President Fernández Proposes Creation of Emergency Plan to Combat Food and Oil Crisis

The President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, on Wednesday proposed the application of an emergency action plan that would allow the world’s most vulnerable countries to have access to enough resources to confront the rising costs of oil and to adopt sustainable farming production systems. The President made this proposal before the High Level Plenary Session of Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Changes and Bio-Energy.

President Fernández said that to reverse the current global crisis, which could lead to governing problems, the United Nations should create a Global Solidarity Fund,

President Fernández said that to reverse the current global crisis, which could lead to governing problems, the United Nations should create a Global Solidarity Fund, according to Presidential sources.

In the speech and practice of the international community, the concepts of cooperation and solidarity are absent,” criticized President Fernández, “because what has taken precedence is profit, speculation, greed, selfishness, arrogance and the lack of sensitivity for the problems of others.”

President Fernández thanked UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon who established that the Dominican Republic enjoys the perfect conditions to become, in short or medium term, the breadbasket of the Caribbean. Fernández was referring to funds initially contemplated by international organizations as not being sufficient to confront the needs of the situation which exhibits the characteristics of becoming a global catastrophe.

He said there is concern that “only ten million dollars have been earmarked for our sister nation Haiti which, as a result of this crisis, has experienced the wrath of hungry protestors in the streets begging for food while the government has sat by helplessly and terrified until it was forced to dissolve its governing Cabinet.”

He warned that the current situation of amassing wealth and power will doubtless foreshadow a threat to our very civilization as we know it and will plunge the world into a governing crisis.

The Head of State insisted on the importance of implementing a Global Solidarity Fund as part of the commitment made at the Copenhagen Social Summit in 1995 and allocating 0.7% of the GDP to the Official Cooperation for Development.

“In the same say,” continued Fernández, “there are financial windfalls generated by the oil boom in oil-producing countries and exporters of hydrocarbons, which could serve as a source of loans in terms of concessions, similar to what took place during the 1970s.”

The Dominican suggestion recommends that the UN food crisis work group, created by the Secretary General, should openly and carefully examine all the possible finance alternatives in order to overcome this crisis.

He was referring to his proposal that contemplates a unification of ideas about how to replenish, with fresh financial resources, the cooperation and solidarity funds. He recognized that some of these suggestions are controversial and are not always viewed well by the international community.

Fernández said that there is no doubt that humanity has the knowledge, technology and resources to overcome this current situation but urged the international community to adopt the will and not to allow these problems to get out of hand until the results are disastrous.

“History has taught us that all the amazing changes that have come about for the benefit of the people have generally been preceded by huge cataclysms. From darkness comes light and at this moment the thing that is really necessary for that resplendent light is to make globalization and act of solidarity,” concluded the Dominican President.