With rising levels of global hunger putting
the goal of ending malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 in serious
jeopardy, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and
the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) have today launched a
global conference aimed at urgently accelerating efforts to achieve Zero Hunger
worldwide.
After decades of impressive reductions in the
numbers of undernourished people, hunger is again on the march. According to
the latest report published jointly by FAO and four other UN
agencies, about 820 million people on the planet are malnourished.
“This is the third consecutive year that
progress in ending hunger has stalled and now has actually increased (in 2015,
2016 and 2017). Child stunting is a major problem and nearly two billion
still suffer from hidden hunger or a deficiency of important nutrients. This
also includes people who are overweight or obese,” said FAO Director-General
José Graziano da Silva in a video message to the conference.
Pointing out that the number of hungry and
malnourished people in the world has gone back up to levels last seen ten years
ago, he added: “After decades of gains in fighting hunger, this is a serious
setback and FAO and the UN sister agencies, together with member governments
and other partners, are all very concerned.”
While there are big challenges in reaching Zero
Hunger, FAO and IFPRI are stressing that the goal is still achievable.
But there is no time to waste.
“After many years of tremendous global progress
in reducing hunger and malnutrition, it is painfully clear that our current
pace is not sufficient to end hunger by 2030, but we can still achieve this
goal,” said Shenggen Fan, IFPRI Director General. “Many countries – from China,
to Ethiopia, to Bangladesh, to Brazil – have achieved remarkable reductions in
hunger and malnutrition, and those successes hold important lessons for the
places currently struggling to make significant progress.”
The conference, attracting delegates primarily
from Africa and Asia is providing a platform to accelerate the sharing of
existing specialty knowledge, approaches and tools that have led to success in
many countries so others can learn, adapt and accelerate their own work to
reduce hunger and malnutrition in sustainable ways.
Ending hunger and malnutrition by the
numbers
While Africa continues to be the hungriest
continent per capita, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest total number of
undernourished – more than 500 million by FAO estimates.
The size of the global challenge means it must
be addressed meaningfully and immediately. For example, the Asia-Pacific region
is home to more than 60 percent of the world’s undernourished, and in order for
it to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 the countries of the region need to
collectively lift more than 110 000 people out of hunger each and every day for
the next 12 years.
The urgency of the task at hand cannot be
overstated – and ending undernutrition is more complex than many realize. The
rise in global hunger is witnessed alongside an increase in obesity, which
brings with it an entirely different set of health and economic challenges for
the world now and in the future.
Leveraging good public policy and knowledge
to accelerate the arrival of Zero Hunger
The conference is highlighting how great
strides have been made in many countries in reducing hunger and malnutrition,
rapidly and sustainably, through improvements in public policies, focused
investments and the harnessing of new technologies.
Bangladesh, for example, has achieved one of
the fastest reductions in child underweight and stunting in history, largely by
using innovative public policies to improve agriculture and nutrition. Policies
supporting agricultural growth helped increase agricultural production, while
other policies supported family planning, stronger health services, growing
school attendance, greater access to drinking water and sanitation, and women’s
empowerment. Together, these policies reinforced each other to create an
environment of improved food security and nutrition for millions of
Bangladeshis.
Economic growth in China lifted millions out of
both hunger and poverty, while Brazil and Ethiopia transformed their food
systems and diminished the threat of hunger through targeted investments in
agricultural research and development (R&D) and social protection
programmes. Starting in the mid-1980s and continuing over two decades, crop
production in Brazil grew by 77 percent and that -- combined with the
country’s Fome Zero programme, established in 2003 to provide beneficiaries a
wide range of social services -- saw hunger and undernutrition nearly
eradicated in just ten years.
Similarly, Ethiopia’s large-scale investments in agricultural have led to substantial growth in the production of cereals and the availability of food, while the creation of the Productive Safety Net Programme provides food and/or cash to needy households, which are direct for the most needy and conditional on a work requirement for others. These investments, combined with large public expenditures in health and education, have dramatically reduced hunger and undernutrition, shifting the international image of Ethiopia from victim of frequent famines to development success story.
Accelerating the roll out of technology and
better food systems
Worldwide, improvements in technology are
helping to deliver better nutrition. For example, boosting the nutritional
value of staple foods through fortification or crops themselves through
biofortification is helping reduce incidence of harmful health conditions like
anemia and improve cognitive development in places as diverse as Zambia and
India.
And approaches like precision farming, drip
irrigation, conservation agriculture, and the introduction of staples that are
resilient to droughts and floods all represent additional examples of powerful
tools that can help us produce greater amounts of more nutritious foods in more
sustainable ways.
The proliferation of new communications
technologies, and ability to harness big data, also offer opportunities to
scale up successes significantly to even greater impact.
But innovation extends far beyond apps, drones
or farm machinery. Innovation in agriculture can involve using new social,
organizational and institutional processes to support farmers and sustainably
intensify production. These can range from building stronger producer self-help
groups and extension services, to improving access to markets and credit in
pioneering ways, to developing new ways of processing, storage, transport and
marketing food. Innovation can be decidedly "low tech" – for example
leaving stands of trees on farms intact to promote soil health and enhance
agroecosystem productivity. Innovations in intervention design can boost their
potential impact, like when behavior change communications that encourage the
adoption of ideal nutrition and child feeding practices are integrated into
social protection programmes to improve household nutrition as well as food
consumption.
Marshalling political will, knowledge, and
brainpower
By convening key figures from the worlds of
research, policymaking, and development programme implementation to share
knowledge of the policies, interventions, and technologies that have
effectively accelerated the elimination of undernutrition, the conference aims
to catalyze the next era of rapid reductions in hunger and malnutrition.
“We have the tools, and we have the knowledge
to eliminate hunger in the next 12 years,” said Fan. “By empowering key actors
in policymaking, research, and program implementation with those tools and
knowledge, we can reach this goal and help millions of people achieve their
full potential.”
“We need to work closely together more than
ever, sharing with each other those successful experiences. If we can
accelerate this knowledge exchange, then we can accelerate its implementation
and take actions that are more concrete,” Graziano da Silva said. “Hunger and
obesity are not simply an individual’s problem. They are public issues. That is
why this conference jointly convened by IFPRI and FAO is so important. We must
accelerate our actions to end hunger and malnutrition. But we also need
stronger political will and greater financial commitment to get the job done.
Political will is fundamental.”
The IFPRI-FAO Conference on Accelerating the
End of Hunger and Malnutrition, is taking place in Bangkok and runs 28-30
November, 2018.
