Africa

UN warns that goal of ending world hunger by 2030 is completely derailed

UN warns that goal of ending world hunger by 2030 is completely derailed

Some 2.3 billion people will experience some form of food insecurity and up to 757 million will suffer from hunger in the world in 2023

FAO highlights progress in Latin America and sees no changes in Asia, but warns that hunger continues to increase in Africa

Jul 24. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Wednesday that the world is far from meeting the goal of ending world hunger by 2030 after noting an almost total lack of progress, with the exception of Latin America, during the past year, in which up to 757 million people have gone hungry and 2.3 billion have suffered some form of food insecurity; figures that continue without reducing the spike experienced during the coronavirus pandemic, three years ago.

FAO has issued a serious warning during the presentation of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) Report 2024 on the sidelines of the Ministerial Meeting of the Working Group of the G20 Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), an event in which the UN agency has highlighted very serious challenges that need an economic boost estimated at “several billion” euros between now and the next six years if the international community wants to meet this Sustainable Development Goal.

“The lack of progress against food security and the uneven progress in economic access to a healthy diet cast a shadow over the possibility of ending world hunger within six years of the 2030 deadline,” the United Nations warns. These factors, it indicates, are not only increasing in frequency and intensity, but are increasingly feeding off each other. Combined with underlying factors specific to each continent, the numbers of malnutrition are only increasing.

Overall, FAO estimates that between 713 and 757 million people will have suffered from hunger in 2023 worldwide. This is one in eleven people and between 8.9 and 9.4 percent of the global population, and 152 million more people than the previous year. This percentage skyrockets when it comes to food insecurity, which has affected 28.9 percent of the world’s population, 2.33 billion people.

AFRICA ON THE RISE, PROGRESS IN LATIN AMERICA

By continent, FAO estimates that hunger continues to rise in Africa, but has remained relatively unchanged in Asia and there is notable progress in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the percentage of the population experiencing food insecurity has fallen by more than three percentage points since 2022 (31.4 to 28.2 percent).

The African continent remains the region with the highest proportion of its population suffering from hunger: 20.4 percent, compared to 8.1 percent in Asia, 6.2 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean and 7.3 percent in Oceania. Although Asia is still home to more than half of all hungry people in the world, Africa is expected to overtake this position within six years.

The outlook is grim: FAO predicts that 582 million people will suffer from malnutrition by the end of the decade, which highlights the enormous challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger. Therefore, “we must accelerate the transformation of our agri-food systems to strengthen their resilience to the main factors and address inequalities to ensure that healthy diets are affordable and available to all,” says the agency.

“BILLIONS OF EUROS”

FAO estimates that this will require “several billion euros” because, otherwise, the world will face a series of social, economic and environmental consequences that can only be overcome by investing possibly more than that amount.

The UN agency proposes various options to improve the effectiveness of existing funding.

For countries with limited capacity to access financing flows, grants and concessional loans are the most appropriate options, while countries with moderate capacity can increase domestic tax revenues by linking taxes to food security and nutrition outcomes.

In any case, FAO regrets that “the current financing architecture for food security and nutrition is highly fragmented and needs to move from an isolated approach to a more integrated perspective.”

This requires “better coordination between actors on what is essential considering national and local political priorities”, with “transparency and harmonisation of data collection” being essential requirements to improve coordination and target funding effectively.

Ultimately, FAO sees this report as “a call to action” that it hopes will influence upcoming debates on development and financing at the Future Summit in September 2024 in New York, as well as in future talks because “a world without hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition is a world worth saving, worth financing and worth investing in.”

Source link

Tags