The Challenge of Hunger

The Challenge of Hunger

Hunger is the most extreme manifestation of poverty and arguably the most morally unacceptable. In the globalized world of the 21st century, with more than enough food produced to feed all of its 6 billion inhabitants, there are still over 800 million poor suffering from chronic undernourishment (which is more than the entire population of Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa). According to the recent estimate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in 1999-2001 there were 842 million undernourished people in the world, including 798 million in developing countries, 34 million in countries with transition economies, and 10 million in high-income countries. See Figure 6.5 for the regional distribution of hunger and Data Table 2 for the shares of undernourished adults1 and malnourished children2 in individual countries. Note that three-quarters of the world’s hungry people live in rural areas and the majority of the hungry are women.

Particularly disturbing is the recent dynamics of world hunger. During the first half of the 1990s the number of undernourished people decreased by 37 million, but over the next 5 years it increased by more than 18 million. The numbers of undernourished have fallen in East Asia and Pacific, but remain high in South Asia and continue to rise in Sub-Saharan Africa and in the Middle East and North Africa. In India, after a decline of 20 million between 1990-1992 and 1995-1997, the number of undernourished climbed by 19 million over the following four years. And in China, where the number of undernourished people was reduced by 58 million over the 1990s, progress is gradually slowing. In countries with transition economies the second half of the 1990s brought another increase in the number of undernourished people, from 25 million to 34 million.

On the surface, the causes of hunger appear to be multiple and to differ among countries. Many hungry people live in countries that lack sufficient arable land or water to feed their growing populations. But there are also many hungry people in other countries, with plentiful natural capital. Some of these latter countries specialize in producing and exporting a single agricultural commodity, such as cacao, coffee, or cotton, and suffer from declining prices in the world markets. It is arguable that these same land and water resources could be better used for growing food and making it available to these countries’ populations. But still other countries, like Brazil, specialize in exporting those same food products that are desperately needed by their own poor and malnourished.

Statistics show that in the world as a whole there is more than enough food produced to feed all the hungry. Moreover, they also show that countries with smaller proportions of undernourished people tend to be more dependent on food imports than countries with more widespread undernourishment (even though they spend smaller shares of their export earnings on food imports). The conclusion appears to be that persistent hunger is an issue not of insufficient global food production but of extremely unequal distribution among countries as well as within countries. The low export earnings of the poorest countries prevent them from buying enough food in the world markets, but even where food is available inside a country, the poorest of its citizens are often unable to pay for it. Poverty of countries and extreme poverty of households are the most undisputable causes of hunger.

According to FAO observations, most food emergencies across the world are directly caused by natural disasters (droughts and floods), conflicts, refugees, and economic crises. But is it not poverty that makes people so vulnerable to natural as well as man-made disasters? And is it not poverty that lies at the root of many of these disasters? For example, poverty impedes investment in irrigation that could prevent the disastrous consequences of droughts in many countries. And poverty (low export earnings) hinders the food imports that could compensate for unpredictable natural emergencies. Poverty breeds conflicts, and many refugees are trying to escape not only violence but also economic deprivation.

But seeing poverty only as a root cause of hunger (see Figure 6.6) actually oversimplifies the real picture. In fact, poverty is both a cause and a consequence of hunger. Undernourishment is a critical link in the vicious circle of poverty, leading to poor health, lower learning capacity and diminished physical activity, and thus to lower productivity and poverty (see Figure 6.7)3

Nearly one-third of poor health outcomes in developing countries are associated with hunger and malnutrition. Malnourishment negatively affects children’s school attendance and their educational attainment, and the legacy of malnourishment in childhood, combined with insufficient food intake in adulthood, manifests itself in lower wages and reduced earning capacity for adults, who will be unable to support their own families. In addition, malnourished mothers are more likely to give birth to underweight babies. Thus closes an intergenerational vicious circle of malnourishment and poverty, particularly threatening to the social sustainability of national and global development.

So, given the close and complex interaction between hunger and poverty, is there any hope of doing away with hunger--as the most demeaning of human deprivations--any time soon?

Obviously, a lot will depend on the political will and responsibility of national governments. For example, in Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to eradicate hunger by the end of his four-year term and has launched the comprehensive Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) Project. Note that Brazil is one of the major exporters of crops and meat, but over 40 million of its 170 million people live on less than $1 a day.

However, many developing countries may fail to meet the enormous twin challenges of hunger and poverty on their own. The role of the international community is therefore indispensable too. As one practical step, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (South Africa, August-September 2002) and the United Nations General Assembly (December 2002) called for immediate implementation of the World Solidarity Fund to reinforce the global fight against extreme poverty and hunger. However, perhaps even more important for improving the lot of developing countries’ poor and hungry might be pro-poor reforms in international trade, such as those discussed during the Doha round of world trade negotiations (see Chapter 12).

Finally, identifying and committing to the most effective policy measures will be of crucial importance. In the short term, even emergency measures aimed at giving hungry people direct