The Rich Prevail Over the Poor

The 164-member World Trade Organization (WTO) has implicitly rubber-stamped the widely-condemned policy of “vaccine apartheid” which has discriminated against the world’s poorer nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, depriving them of any wide-ranging intellectual property rights.

Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said at the conclusion of the WTO’s ministerial meeting last week: “The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful. The European Union has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The UK and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the US has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement.”

 This so-called compromise, he argued, largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances. And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines.Lawson added, “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and treatments for everyone, everywhere. The EU, UK, US, and Switzerland blocked that text.”

“Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives.”

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ explained that rich countries had acted to protect the monopolies of big pharmaceutical companies to determine production levels of pandemic-ending medicines.

In doing so, he said “they are not only causing deaths in developing countries, they are causing deaths in their own countries’ too. It’s not Northern interests vs Southern interests. It’s a handful of oligarchs who cannot share vs 8 billion people who want to be safe from pandemics.”

“Almost everyone in every country in the world”, he said, “would be better off if big pharmaceutical companies made slightly less obscene profits so that enough doses of pandemic-ending medicines could be made by multiple producers across the world to reach everyone who needs them on time.”

“The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the rot of the system of monopolies over production of vital medicines. Everyone can see it, and it will fall. How quickly it falls is the only question left. People are organizing nationally and internationally and they won’t let this pass again,” Phillips declared.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), said, “unequal access to vaccines is a global scandal that flies in the face of the economic, social and technological progress we claim to have made as humanity”. He pointed out that CSOs around the world have long called for equity in health care and an end to excessive profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of people’s well-being.

The Battle for Covid-19 Vaccines: the Rich Prevail Over the Poor | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

“Ethical” investing is one of the fastest-growing areas of finance. Corporations worldwide are backing projects to plant or protect carbon-absorbing trees which weighs up a company’s commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

Some environmentalists, however, argue that such efforts are often just cases of “greenwashing” – a way for companies to look like they are taking action to curb climate change without actually cutting their own planet-heating emissions.

“Funding for communities is not bad, but that doesn’t make up for the negative impact that the company may be having on the environment,” said Gustavo Pinheiro, a coordinator at the Institute for Climate and Society, a Brazilian philanthropic organization.

But the current ESG wave means many corporations are investing in forest protection as a way to buy external goodwill, instead of using the money to make internal changes to cut their carbon emissions, said Daniela Teston, Brazil’s corporate engagement manager for green group WWF.

“Sometimes a company supports a specific project and communicates that investment to the public as if it were a part of its strategy in terms of social-environmental conservation,” Teston said. Instead, companies should take “a broader look at concrete actions that are not focused on small projects,” she added.

In Brazil between January and March this year, tree loss in the Amazon rose 64% from a year ago to 941 sq km (363 square miles).

Can ethical investment help protect the Amazon rainforest? (trust.org)

The experts now foresee a long protracted war in Ukraine with further inevitable economic consequences for many other peoples across the world. The burden of war always falls heaviest on the poor and vulnerable. They are taught that their masters always know better, and thus when commanded go out in vast numbers to be killed on the battlefield. And what is their reward? If they escape death they return to face their rulers cutting social and welfare services. You are doomed to sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters’ freedom. Let the workers form one great worldwide union to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness. When millions of workers are set free from making armaments for warfare, then they will be able to turn their attention to building themselves better houses, producing more and better food and healthcare for their families, and they will enjoy the leisure, the comfort, the culture and the education which are now the privileges of the exploiters. Let us work to bring about universal prosperity and peace.

To the Russian soldiers, we say you are being misled and are sacrificing your lives and your family’s happiness in an unjust foreign invasion. You are fighting a most disgraceful and inhuman war. Yours is the robbers’ fight to steal another’s country.  Putin cannot fight even the smallest battle without you. You are the masters of the entire situation. Lay down your weapons, go back home and change conditions back there.

To the Ukrainian soldiers, you are martyring your lives in the name of patriotism so that plutocrats can preserve their privileges and private property. Join your women and children and seek safety outside Ukraine and let the politicians and the employers who benefit do the fighting. Why bleed for the capitalists?

