to compliment Jim Morris (WFP head): he is a much more patient man than I am in trying to negotiate with these governments to try to get this food in and arrange milling requirements. South Africa has made an agreement to mill 100 tons of WFP food, if I am not mistaken. So other governments are trying to help, too. The Europeans have made some commitments, but this is a serious issue--a very serious issue.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: I made the offer to the President of Malawi. I asked, "does it make you nervous?" He said, "no, no, we want the corn, we will accept it and we do not want these other crops." So he was fine, because he accepted what we offered. I offered to President Mwanawasa of Zambia, which has rejected any GMO corn, the other alternatives and he said, "no, we want corn." I said, "well if you want corn from the United States, the great bulk of our corn crop--96 percent--is not segregated by GMO versus non-GMO, so we cannot give it to you."
The offer also was made to Zimbabwe, not by me directly, but by other senior officials, and they rejected it, as well. Except for some wheat in the cities; they will take some wheat in the urban areas.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: The first think I would say is we need to get in the crop assessment in Ethiopia. We do not use rhetorical statements; we use precise records of what the crop assessments are in these countries to make our estimates. That is what the NGOs do, that is what the World Food Program does and that is what AID does. The crop assessment material, data collection, took place in Ethiopia over the last three weeks, in the last month. And it will be out, I would guess, by mid to late December. And we will know whether the lowest scenario, the mid-scenario or the most-severe scenario will come out of that crop assessment.
The figures you saw in that press release are presuming the upper end of requirements--in other words, the most severe crisis situation in all of these countries. We are getting, I think it is 300,to be precise, $335 million more for this fiscal year than the last fiscal year, so we have a lot more resources coming in.
We have 2 million tons of food in the Emerson Trust, which was designed for emergencies like this. We've got another emergency -- it is called Afghanistan. It is not on this map. And many of the food aid NGOs that are here and with the World Food Program, are the ones that also do the distributions in Afghanistan.
We also have a drought in Central America. It is not as severe, but it is serious in Central America because of the coffee crop collapse and because of the drought. So this (Africa) is the epicenter, but Afghanistan is very severe.
There was an 800,000 ton increase in wheat production in Afghanistan this last summer or we would be in an irreparable position right now. Thank heaven the peace held and we put a lot of money into seed production and seed distribution in Afghanistan that did increase production substantially.
But this is very serious -- there is no question about it. We will see what the crop assessment shows and then we may have to make a proposal through the interagency process to access the Emerson Trust for the bulk of what we need.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: We do not know at this point, but a good disaster manager always hopes for the best and plans for the worst and that is what you are seeing here today. Time is the most valuable commodity in famine response. It is not something we talk about -- it's an arcane subject -- but it takes three or four months to order the food,to go through the process making the decision. The USAID orders the food in the Midwest grain markets, they put it on ships, either in New Orleans or on the West Coast, sometimes in the Great Lakes. They ship it; it takes a long time to get there. Then it goes to the ports. Then it is off-loaded and sent by truck, and then by the WFP and then the NGOs distribute it sort of at the retail level. That takes a long time to do.
The purpose of this press conference is to: one, tell everyone that there is a very serious crisis that we are facing. And if we're going to prevent famine we need to act now, not when we see faces of emaciated children. When we see that we have failed, because then it is too late. It takes three or four months to act. You do not act once you see the faces. You act when the pre-famine indicators are showing severe stress. And they are showing severe stress right now.
[Technical interruption]
MR. NATSIOS: -- We are spending $4 million this year in Ethiopia to implement these eight reforms. These are the eight reforms the Ethiopian government agreed to last December. If they implement all these, we will not have these cycles.
QUESTION: Yes, see that is the answer--
MR. NATSIOS: The answer is agricultural development in the long-term, not food aid. Food aid is a requirement when we have no other options. The long-term solution, in Africa, is a Green Revolution, and that is what we are proposing.
QUESTION: What about manpower? Where will the manpower come from? Will the leadership be U.S. or -- ?
