World hunger increases, 828 million suffer from it

Government, Count:

The world is backtracking in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by 2030, a goal set by the United Nations in 2015, in a context of extreme poverty and increasing chronic malnutrition. If current trends continue, in 2030 we will have 670 million chronically undernourished people worldwide. A similar figure to that of 2015, when the Zero Hunger initiative was launched. This is the alarming forecast of the latest UN report on the ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ (Sofi), presented in New York.

The report indicates a worsening of the situation: over 828 million people suffered from hunger in 2021. An increase of around 46 million people in just one year, between 2020 and 2021 and an increase of 150 million since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are worrying numbers, underlines the FAO Deputy Director, Maurizio Martinawhich, “if projected to 2030, they tell us an unequivocal thing, that eight per cent of the entire world population will risk still suffering from hunger in that year”.

After having remained relatively unchanged since 2015, in 2020, the percentage of people affected by hunger has risen and has continued to rise in 2021, up to 9.8% of the world population, compared to 8% in 2019 and 9.3. % of 2020. In 2021, approximately 2.3 billion people (29.3%) worldwide were in moderate or severe food insecurity (350 million more than before the outbreak of the pandemic). Nearly 924 million people (11.7% of the world population) suffered from severe food insecurity, an increase of 207 million in two years.

The key factors behind food insecurity are conflicts, climate change and the economic slowdown due to Covid 19, which together with growing inequalities are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. The war between Russia and Ukraine, which involves two of the world’s largest producers of staple grains, gas and fertilizer, is disrupting supply chains and further affecting the prices of grain, fertilizer and energy. In the first half of 2022, this resulted in an increase in the price of food.

The global economic growth prospects for 2022 have been significantly revised downwards, this means less financial resources to invest in agri-food systems. Public spending and investment, the report stresses, will be critical in the face of extreme climate change and supply chain disruptions.

“Certainly – adds Martina – to cope with this worsening situation, agricultural policies must be intensified, especially in developing countries. An extraordinary initiative is needed, I am thinking in particular of Europe. The steps that Europe is taking, in particular first and foremost in cooperation with the great African continent, they are essential. It will be necessary to be very concrete and very operational, to spend the available resources well and to do so especially thinking of the small and medium farmers of those lands “.

The Sofi report is a joint effort of five United Nations Agencies: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Fund for childhood (Unicef), the UN World Food Program (PPAM and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In this year’s foreword, the heads of the five agencies wrote: “This report highlights time and again the intensification of the main factors of food insecurity and malnutrition: conflicts, extreme climatic events and economic crises, combined with growing inequalities. The main question is not so much whether or not adversity will continue to occur, but, rather, how to take more courageous action to build resilience against future crises. ”

Source: Ansa

Share this article:

Leave a Reply

most popular