The chances that the world will succeed in realising its commitment to end global hunger by 2030 have been reduced dramatically by the objective realities that it faces less than nine years before it has to face its target date.
The UN is reporting that the 2030 deadline now looks ominously challenging in the face of what it says has been a dramatic worsening of global hunger in 2020, much of it attributable to the socio-economic fallout from the advent of COVID-19.
With the full impact of the pandemic yet to be decisively determined, the UN reported earlier this week that around a tenth of the global population, up to 811 million people, were undernourished last year. These numbers, the UN says, mean that it will take a tremendous effort if the 2030 target date for ending global hunger is to be realised.
The UN’s sobering assessment derives from a just-released report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
What the report has had to state about the state of global food security and just how precariously positioned the international community is insofar as meeting the 2030 target is concerned, comes as no surprise since previous editions of the same report had already dropped a gaping hint that the food security of millions, mostly children, was under threat. “Unfortunately, the pandemic continues to expose weaknesses in our food systems, which threaten the lives and livelihoods of people around the world,” the heads of the five UN agencies write in the foreword to this year’s report. The agencies warn of a critical juncture in the race to meet the 2030 deadline, chastened by the fact that the impact of global food production by the advent of the pandemic has left poorer countries even worse off than they had been previously “This year offers a unique opportunity for advancing food security and nutrition through transforming food systems,” the agency heads wrote.
Statistics provided in the report indicate that more than half of all undernourished people (418 million) live in Asia; more than a third (282 million) in Africa; and a smaller proportion (60 million) in Latin America and the Caribbean. The sharpest rise in hunger reportedly occurred in Africa where the estimated prevalence of undernourishment – at 21 per cent of the population – is more than double that of any other region.
The report also highlighted that more than 2.3 billion people (or 30 per cent of the global population) lacked year-round access to adequate food while for every 10 food-insecure men, there were 11 food-insecure women in 2020 (up from 10.6 in 2019).
The report pointed out too that malnutrition has persisted in all its forms. During 2020 more than 149 million under-fives were estimated to have been stunted, or too short for their age; more than 45 million – wasted, or too thin for their height; and nearly 39 million – overweight. A full three billion adults and children remained locked out of healthy diets, largely due to excessive costs. Nearly a third of women of reproductive age suffer from anaemia. Globally, despite progress in some areas – more infants, for example, are being fed exclusively on breast milk – the world is not on track to achieve targets for any nutrition indicators by 2030.