Men and women make their own history, as Marx once said. Imperialism is a product of capitalism and we cannot destroy the one without overthrowing the other. Socialists struggling against economic slavery at home cuts at the roots of war that can only be overcome by the working-class conquest of economic and political power in their respective countries, which will bring to an end the capitalist regime, and call into existence the cooperative world commonwealth.

Capitalism condemns people against one another. Capitalism is the instigator of wars. Instead of uniting the world, it works for its irremediable division and for eternal war. 

The Socialist Party has for years declared against the atrocities of capitalism, but now there are so-called socialists informing us that it is our duty to become accomplices of the rulers in the greatest of all iniquities, the slaughter of fellow workers by fellow-worker, dutifully performing one’s patriotism by taking life, bombing homes, and laying waste to fields of the innocent.

The working class of the world has but one enemy, the capitalist class of the world, those of their own country being at the head of the list.

Fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them “have humanity by the throat,” António Guterres, the UN secretary general has said.

He compared fossil fuel companies to the tobacco companies that continued to push their addictive products while concealing or attacking health advice that showed clear links between smoking and cancer, the first time he has drawn such a parallel.

He said: “We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations – with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies. They exploited precisely the same scandalous tactics as big tobacco decades before. Like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility.”

Guterres also castigated governments that are failing to rein in fossil fuels, and in many cases seeking increased production of gas, oil and even coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

He said: “Nothing could be more clear or present than the danger of fossil fuel expansion. Even in the short-term, fossil fuels don’t make political or economic sense.”

Guterres has apparently been incensed by the recent behaviour of fossil fuel companies, which have been reaping a bonanza from energy prices sent soaring by the Ukraine war. Much of these bumper profits are likely to be invested in fresh exploration and expansion of fossil fuel resources.

Guterres is understood to be furious that, six months after the Cop26 climate summit, and after three dire reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the “starkest warning yet” from climate scientists – countries and businesses are ignoring the science and squandering opportunities to put the world on a greener path, when renewable energy is cheaper and safer than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency warned last year that all new exploration and development of oil, gas and coal must cease this year to hold to the 1.5C threshold.

A senior UN official explained: “Even given the secretary general’s impressive track record of speaking truth to power, this is a blistering intervention, to the leaders of the world’s largest economies. The fossil fuel industry is taking a page out of big tobacco’s playbook, and that is utterly unacceptable to the secretary general. He’s determined to call out the fossil fuel industry and its financiers, and he won’t be constrained by any diplomatic niceties.” The official added: “For the secretary general, this is the fight of our lives, and he won’t take a backwards step.”

Fossil fuel firms ‘have humanity by the throat’, says UN head in blistering attack | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, has again been distinguishing himself as a patriot. Bluntly put, Starmer regards it as the duty of Britons to sacrifice themselves in defence of their exploiters should the latter be challenged by the exploiters of any other country. In other words it says that the working class should be prepared to slaughter workers of any other country should their respective masters quarrel over the division of the spoils that has been stolen from the working class.

Every member of the Socialist Party knows that the problem of militarism—like that of unemployment—is inseparable from capitalism. Militarism is an inevitable effect of capitalist domination and the struggle for markets and profit, and so long as the workers are ruled by a master class, so long will their masters use them as cannon fodder. The only solution of the question of militarism from the proletarian point of view is the abolition of capitalist exploitation. It is then our duty to concentrate our efforts upon socialism, upon the triumph of those who labour.

The revolutionary socialist is the truest peace advocate. All socialists call themselves internationalists, and this, to every socialist, means to be in favour of the international union of the workers.

The patriotic left-nationalists say: ‘Present day nations, such as history has made them, are entities whose existence is useful to human progress. However imperfect they may be, however inhuman even they may be for working people, the latter have in each country the duty of defending them when attacked. We are internationalists, but if the country in which we chanced to be born is attacked we will defend it to the death’.

This in plain language means simply; ‘Workers of the world unite; but if your rulers order you to massacre your comrades, do so!’

