| Number of Chronically Hungry Tops One Billion |
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The number of chronically hungry in the world's low-income countries has passed the one billion mark for the first time - with high food prices leaving the poor most vulnerable to a worsening financial crisis. Number of Chronically Hungry Tops 1bn Global Financial Crisis Hits the World's Poorest Hardest Link to report: The Global Financial Crisis, Developing Countries and Policy Responses Link to report: Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2009 27th March 09 - STWR Number of Chronically Hungry Tops 1bn 27th March 09 - Javier Blas, Financial Times (UK) The number of chronically hungry people has surpassed the 1bn mark for the first time as the economic crisis compounds the impact of high food prices, the United Nations’ top agriculture official has warned.
The Rome-based organisation estimated last year that about 960m people were chronically hungry in 2008. Mr Diouf said that had since risen and “unfortunately, we are already quoting a number of 1bn people on average for this year”.Before the food crisis started in 2007, there were less than 850m chronically hungry people in the world, a level that has been roughly constant since the early 1990s owing to the global fight against poverty and countries such as China lifting their economic growth. Mr Diouf’s assessment signals that the food and economic crisis have reversed the past quarter-century’s slow but constant decline in the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the developing world’s population. The percentage fell from 20 per cent in 1990-92 to a low of just below 16 per cent in the 2003-05 period. But with 1bn people chronically hungry now, the percentage has risen to almost 18 per cent. As a consequence, the FAO’s director-general proposed ditching the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of the world’s undernourished by 2015 and replacing it with a target of “eradicating hunger by 2025”. He said to meet that aim, the world should learn from the mistakes of the 1990s, when investment in agriculture fell sharply, paving the way for the surge in food prices of the past two and a half years. Mr Diouf is pressing world leaders for a summit in Rome in November to tackle the roots of food insecurity, rather than to continue reacting to every crisis with ad hoc measures. “The food crisis is not over,” he said, warning that although international benchmark prices for major agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, rice and soyabean had fallen from last year’s peak, they remained almost 30 per cent above the 2005 level. He added that domestic prices in developing countries had not tracked the drop in international prices as their crops had been disappointing. Now, he said, “the financial crisis is worsening the situation by increasing unemployment, limiting the credit for trading [agricultural commodities] and lowering remittances, which in poor countries were used to purchase food”. “Combining all the elements we are in a very unstable situation,” he added. At the proposed summit, Mr Diouf said that world leaders should commit to investing in agriculture, particularly in the developing world, as the rise in the world’s population from today’s 6.5bn people to 9bn by 2050 will mean the world needs to double its current food output. He added that leaders also should agree to revive the FAO’s Committee on World Food Security, elevating it to ministerial level to “allow policy decisions [to] be made”. Mr Diouf said that several heads of state and governments already back its idea of a summit in November to tackle the food problem. Previous summits, however, have yielded few policy results. 27th March 09 - Amelia Gentleman, Guardian (UK) People living in the world's poorest communities are eating less frequently and consuming worse food as a result of the global financial crisis, according to a study of the impact of the recession in five developing nations published today. Many poor families hit by the economic downturn are also removing their children from school, research by the Institute of Development Studies showed, and in a number of countries children are being pushed into work early as a consequence of the international crisis. Research conducted in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Jamaica and Zambia attempted to provide a rapid overview of the consequences of the recession in some of the world's most deprived communities. "Eating less frequently and less diverse and nutrient-rich foods was commonly reported," the report states. "Many report not being able to makes ends meet. Managing food, health and educational needs has been a struggle, and not only for the very poorest. For some, particularly children, the impacts may be permanent: children who drop out of school to earn or because their parents cannot afford fees, books or breakfast, are unlikely to re-enrol once food prices decline." Researchers stressed that it was difficult to untangle which aspects of hardship could be directly traced to either the current economic crisis, the fuel and food price rises of last year or the local political situation, but drew broader conclusions from studying the impact of previous recessions. "Evidence shows that poverty, malnutrition and infant mortality increased during every national financial crisis in the past 11 years," said Neil McCulloch, who headed the IDS research. "The current crisis is global and the effects on households, businesses and trade in developing countries are evident." A separate study released by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) concluded yesterday that Asian and Pacific countries are particularly vulnerable to the triple threat of food and fuel price volatility, climate change and the global economic crisis. The emergence of all three crises at the same time has "hit the world's poor the hardest," Escap's executive secretary, Noeleen Heyzer, said, warning that the financial crisis could result in political instability and social unrest. |
In
an interview with the Financial Times, Jacques Diouf, director-general
of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, warned that the increasing
numbers of undernourished people could trigger political instability in
developing countries. “The issue of world food security is an
issue of peace and national security,” he said, urging world leaders
who are discussing ways to resolve the economic crisis not to forget
that last year more than 30 countries suffered food riots.
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