Conflict, economic unrest and bad weather hampered efforts to curb hunger last year, affecting nearly nine percent of the world’s population, United Nations agencies said on Wednesday.
About 733 million people could face hunger in 2023, they said in a report, a level that has held steady for three years following a sharp rise following the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the picture is uneven. One in five people in Africa suffers from hunger, while the global average is one in 11. Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress in eliminating malnutrition and Asia has stalled.
The broader goal of ensuring regular access to adequate food for all also stalled during this period.
Last year, 2.33 billion people were affected by moderate or severe food insecurity, forcing people to occasionally skip meals – representing around 29 per cent of the global population.
The report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation shows that the UN goal of a hunger-free world by 2030 is becoming more blurred.
Conflict, climate chaos and economic downturn are already known to be major causes of food insecurity and undernutrition, working in conjunction with underlying factors such as persistent inequality, the unaffordability of healthy diets and unhealthy food environments.
But the report says these leading causes are becoming more frequent and intense – and occurring together more often – meaning more people are exposed to hunger and food insecurity.
The report cites updated estimates that a healthy diet will be unattainable for more than a third of the world’s population in 2022.
Here too, regional disparities were evident: more than 71 per cent of people in low-income countries could not afford a healthy diet, compared to just six per cent in high-income countries.
‘No time to lose’
According to David Laborde, an economist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation and one of the authors of the report, the post-Covid economic recovery was uneven within and between countries.
He told AFP that wars and extreme weather events will continue unabated in 2023, but the world has failed to implement a “Marshall Plan” to boost funds earmarked for fighting hunger.
The report by UN agencies, which was presented at the G-20 summit in Brazil, suggested major improvements in food security and nutrition financing to mitigate the crisis.
This will start with adopting common definitions, putting all stakeholders on the same page. According to current estimates, between $176 billion and $3,975 billion will be needed to eradicate hunger by 2030.
Yet the “highly fragmented” financing structure “makes it impractical to scale up financing for food security and nutrition and to ensure effective implementation”, the report says.
It says donors, international agencies, NGOs and institutions must coordinate better, as the current system lacks shared priorities and consists of “a plurality of individuals running mostly small, short-term projects”.
Laborde said food security and nutrition is not just a question of “distributing bags of rice in emergencies,” but also involves providing support to small-scale farmers and access to energy in rural areas so irrigation systems can be electrified.
According to the report, another weakness of the current system is that the intentions of donors do not always match the needs of the population.
Laborde said the debate over animal husbandry in some European countries could discourage investment in promoting animal husbandry in Africa, which is essential.
He noted Africa’s Sahel region, where long-term instability and military coups have caused donors to withhold aid at a time when people need it most.
The report also recommends developing financial instruments combining private and public funds to enable the private sector to invest in food security, which is a source of productivity and political stability.
“There is no question of wasting time, as the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action highlighted in this report,” the report concludes.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