If a wider war happens to break out over Ukraine between NATO and Russia, workers would have protested through the voices of their respective parliamentarians, proclaiming eloquently the fraternity between peoples  and, then, fraternally, the working classes would have gone to massacre each other.

The workers are ill-treated in every existing country.All nations are equal, or nearly so, in this respect, particularly now that the capitalist regime renders more and more uniform the material, intellectual, and political conditions of life for the labouring class in all countries.No country at the present day, is so superior to the others that the workers of that country should get themselves killed in its defence.

 The Socialist Party is the only party of which it can be said that it advocates undiluted socialism. All the various problems that affect the working class hinge upon the ownership of the means of life, and yet outside of our organisation practically the whole of the workers’ energies are being directed against effects rather than to the removal of the cause of the trouble. The origin of poverty, war and slavery lies in class ownership of the means whereby the people live. The straightest road is the shortest road, and the only way to get rid of the evil of militarism is to get rid of capitalism.

All the signs are that this summer will break all existing records for heatwaves. It is only the middle of June, and yet large parts of the world are already registering temperatures that in the past were not reached until the height of the season. 

The US weather map for June 16 shows almost the whole South and Southwest and much of the Midwest over 90° F (32° C). 

The European heatwave, confined so far to Spain, Portugal and southern France but forecast to spread to the rest of Europe, has raised temperatures to 104–109° F (40–43°C). This corresponds to the highest temperatures reached during the European summer heatwaves of 2003 and 2013. This time around, however, temperatures in this range are just the beginning.

Even worse is the heatwave in South Asia, extending from the Gulf (Arabian or Persian, as you prefer) through southern Iran and southern Pakistan and across northern India. In this belt highs of 109–115° F (43–46° C) have been observed; on May 14 a reading of 124° F (51° C) earned Jacobabad, a city of 200,000 people in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, the title of ‘the hottest city on Earth.’[1] 

Where is the limit?

The human body is adaptable only within certain limits. At what point do rising air temperatures become incompatible with human survival? 

This is a little complicated. Survivability depends not on air temperature alone but on air temperature in combination with humidity. Dry air enables the body to cool itself by sweating; with rising humidity this grows more difficult and finally impossible. 

Measures have been devised to take this interaction into account. Most commonly used is the Wet Bulb Temperature (WBT) – the temperature shown by a thermometer whose bulb is wrapped in cloth that has been soaked in water at the same temperature as the air. Evaporation from the cloth cools the bulb, just as perspiration cools the human body.  

Human beings cannot survive once the WBT reaches 35° C (95° F). This is the threshold at which a healthy person at rest will die in six hours. WBTs at this level or above have not as yet been recorded in populated areas. Apparently conditions came closest to the threshold of survival during a 2015 heatwave in Bandar Mahshahr in southwestern Iran.  

Of course, not everyone can afford to rest indoors or in the shade whenever the weather gets too hot and/or humid. Many do not have enough water to drink and bathe as much as they need to, even though they may spend a fifth of their income on water deliveries.

When will we cross the threshold?

Casualties from excessive heat are already considerable in absolute terms. It is estimated, for example, that the European summer heatwaves of 2003 and 2013 caused 70,000 and 30,000 deaths, respectively. Nevertheless, their impact was fairly minor in relative terms – say, by comparison with the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths did not exceed 0.1% of the populations concerned.[2] Most victims belonged to specially vulnerable groups like the elderly and people with heart conditions. 

As global heating proceeds further, an expanding area of the world’s land surface will become uninhabitable by human beings. Heat-related deaths will start to occur on a much more massive scale – not in the thousands but in the millions and eventually billions, in Central America, the Caribbean and Amazonia, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia. The implications for human society and international relations are enormous, because whole countries are likely to disappear as organized states, probably including two nuclear powers – India and Pakistan.

