One in every six humans wakes- up hungry, not knowing from where her or his next meal would be coming. This is the sobering eye-opener from the UN World Food Programme. Since the ‘poor will always be with us’ and they are everywhere, let not the so-called rich countries bask in the delusion that they will be spared the horrors of hunger which hitherto have been seen as descending on only the ‘poor countries’.

If there is one myth the global financial crisis has punctured, it is the long-standing notion nurtured by the hitherto rich countries, that they would be generally spared the economic shocks of the free market system. The current economic crisis demolishes this illusion and drives home the precariousness of the capitalist economic model. In fact, the world is now being jolted into the realization that all is not wrong with the planned economy.

Nevertheless, the brunt of the crisis would at least initially be borne by the ‘poor countries’ and it is best that those who wax lyrical about an ‘Asian Century’ bear in mind the WFP ‘shocker’, because they preside over the destinies of the majority of the world’s poor. Laying the groundwork for an EU-style Economic Community by these economically-dynamic countries of Asia is all in order, but they would need to keep ‘the wolf from the doors’ of their poor.

Said the WFP’s executive director, Josette Sheeran: ‘The food crisis is not over. We have an anomaly happening where on global, big markets, the prices are down, but for 80 percent of commodities in the developing world, prices are higher today than they were a year ago, and the prices a year ago were double what they were the year before that…..What it means is for about 80 percent of the developing world, people can afford one third as much food today as they could two or three years ago’.

This is indeed food for thought. Prices of some essential commodities may be down in the world market, but the experience of particularly the poor of the Third World is that food prices at home are unaffordable. In fact, the cost of living is making them desperately poor.

An explanation for this ‘anomaly’ is not difficult to find. The poor are suffering the benign negligence of their governments, who prefer to follow a ‘hands off’ policy on the issue of price control. We are seeing this happening in Sri Lanka and cannot claim ignorance on this score. The simple truth is that states turn a blind eye on these iniquities and even connive with the local agents of exploitation in the latter’s efforts to fatten themselves on the misery of the poor. These are essential features of the political-economy of poverty and should not go unnoticed by those sections which are concerned about ‘How the Other Half Dies’.

Essentially, it is the increasing empowerment of the poor and the more vulnerable sections of society which could prove most effective in achieving political and social stability in particularly the Third World. World political leaders would need to bear this in mind as they gather in Copenhagen early next month to hammer out a new comprehensive climate change treaty which, among other things, would aim at containing, greenhouse gas emissions.

The industrialized West has apparently indicated strong support for the upcoming climate change consultative process but is unlikely to help make a positive impact through these deliberations unless and until it sees an umbilical link between its economic models, environmental degradation and poverty or powerlessness.

The vampirical exploitation of nature by those with a vested interest in this self-destructive process has been continuing but if the world community has eyes to see it would realize that nature has been ‘hitting back with a vengeance’. Largely unnoticed perhaps, there has been a relentless increase in the number of environmental disasters over the past few decades. In fact there has been a fourfold increase in the number of such disasters over the past 20 years and Asia has borne the brunt of these catastrophes.

Coming in tandem with the global economic crisis, it should be plain to the human that it is his exploitative attitude towards nature and the more vulnerable sections of his own species, along with his uncontrollable lust for ‘greenbacks’, that has brought him down to the current state of helplessness.

Hopefully, there would now be a searching look by the world community at economic models in particular. Uncontrolled exploitation of natural and human resources, spurred on by material greed, is what the free market system is basically all about. The world economic crunch is only an initial indictor of the foolhardiness which has gone along with this wasteful enterprise.

Not only must centralized planning, to a degree, come to centre stage of modern economic life, there also needs to be a special effort at ‘greening’ the planet. In fact, UN chief Ban Ki-moon has underscored these concerns by speaking of the need for ‘green growth’.

The question is, would the G7 put its weight fully behind this long overdue globe-saving venture? Or would it continue to be motivated by the urge for power-aggrandizement?

Hopefully, the world’s powerful too would see that it is in their interests to usher in ‘green growth’. Today, the US- led NATO is mired in a highly costly ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan. In fact it is perceived that NATO casualties are relentlessly on the rise in Afghanistan although US casualties in Iraq may seem to have proportionately decreased somewhat.