Bangladesh calls for immediate global action to address three major global challenges - food crisis, increased oil price and climate change. Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, Ismat Jahan, made this call while speaking on behalf of the least developed countries at the high level segment of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in New York Wednesday. Ambassador Jahan said the price of food grains had surged to its record high, affecting the LDCs most disproportionately. "In the LDCs where poor households spend nearly 70% of their income on food items, a sharp increase in food price was bound to have strong adverse impact on the incidence of poverty and human development', she said. She expressed deep concern at a time when the poor countries had expected increased global support, food market had become further distorted. "Many food exporting countries had adopted restrictive measures through both tariff and non tariff barriers', she added. Ismat Jahan urged strategizing of the global response to the food crisis through a coherent and multi-pronged approach, addressing short, medium and long-term needs, said a press release received here yesterday. She urged removal of the supply side constraints and to ensure adequate food supply. She underlined the need for providing targeted cash transfers and other direct support measures to vulnerable groups. Ambassador Jahan called upon the development partners to immediately come forward with increased grant-based funding to assist the LDCs in meeting their rising food import bills and underlined the need for addressing systematic issues and undertaking long-term solution. Ismat Jahan said agricultural productivity growth in LDCs had been slow and agricultural exports of LDCs, as share of their total exports, were declining dramatically. She said since the late 1980s their agricultural trade deficit had widened rapidly and LDCs had emerged as net agricultural importers. The agriculture sector of the LDCs was primarily rain-fed and thus its productivity was highly vulnerable to climate change, she added. She underscored the need for scaling up of investment in agriculture and rural infrastructure to develop efficient agricultural production across the developing world. She called upon the developed countries to fulfill ODA commitment of 0.2% of their GNI to LDCs by 2010 and to write off all LDC external debts forthwith. She demanded duty-free, quota-free market access for all LDC products and urged the developed countries to provide access to appropriate technologies and related field at affordable cost to crow climate-resilient crops in LDCs. She emphasised the need for regional cooperation in disaster preparedness and addressing the climate change. The 16th session of the CSD is being held in New York from 5-15 May.