These conclusions follow logically from scientific studies, but the journalists who report the studies and even most of the scientists themselves appear unable or afraid to spell them out. I suppose they don’t want to be accused of ‘alarmism’ or ‘apocalyptic thinking.’ Take the study reported by the New York Times on May 4, 2020. The researchers projected that ‘uninhabitable hot zones’ would expand from 1% of the Earth’s land surface in 2020 to 20% in 2070 and noted that about one third of the world’s population now live in those future hot zones.[3] The newspaper headline reads: ‘Billions Could Live in Extreme Heat Zones Within Decades.’ The opening sentence again speaks of billions ‘likely to live in areas that are considered unsuitably hot for humans’ (italics mine). But those areas will be uninhabitable. That means that humans will be unable to live there. The former inhabitants will have either migrated to cooler areas or died.   

I do have serious doubts regarding the timescale. Many projections made by climate scientists in the past were later found to have underestimated the rate of change. Seeing that we are already so near the edge of the cliff and continue to charge toward it at full speed, why should we need another half century to reach it? On the basis of available evidence, I suspect that the transition to mass heat-related death will occur by the end of the current decade, perhaps by the end of this summer. After another decade, by 2040, I expect that there will be a broad equatorial belt devoid of human (and much other) life.  

Climate refugees

Many authors acknowledge that millions and eventually billions of people will no longer be able to live where they live now but envision that they will survive somewhere else. Undoubtedly some, especially professionals and the wealthy, will be allowed to migrate to cooler regions. Global warming is gradually opening up more of Greenland for the settlement of immigrants; later Antarctica will also be able to absorb a few million. 

For some time, however, Europe and North America will continue to be the main refugee destinations. These regions have experience of taking in climate refugees: the refugees from Syria were fleeing drought as well as war (moreover, the drought was one cause of the civil war), while the refugees from Central America trudging through Mexico for the US are fleeing drought as well as political and gang violence. The destabilizing political impact of these refugee flows makes it likely that effective – if necessary, ruthless and cruel – measures will be taken to block future flows. It should be kept in mind that Europe and North America will be coping with heatwaves of their own (less severe ones, to be sure).     

Finally, many of the areas that will be worst affected – Southeast Asia, for instance – are a very long way from Europe or North America. Would-be refugees will face formidable barriers long before they get anywhere near their destination, such as the wall that India has erected right around Bangladesh.

For all these reasons, most of the inhabitants of ‘extreme heat zones’ will stay where they are and perish. It will be by far the biggest genocide in history – for, after all, global heating could have been halted at an early stage. 

What next?

What will the Earth look like once the tropics have turned into a vast ‘dead zone’ or ‘hot zone’? 

Remaining human habitation will be concentrated mainly to the north of the dead zone — in Canada and the cooler parts of the United States, Europe (not necessarily the whole of Europe), Russia, northern and central China, Japan and the Arctic (including Greenland). There will also still be scattered settlement to the south of the dead zone – for example, in the southern cone of South America, New Zealand and Antarctica. 

There will no longer be a single world society or world economy, because the dead zone will sever most connections between the inhabited zones to its north and south. It will not be safe to steer ships through tropical waters or fly planes through tropical airspace. The future of our species and our planet will depend crucially on the character of the civilization that develops in the North. 

Despite the enormous damage global heating will have inflicted on the planet and the immeasurable human suffering it will have caused, it cannot be assumed that ending and reversing the process will be a top priority of the Northern civilization. On the contrary, it is quite likely that the ‘new’ civilization will develop as a mere extension of today’s capitalist economy, based on predatory exploitation of all natural resources, not excluding hydrocarbons. Canada, one of the two leading powers of the new North, stubbornly refuses to abandon even the Alberta tar sands, the filthiest of all known energy sources, while the other leading power, Russia, remains as firmly committed as ever to exploit its Arctic oil and gas deposits.[4]   

Unfortunately, it is too late to avert the next stage of global heating. Whatever policies might be adopted, it is built into the climatic system. 

But will it still be possible to salvage what remains? Perhaps. But it depends on whether there emerges a popular transnational movement, especially across the global North, strong enough to wrest control over resources from the hands of the capitalist class, halt the capitalist profits machine and establish a humane, democratic and ecologically sustainable way of life. 

