WASHINGTON, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Food, financial and economic crisis, climate and environment, are the three big issues that could derail the world's sustained development, former vice president of the World Bank Vinod Thomas said in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Those will be the three issues that are coming in the way of sustained development in middle-income countries like China as well as low-income countries like Ethiopia, and high-income countries like Germany, Thomas told Xinhua at the sideline of the ongoing IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington.
Thomas, currently director-general of Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) at the World Bank Group, said that climate change has changed its impact on development in the recent years.
It was thought that it was a distant future issue but right now we have the evidences that much of the disasters are increasing partly because of the impact of climate change, especially floods and drought, Thomas said.
According to a recent IEG report, the frequency of disastrous heat waves (such as in Europe in 2003 and in Russia in 2010) and floods (such as in Pakistan in 2010) may have doubled, due to climate change. Sea level may rise two to five feet this century, imperiling coastal cities, populous deltas and low-lying islands. Unabated, climate change could derail development, with a one-in- fourth chance of an 11 Fahrenheit rise this century.
Thomas, who is expected to move to a new position in the Asian Development Bank in August, said that the global financial and the economic crisis, which in some ways have been overcome particularly in the middle-income countries because of the recovery of growth, still pose serious issues in developed countries.
The Europe's situation means that growth cannot sustain as easy as in the past, Thomas said. So, economic and financial ( crisis) is the second one (challenge).
According to the IEG, the severity of the global economic crisis has a huge variation across regions. Europe and Central Asia has suffered the largest decline, at -12.4 percent, and South Asia the smallest, at -1.4 percent. Middle-income countries were more affected than low-income countries, although low-income countries had greater vulnerability to negative shocks.
The third challenge is directly related to food prices increase and agriculture, Thomas said, adding that the increase of world food prices in 2011 was greater than 2008's level, with the overall food prices rising by 36 percent from last year, and the rising of food prices had affected the low-income countries more than high-income countries.
Obviously we've seen a big shock in the system. It is not a normal kind of increase than expected, said Thomas. The fact that the agriculture sector has experienced two big price hikes in less than four years suggests that there are some fundamental underlying issues that need to be addressed.
Editor: Yang Lina