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2% of Elon Musk’s wealth would help solve world hunger, says UN director

A small group of ultra-rich individuals could help solve world hunger with just a fraction of their net worth, says the director of the United Nations World Food Program.

Billionaires need to “go forward now, just once,” said David Beasley in a CNN Connect the World interview with Becky Anderson, which aired on Tuesday – specifically citing the two richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

“$6 billion to help 42 million people who will literally die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” he added.

Tesla Chief Executive Musk has a net worth of nearly $289 billion, according to Bloomberg, meaning Beasley is asking for a donation of just 2% of his fortune.

The net worth of US billionaires has nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic, reaching $5.04 trillion in October, according to the progressive groups the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness.

A “perfect storm” of various crises, such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, means that many nations are “knocking on the door of famine,” Beasley said.

Half of Afghanistan’s population – 22.8 million people – is facing an acute hunger crisis, according to a report by the World Food Program (WFP) released on Monday.

Soaring unemployment and a liquidity crisis mean the country is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis and 3.2 million children under the age of five are at risk, the report concluded.

A series of new reports from the Biden administration issued a stern warning last week: The effects of climate change will be far-reaching and will pose problems for all governments.

Among the reports, the government details how climate change is driving migration, the first time the US government has officially recognized the link between climate change and migration.

WFP has warned of this increase in movement in the past, particularly in the “Dry Corridor” region of Central America.

“For example, take the United States and the Central American region, the Corredor Seco, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua – just in that area,” Beasley said on Tuesday. “We are feeding a lot of people there and the climate is changing with hurricanes and floods; it’s just devastating.”

In Ethiopia, the WFP estimates that 5.2 million people are in urgent need of food assistance in the Tigray region, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has led a major offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) since last year.

Since then, thousands of civilians have been killed, while more than 2 million have been displaced.

Humanitarian organizations such as the WFP have struggled to bring supplies to those in need in the region, exacerbating the crisis.

“I don’t know where they’re getting the food from,” Beasley said in the wide-ranging interview. “We’re out of gas. We’re out of money in terms of paying our people and we’re running out of money and we can’t put our trucks.”

 

Reference: CNN Brasil

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