Notes            

[1] Whether it deserves this title is impossible to judge, given the sparsity of weather data for many tropical cities, especially in Africa.  

[2] The 2010 summer heatwave killed 11,000 people in Moscow, equal to about 0.1% of the city’s population at the time, but the deaths were caused not only by heat but also by air pollution from forest fires.

[3] Chi Xu et al., Future of the human climate niche, May 4, 2020

[4] On Russian interests in the Arctic see Chapter 1 in Alexander Sergunin and Valery Konyshev, Russia in the Arctic: Hard or Soft Power? (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2015).

Laurence C. Smith, currently Professor of Environmental Studies at Brown University, has written a book entitled The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future (Dutton, 2010) that exemplifies the attitude of many observers. Although supposedly a specialist on the environment, his evident excitement at the prospects for ‘economic growth’ in the Arctic sweeps away any concern he may have for our environmental future. See also his video The Future is in the North.

Stephen Shenfield

World Socialist Party 

The heat to come – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

The United States is on the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the judges and courts. The people are demoralized and disillusioned. The media is largely subsidized by the wealthy to ensure it is muzzled and public opinion silenced. Labor is denied the right to organize for self-protection. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few and the possessors of those endanger liberty. From this social injustice, America has bred two classes—paupers and billionaires.  Increasingly events forebode terrible social convulsions, the establishment of absolute authoritarianism the destruction of civilization.

Working people have witnessed the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering public. The controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform? They have agreed together to ignore every serious issue. They propose to drown the outcries of pillaged people with sham battles. Both parties are prepared to sacrifice our homes, lives, and the health and education of our children on the altar of Mammon so as to secure corrupt campaign funds from the billionaires.

Too many people are suffering unnecessary misery. Every person deserves the opportunity to contribute to society and in return to have their needs met. Capitalism makes it impossible to solve the problems it creates. The core purpose of capitalism is to create profit, not develop humanity’s potential. On the contrary, capitalism deny the majority any real control over their lives and the result is results: anger, anxiety and apathy. We live in a competitive, exploitive society where bosses are constantly thinking up new ways to enrich themselves at their workers’ expense.

The root cause of our problems today is not globalization but class divisions. Private property divides society into classes: the minority who claim ownership of the means of production and what is produced; the majority who labor to produce.  Over time, the form of class society has changed (feudalism, slavery, capitalism). Nevertheless, all class societies are based on private property, where the fruits of social production is kept in private hands.Because most of the world’s wealth is owned or controlled by a small group of people, everyone else must struggle to survive. The opposite of private property is socialism, or common control of society. There are no genuinely socialist societies in the world today. Not even one. Genuine socialism would abolish private property. People would continue to enjoy the possession of personal-use items; however, no one would be allowed to own the social means of survival, and thereby exercise power over others. Abolishing private property would end the class division of humanity and all of its miseries. The world, once again, would  be shared by all.

Capitalism is an international system, and it will take a worldwide  effort by the world’s majority to replace it. Once we have build that coordination, we will be able to solve problems like climate that small groups could never manage. World socialism would be much richer in resources and opportunities for sharing than would be possible in small autonomous communities. The challenge is to ensure that global integration meets human needs.  People would prefer a compassionate world of giving and helping one another out, an all-for-one-and-one-for-all world for the benefit of all. Together, we can free ourselves from the heartless hell of capitalist rule.

We must abolish the system of private property in order to create a truly sharing society based on the principle of  from each according to ability, to each according to need.

A native American elder was teaching his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win grandfather?” 

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Capitalism feeds the first wolf, while socialism feeds the second.

 A Short Story from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Britain battles a worsening social care staffing crisis, with an estimated 105,000 vacancies nationally and thousands of patients facing long delays for care.

Care workers recruited from overseas to look after elderly and disabled people in Britain are being charged thousands of pounds in illegal fees and forced to work in exploitative conditions to pay off their debts. By law, agents cannot charge a fee for finding or trying to find a candidate work. 

But the fees are often disguised as a “processing”, “service” or “admin” charge, with many workers unaware they are illegal. Often, the breakdown of fees or full amount is not fully disclosed until the worker has reached the UK, by which time they have already paid for flights and relocation.

