G8 pledges $20bn in self-sufficiency aid
Updated on 10 July 2009
The world's richest countries have pledged $20 billion (£12.3bn) in aid towards an agriculture programme aimed at helping poor countries feed themselves.
The focus on agricultural investments reflects a US-led shift away from emergency aid assistance towards longer-term strategies to try to make communities more self-sufficient.
The cash - $5 billion (£3bn) more than expected thanks to last-minute offers during discussions at the summit in the Italian town of L'Aquila - is intended to go towards projects designed to put Africa on the road towards food self-sufficiency.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had already promised $1.8 billion (£1.1bn) from Britain for agriculture and food security, said the pledges will help tackle a "hunger emergency that is gripping over 1 billion people around the world".
Mr Brown said: "There is a hunger emergency that is now gripping over a billion people around the world. It is unacceptable that today, people should go hungry in a climate as fertile as ours."
He said there is "an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger and poverty".
The United Nations says the number of malnourished people has risen over the past two years and is expected to top 1.02 billion this year, reversing a four-decade trend of declines.
The global downturn has led to a sharp increase in food shortages, with the numbers of chronically hungry estimated to be growing at a rate of around 275,000 a day throughout 2008.
The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation has called for an additional $30 billion (£18.4bn) per year investment in agriculture and rural infrastructure, on top of emergency food aid.
Development charity ActionAid estimates that around $23 billion (£14bn) of this will have to come from the G8, with Britain needing to more than treble its donations from $600 million (£370m) to $1.87 billion (£1.14bn) by 2012.
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