Title:
World Leaders Urged to Meet Development Goals by
2015
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
In September, world leaders met in New York City to
discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals
they set ten years ago. Five years remain to meet
eight goals to reduce hunger, poverty and disease
and expand education.United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a three-day
summit meeting of one hundred forty presidents and
prime ministers. Mr. Ban called for renewed efforts
to meet the goals, saying there is much more to do.
He said the economic crisis "cannot be an excuse"
for limiting development efforts. President Obama
spoke September twenty-second, a day before world
leaders opened this year's debate at the United
Nations General Assembly. A U.N. report says the
world had more than one billion undernourished
people last year. That followed the food crisis of
two thousand seven and eight. This year, improved
economic conditions are expected to reduce the
number of hungry people for the first time in
fifteen years. The number is predicted to drop by
almost one hundred million to nine hundred
twenty-five million. Jacques Diouf, head of the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization, says that is
still "unacceptably high." He says the expected
decrease in world hunger is mainly the result of
better access to food as the global economy recovers
and food prices remain below their highest level of
two thousand eight. But wheat prices rose after
Russia halted grain exports in August because of a
severe drought. That ban is now extended until next
year's harvest. In Mozambique, thirteen people died
in recent riots over higher prices for bread,
electricity and water. The cost of bread rose by
thirty percent after the government ended price
supports. After the protests the government said it
would halt the price increases. Officials from FAO
member countries met in Rome to discuss current
supply and demand for grains and rice. A top FAO
official recently said on the agency's website that
a new food crisis appears unlikely. Hafez Ghanem
said there is no cause to worry, unless there is
another "shock to supply." He gave examples like
more bad weather or government policies that shake
the market. The U.N. says two-thirds of the world's
undernourished people live in seven countries. These
are India, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan,
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. For
VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
