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Now, more than a decade after the Arab Spring, global food prices are soaring again. They had already reached their highest level on record earlier this year as the pandemic, poor weather and the climate crisis upended agriculture and threatened food security for millions of people. Then came Russia’s war in Ukraine, making the situation much worse — while also triggering a spike in the cost of the other daily essential, fuel.
The combination could generate a wave of political instability, as people who were already frustrated with government leaders are pushed over the edge by rising costs.
“It is extremely worrisome,” said Rabah Arezki, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and former chief economist at the African Development Bank.
“I don’t think people have felt the full impact of rising prices just yet,” said Hamish Kinnear, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk consultancy.
Lessons from the Arab Spring
In the run-up to the anti-government protests that became known as the Arab Spring — which began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread through the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 — food prices were climbing sharply. The Food Price Index from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reached 106.7 in 2010 and jumped to 131.9 in 2011, then a record.
“Mohamed Bouazizi didn’t set himself on fire because he couldn’t blog or vote,” an Emirati commentator wrote in January 2011, referring to the street vendor whose protest act helped launch the revolution in Tunisia and, ultimately, the Arab world. “People set themselves on fire because they can’t stand seeing their family wither away slowly, not of sorrow, but of cold stark hunger.”
Circumstances in individual countries differed, but the bigger picture was clear. Surging wheat prices were a major part of the problem.
The situation now is even worse than it was then. Global food prices have just hit a new record high. The FAO Food Price Index…
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Source : cnn
