ADB plans $14-B to ease food crisis
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled a new funding support to ease the worsening food crisis in the region, and strengthen food systems against the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.
ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa in a In a briefing Tuesday, Sept. 27 said the Manila-based lender will provide at least $14 billion from 2022 to 2025 under a comprehensive program to ease the food crisis.
“This is a timely and urgently needed response to a crisis that is leaving too many poor families in Asia hungry and in deeper poverty,” Asakawa said. “We need to act now, before the impacts of climate change worsen and further erode the region’s hard-won development gains.”
According to Asakawa, the ADB support will be channeled through farm inputs, food production and distribution, social protection, irrigation, and water resources management, as well as projects leveraging nature-based solutions.
ADB estimated nearly 1.1 billion people lack healthy diets in the Asia Pacific due to poverty and food prices which have soared to record highs this year.
“ADB will continue to invest in other activities which contribute to food security such as energy transition, transport, access to rural finance, environmental management, health, and education,” the bank said.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted supplies of food staples and fertilizer, straining a global food system already weakened by climate change impacts, pandemic-related supply shocks, and unsustainable farming practices.
Asia and the Pacific is vulnerable to food shocks, as some of its countries depend on imported staples and fertilizer. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, nutritious food was unaffordable for significant portions of the population in many ADB low-income member countries.
“An important part of our long-term approach is to safeguard natural resources and support farmers and agribusinesses which produce and distribute much of the region’s food, and to promote open trade to ensure it reaches consumers efficiently,” Asakawa said.
Assistance under the program will start this year and continue through 2025. It will be drawn from across ADB’s sovereign and private sector operations, and seek to leverage an additional $5 billion in private sector cofinancing for food security.