Natural disasters increasing, more aid needed

Rome. Natural disasters are increasing around the world, adding to the need for United Nations food aid shipments and planning for emergencies, delegates at a conference said on Thursday. „The number of people affected by natural disasters will probably double over the next 30 years,“ Dianne Spearman, director of strategic planning of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), told delegates at a two-day WFP shipping conference. She said people in developing countries would be the most affected and that the WFP, the world‘s largest food aid agency, would have to respond by moving very large quantities of food to victims at very short notice, often by ship.

The 1990s saw a tripling in the number of large natural disasters compared with the 1960s, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, Spearman said. There were some 113 million victims of natural disasters each year on average in the 1990s. Spearman said the WFP was making contingency plans with countries to deal with natural disasters, in regions where drought and floods were frequent, but was struggling to obtain funding from donors. „It is more difficult to obtain funds for situations that are not yet a full emergency,“ she said.

About 80 percent of WFP‘s funding is used to tackle emergencies. Total annual voluntary donations to the WFP from governments now stand at around $2 billion. The top 10 donors, led by the United States, provide some 90 percent of that. Donor nations, suffering from the global economic downturn, expected the WFP to show that its work was making a real difference to the lives of the hungry, WFP officials said. „The constant challenge is to do more with less,“ said Rebecca Doyle, a senior official in WFP‘s resourcing division.

The Rome-based WFP‘s ocean transport service (OTS) uses a panel of 13 ship brokers located worldwide to arrange shipments of food aid to the needy. In 2000 the WFP moved about 3.54 million tonnes of food aid representing around $240 million in ocean freight. In 2001 the aid agency chartered an average of 260 bulk carriers and booked an estimated 30,000 containers. The WFP has on average 40 to 45 bulk carriers, loaded with food aid commodities, always on charter. These ships can, on short notice, be re-routed to meet sudden emergencies. (Reuters)