Ten years after world leaders promised to cut hunger in half over 20 years, the number of hungry people in the world continues to increase.
Jacques Diouf, director of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, recently said the world still can meet the goal set at a World Food Summit in Rome in 1996, but warned of failure if political attitudes and commitments do not change.
“We must dispel any complacency that may be engendered by the abundance of world food supplies, by the general increase in agricultural productivity or by the expansion of international trade possibilities,” he wrote in the annual FAO report on world food insecurity.
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“The coexistence of food abundance or even over-nutrition with food deprivation even in the same countries or communities has been a reality for decades and unless conditions conducive to chronic hunger are eliminated, the two extremes will continue to coexist in the future.”
Diouf said the “sad reality” is that despite all the political promises and growing world wealth since the 1996 meeting in Rome, the number of chronically hungry has increased by several million to an estimated 854 million.
“The world is richer today than it was 10 years ago,” he said. “There is more food available and still more could be produced without upward pressure on prices. The knowledge and resources to reduce hunger are there. What is lacking is sufficient political will to mobilize those resources to the benefit of the hungry.”
The FAO proposed a series of political and policy decisions that could help move toward the hunger reduction goal: allow farmers in poor countries to benefit from compensation for environmental goods produced; create trade rules that give poor countries market access and time to invest in their agricultural sectors before their markets are open; spend money on supporting small farm operations in developing countries; and make governance reforms in developing countries to encourage private sector investment.
The FAO also urged rich countries to meet their commitment to increase official development assistance to 0.7 percent of the economy. Most countries, including Canada, remain well short of their promises.
Under previous Liberal governments, Canada’s aid budget fell to less than 0.3 percent of the domestic economic output, even though the 0.7 percent goal was recommended by former Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson almost 40 years ago and successive Liberal governments promised to honour the commitment.
The present Conservative government has not repeated the promise, although it is committing to increased aid spending.
Diouf said hunger complacency by rich countries is unacceptable because they have the ability to deal with it.
“In a world that has the means for feeding its population, the persistence of hunger is a scandal,” he wrote in the report.
