Lack of political will to slow malnutrition and hunger

At the end of last year 2.8 billion people – almost one in three people on the planet – found it impossible to have a healthy diet. Over 864 million of them experienced severe food insecurity, sometimes going an entire day or longer without eating. The causes: economic crises, military conflicts and the negative effects of climate change.

Sergio Ferrari

What is true is that over 730 million people in the world suffer hunger. 36% more than ten years ago. The world has regressed fifteen years with current malnutrition levels comparable to those of 2008 – 2009.

This complex planetary reality is described lucidly in the annual report on the State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2024), published on the last Wednesday in July in the framework of a G20 ministerial meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Drawn up jointly by five United Nations agencies [the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), the World Health Organisation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme] and under the FAO’s oversight, the report sets out the structural causes and critical factors behind this scourge: economic crises, military conflicts and the negative effects of climate change which in 2023 represented the principal element conspiring against food security and causing malnutrition.

These three critical factors coincide, inevitably, with underlying agents such as inaccessible healthy diets, insalubrious food environments and persistent inequality. The panorama of hunger, concludes the report, is aggravated by the direct impact of “persistent inflation in food prices which continues to erode the economic situation of a large quantity of people in many countries”.

The report also specifies that levels of hunger continue to be catastrophically high for the third consecutive year following a sharp increase between 2019 and 2021. If this trend is maintained, the international community will not achieve any of the seven global targets for nutrition planned for 2030. In other words: it will be necessary to keep waiting and waiting to ensure a world without hunger.

Hunger levels have not been uniform across regions: it increased in Africa, it remained essentially the same in Asia and it decreased in Latin America, the only region that also experienced a significant reduction in food insecurity. If this trend continues, by around 2030 some 582 million people will suffer from chronic malnutrition, half of them in Africa.

In Latin America’s case, the FAO highlights that the region is an example to the rest of the world due to its investments in social welfare programmes. Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile all have solid social welfare systems which allow them to react rapidly to changes and direct financial resources efficiently towards the fight against hunger, fundamentally among the most vulnerable parts of their populations. Comparatively, South America achieved a faster recovery than other regions after the covid-19 pandemic.

At the time the report was presented in Rio de Janeiro, it was precisely Brazil that was the principal recipient of praise from the international community, with surprising figures for 2023: close to 80 specific programmes promoted by 24 ministries, which enabled it to reduce severe food insecurity by 85%.

In this context, and in parallel to the SOFI 2024 report becoming known, the Brazilian president Lula da Silva revealed his proposal for a “Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty” which will be launched internationally next November against the backdrop of a G20 (Group of 20) ministerial conference. It will be funded partly by Brazil and partly with existing international funds. The possibility of funding this new international mechanism partly through taxes on large fortunes is not being ruled out.

Alternatives exist, political will is needed

The SOFI 2024 report is not limited to diagnosis. In fact, it makes proposals for the international community in general and governments in particular.

It is vital and urgent, it declares, to transform agri-food systems to increase resilience and tackle inequalities. And it proposes more and better funding to guarantee that healthy diets are accessible to everyone. Support for key groups in the fight against hunger, like small producers, constitutes a priority.

According to the United Nations agencies involved in the report, funding is a topic of central importance.

“The current funding architecture for food security and nutrition”, they state, “is very fragmented and must change from a compartmentalised approach to a more holistic perspective”. And they emphasise improving co-ordination to define what is essential based on national and local priorities with regard to policy implementation. It follows that transparency and harmonisation of data collection are critical. According to the report donor countries, which through their international co-operation support the fight against hunger, “must increase their tolerance to risk and participate to a greater extent in activities to reduce the risks”. For their part, states “must compensate for deficits not covered by private commercial agents by investing in public goods, reducing corruption and tax evasion, increasing expenditure on food security and nutrition and considering the possibility of redirecting support with regard to policies”.

More funding for food programmes would entail more money more efficiently administered and a greater protagonism in decision-making for national and local actors to ensure the resources benefit small producers.

The report recognises the high cost involved – billions of dollars more – in the promotion of transformative policies but warns that the cost of inaction and paralysis in the fight against hunger would be much higher. The key to concrete progress consists of redirecting and restructuring existing funding for food and agriculture. PL