Workers from India, the Philippines, Ghana and Zimbabwe are among those charged for their recruitment, with fees ranging from £3,000 to £18,000.

Some have become trapped in debt bondage – a form of modern slavery – as a result of the fees. Suspected victims described how agents had deducted money from their salaries and withheld their passport or residence permit until they repaid the sum owed.

Others claim to have been subject to abuse and threats or paid less than the minimum wage. They cannot speak up because the sponsorship system for care workers means their visa is tied to their employer.

Many of the care workers used a government visa scheme introduced in February which added care workers to the shortage occupation list to attract international candidates. But evidence collected by the Observer – including interviews with suspected victims, charities and labour experts; conversations with agents; and analysis of payslips, contracts and online chat groups – reveals the new visa route is being widely abused by agencies and traffickers, leaving workers open to exploitation. Modern slavery in the care sector is a growing problem, with several raids by the government’s labour abuse agency recently, and data from charities and the Care Quality Commission suggesting a rise in cases.

Todd Maforimbo, who studied the supply of labour in the UK health sector and now campaigns on labour abuse, explains, “People are coming to look for a better life but they’re ending up in worse situations.”

An internal report from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority said more monitoring was needed to “prevent debt bondage and highlight potential traffickers”.

Revealed: Migrant care workers in Britain charged thousands in illegal recruitment fees | Social care | The Guardian

 A surge in the cost of corn-based Latin American staples such as tortillas, tamales and arepas risks fueling food insecurity and hunger from Mexico to Argentina.

Corn prices hit nine-year high, partly due to Ukraine war

Cost of Latin America’s staple tortillas and tamales jumps

Some 267 million people face food poverty in the region

The surge in the cost of corn – which is used to make Mexico’s staple tortilla – forced Marco Antonio Jimenez to raise the price of his tacos by two pesos (10 U.S. cents), but he said many of his mainly low-income customers could no longer afford the 20-peso snack.

“When the price of tortillas increases, I have to increase the price of tacos. Many people prefer not to buy anything anymore.”

Latin America had the biggest increase in food poverty globally between 2014 and 2020 due to the reduction of economic growth rates, extreme inequality and serious climate events that predated the pandemic. In Mexico, longer and more frequent droughts have forced farmers in some corn-growing areas to switch to less thirsty crops in recent years. Such factors mean the region is especially vulnerable to the impact of higher grains and fertilizer costs linked to the war in Ukraine. Rising fertilizer prices can lead farmers to cut their usage, causing production to fall. 

As the pandemic wreaked havoc on the region’s already weak economies, the prevalence of food insecurity rose to 40.9% from 31.9% between 2019 and 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the latest FAO data. Accelerated inflation is expected to push 7.8 million people more into food insecurity this year, according to new estimates released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Food and drink inflation in six countries – Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay – hit double digits in March, with women and people with informal jobs set to be hit hardest, ECLAC said. Central American countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, which rely on corn-based foods like tamales and pupusas, are particularly at-risk from rising grains prices after the 2020 hurricanes Eta and Iota wrecked crops and exacerbated hunger. Caribbean countries, which are heavily dependent on imported grains and fuel, are also threatened by food insecurity due to an increase in debt burdens during the pandemic.

We are seeing the perfect storm,” said Carolina Trivelli, senior adviser for strategic analysis at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “We need a package of temporary and focalized social policies for the most vulnerable populations and measures to support food production,” said Trivelli.

Governments are taking emergency measures to rein in inflation. Mexico has suspended import duties for a year on a range of essential goods including corn, while Argentina – where inflation could top 70% this year – proposed a bill this month to tax companies that earn “extraordinary income” as a result of the fall-out from the war in Ukraine – mainly commodities firms. Biden pledged $331 million in funding for food security in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Colombia.

The food crisis looks set to last until well into 2023, calling for public policies such as direct welfare payments or school lunch programs to help the poorest.

Corn price hike forces Mexicans to cut back on tortillas (trust.org)