MR. NATSIOS: Well, we have got the Europeans. The Europeans got out of agriculture just as we did and now they are getting back into it. The Canadians have made a decision; the Norwegians have made a decision; the Swedes and the British to re-invest in agriculture with us.
QUESTION: So this would be, essentially a global coalition?
MR. NATSIOS: It is a global coalition and it is called the Coalition to end Hunger in Africa through Agriculture, and it is composed not just of AID, but the heads of six countries in Africa--the presidents and the presidents of major agricultural schools; Michigan State University president, Peter McPherson; he used to be head of AID in the '80s, and he is the leader of the coalition. We are members of it. We have made a big commitment of money and technology and use of science, the use of marketing. And we made a proposal to eliminate all tariffs on agricultural production worldwide at the current round of Doha (trade) negotiations; this has been made by the USTR (US Special Trade Representative).
We proposed eliminating all production and export subsidies, I think within 10 years. And that will help, too. You have to do all these things, you cannot do just one thing.
QUESTION: I was wondering, on the GMO issue, is there any pattern as to why one country accepts it and another does not? For example, why--
MR. NATSIOS: Internal political pressures. There are domestic groups in Europe, the green groups.
QUESTION: Right, but they are not voters in these--
MR. NATSIOS: They have chapters in the South. They are leading the effort against GMO.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: No, I do not want to get into individual names. I am just telling you what is happening. If you read the newspapers in these countries, it is indisputable as to what has happened. Just read the statements of these groups.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: It is Title II, which is the food that goes to WFP and the NGOs. None of it goes to governments. In famines we do not go through governments, we go through the NGOs and the World Food Program.
QUESTION: So this $335 million is--
MR. NATSIOS: Is on top of the existing budget--
QUESTION: On top of the existing--MR. NATSIOS: Yes, the existing budget is $885 million or something like that, I do not remember the exact amount.
QUESTION: (inaudible)
MR. NATSIOS: Well, we are seeing requirements of around 13 to 14 million people in southern Africa and an equal number in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan. And between those two, we are facing very, very severe stress in our food budget; 62 percent of the food that goes to the United Nations from these crises comes from the United States government. We have increased the budget for our food account by more than $300 million for this fiscal year.
But the crisis is very severe. We need other governments, though, to also give. Having the U.S. give 62 percent of the food is not balanced. We need other governments to grow food--donor governments--Europe, Canada, and Japan to come up and work with us as collaborators. Typically, we work together, but on the food-aid issues, it is the case that the United States has become the dominant force, and I am not sure that is the way it should be.
QUESTION: This call for help seems a little bit more urgent than what we have heard in the past regarding the crisis in Africa. What makes this a little bit more urgent?
MR. NATSIOS: We knew what was happening in Afghanistan, in Central Africa, and Angola and Southern Africa--that was very clear. What we did not realize is the severity of the problem that has just taken place in Ethiopia. The crop died this summer. And we realized by September, October we are facing a crisis there, too. And this is multiple crises layered on top of each other that is causing the problem. One crisis we can handle, two crises, but when you have three or four at the same time, it is very difficult.
QUESTION: meaning by that the crisis of HIV AIDS--
MR. NATSIOS: No, the crisis of too many food emergencies in too many countries at the same time. On top of all that is the HIV AIDS problem, which makes it even much, much worse. People are dying in the villages because they have HIV/AIDS and they are malnourished. If they were just malnourished, they would survive, but when you combine being HIV/AIDS positive with being malnourished, it accelerates the spread of the disease. It means people who, instead of surviving five years, will survive a year or six months.
QUESTION: Okay, are you optimistic that this coalition and with the (inaudible) campaign-
MR. NATSIOS: This is the first time this has happened to this degree and I really want to compliment the NGO community, the charities that work on food aid and the World Food Program from the U.N. for the high level of collaboration that they have working with us together. When people are not fighting and they are working together, it means everything works much more efficiently. And they are doing that in a way we have never seen before.
 |
|||
|
