Despite increasing international efforts to combat food insecurity and malnutrition, the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger in all its forms by 2030, according to a new report published by the United Nations.
Globally, the UN reported that 828 million people suffered some form of hunger in 2021, an increase of 46 million people since 2020. World hunger levels have gone up by 150 million since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, said the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), released this month.
Worryingly, projections estimate that even with global economic recovery, 670 million people will still be facing hunger by 2030. These numbers are similar to 2015 figures when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
After remaining relatively unchanged since the launch of the agenda, the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 largely due to the negative impacts of the pandemic.
It continued to rise in 2021 to 9.8% of the world population, compared with 8 % in 2019 and 9.3% in 2020.
The report, which was jointly published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), paints a grim picture of the global food security scenario.
Around 2.3 billion people worldwide were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021, an increase of 350 million compared to before the pandemic. Nearly 924 million people faced food insecurity at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in just two years.
The global gender gap in food insecurity continued to increase in 2021 with 31.9% of women moderately or severely food insecure compared with 27.6% of men. The figures show a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared with 3 percentage points in 2020.
The report also talks of food inflation, which has been on an unprecedented rise worldwide, triggered by two years of the Covid-19 pandemic-induced disruption and now the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to the new report estimates, almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up from 112 million in 2019, showing the effects of inflation on consumer food prices. The inflation stemmed from the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.
The ongoing war in Ukraine, involving two of the biggest global producers of staple cereals, oilseeds and fertiliser, is disrupting international supply chains. It is pushing up the prices of grain, fertiliser, energy, and ready-to-use therapeutic food for children with severe malnutrition, the FAO said in its statement.
FAO said: “The disruption comes as supply chains are already being adversely affected by increasingly frequent extreme climate events, especially in low-income countries, and has potentially sobering implications for global food security and nutrition.”
It also pointed out that governments could do more to reduce trade barriers for nutritious foods, such as fruits, vegetables and pulses.
Current Affairs