South-North Dialogue of Food and Energy Security opens in Geneva, 17 June 2008

South Centre and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia in Geneva organized this joint event to assess the underlying causes and policy dilemmas related to energy security, food security and livelihood security and multilateral responses required to correct the systemic issues.

H.E I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Charge d'Affairs, Permanent Mission of Indonesia to Geneva and Dr. Yash Tandon, Executive Director of the South Centre provided the welcome address. Ambassador Puja stressed the need for multilateral responses to multidimensional crisis such as that of food security while Dr. Tandon laid out the systemic issues underlying food crisis and which requires a rethinking of existing development strategies.

Opening remarks were made by Mrs. Lakshmi Puri, Acting Deputy Secretary General of UNCTAD and by H.E Ambassador Juan Antonio Fernandez Ambassador of Cuba to the UN. Mrs Puri described the food crisis as an urgent wake up call in the area of development while Ambassador Antonio Fernandez illustrated the negative impact on the realization of the right to food of the worsening of the world food crisis, caused inter alia by the soaring food prices’.

Session 1: Understanding the Extent of the Problem

Mr. Josef Schmidhuber from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reminded the audience that food prices will remain high as long as oil prices remain high.

Mr. Mbaye Ndiaye from Permanent Mission of Senegal stressed that agriculture should be high in the economic agenda at the national and intenational level and adequate resources should be mobilized to help developing countries, especially the LDCs.

Ms. Umpika Poonachit, Permanent Mission of Thailand shared the policy responses undertaken by Thailand - as a rice exporting, middle-income developing country, to tackle the food security issue.

Section 2: Causes and Possible Solutions

Ms. Teresa Cavero (Oxfam) explained how decades of wrong policy prescriptions to developing countries and forced liberalization have led to price crisis. Developing countries were forced to let agriculture fall apart and then forced to open their markets which were flooded with cheap imports. Unregulated capital and commodity markets and push towards biofuels has fueled food crisis.

Over 80 people are participating in the event from Missions to the UN of countries of the North and South in Geneva, NGOs and other development agencies.

South North Dialogue Series: Building Capacities on Climate Change

South Centre brought together delegates from the developed and the developing world on Aril 16, 2008 as part of its South - North Dialogue Series (SNDS) initiative. Participants from the North included those from Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France while from the South it included delegates from Maldives, Mexico, China, Indonesia and Philippines; and some NGO's like Third World Network, ICTSD, IGSD and E3G Third Generation Environmentalism.

This SNDS initiative was aimed at strengthening the participation of developing countries in climate change negotiations and to forge an alliance with developed partners in capacity building, financing and technology transfer. The event was organized in the light of the ongoing Bangkok talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The perspective of the developed countries was summarized by H.E. Mrs. Marie-Louise Overvad, Ambassador of Denmark, who acknowledged the higher responsibility of the North in climate change "mitigation" and "adaptation" and its moral obligation to help developing countries counter the adverse effects of global warming.

From the South, H.E. Mr. I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, Ambassador of Indonesia, emphasized the importance of political partnerships and active involvement of all nations, if the hard-won victory in Bali is to survive and deliver.

Mrs. Bernarditas Muller, a senior negotiator from the Philippines (and now the G-77) on climate change and South Centre advisor, elaborated on the role of capacity strengthening as a cross-cutting issue which should be demand-driven and tailored to fit the needs of developing countries instead of simply being imported from the North experience. A lot has been achieved in Bali and political will and efforts should be channelled through the UNFCCC avenue rather than splitting resources and creating alternative venues for action.

The Event concluded with a common agreement that whatever capacity-building and financing should happen on climate change, should be under the Convention.

South North Dialogue: Capacity Building in Climate Change for Developing Countries

Capacity-building for developing countries to be able to adapt to climate change will be an important component in further enhancing the global cooperative framework for action on climate change under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The key question is how best to undertake capacity-building, together with the provision of financing and technology transfer under the Convention, to strengthen participation of developing countries in meeting the developmental challenges of climate change. This is an issue which needs to be discussed in a North-South as well as South-South context and forms the theme of our upcoming South - North Dialogue Series to be held on 16 April 2008 at the South Centre from 1300 - 1530.

Please RSVP your participation to: Mrs. Shirley de Leon-Garnier, By email: deleongarnier@southcentre.org, By telephone: 022 7918055 ext. 29

Opening address will be provided by Dr. Yash Tandon, Executive Director, South Centre. Perspectives will be shared by H.E. Mrs. Marie-Louise Overvad, Ambassador of Denmark, and Ms. Reena Wilfrid-René, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of Mauritius. Closing remarks will be provided by Mr. Vice Yu, Lead Expert on Climate Change, South Centre.

The South North Dialogue Series is an activity taken up under the South Intellectual Platform of the South Centre.

For further details on the event, see the Events section at http://www.southcentre.org