London - The global financial crisis is distracting attention from other pressing issues such as rising food and energy prices, and environmental damage, Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus said on Wednesday.
The Bangladeshi economist warned that not addressing those other issues would lead to a "much bigger crisis ahead" that would have political and financial implications.
"What we see as a financial crisis is a part of many more crises, which are going on simultaneously in 2008," Yunus said in an interview at a summit of business leaders in London.
"You remember the food crisis? It's still on, it didn't disappear. Simply, this became much more pressing and everybody is paying attention.
He continued: "Then we have the energy crisis, it's still there... And then the environmental crisis, we have not solved anything about the environmental crisis."
Yunus, who along with his Grameen Bank won the Nobel peace award in 2006 for efforts to lift people out of extreme poverty by giving them small loans, said that any solution had to "address simultaneously all these four things.
"It's a framework problem, we have to have a framework which can address these issues about the lifestyle, about food production, technology, pricing, globalisation, tariffs. Everything has to come."
He noted, though, that the "worst kinds of disasters, which we have right now, are also the best of opportunities."
"Now, we should be looking at the opportunity part, in a big way, in a global way, and in a comprehensive way, together," he said.
In recent weeks, governments in Europe and the United States have pledged trillions of dollars in public funds to bail out financial institutions reeling from the credit crunch, sparked by a crisis in the American sub-prime mortgage sector, and re-ignite lending.
Most recently, finance ministers from all 27 European Union countries met on Tuesday to discuss proposals for a stimulus plan totaling €200bn, equivalent to 1.5% of EU gross domestic product.
Yunus criticised the government aid for banks, describing as "bailing out the people who are responsible for creating this crisis, but ... not looking at the victims of this crisis."
- AFP