The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has all but conceded that the world will fail to meet its oft-made promise that the number of chronically hungry people would be cut in half by 2015.
At a meeting of the committee on world food security in Rome last week, the FAO presented a report that concluded human actions are the main cause of regional hunger crises, including war, conflict and AIDS.
It noted that world leaders agreed at a world food summit in 1996 to cut hunger in half within 20 years. The commitment was repeated in 2000 at a leaders’ meeting on millennium development goals.
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“The goal … (is) almost certain to be missed by a wide margin if current trends persist,” the FAO said.
A second report to the meeting said climate change will worsen world hunger by taking millions of acres of land out of food production in developing countries.
FAO information officer John Riddle said in a May 26 interview from Rome that the hunger reduction goal is virtually out of reach.
Almost half way through the implementation period, the number of chronically hungry has dropped by just a few million from the 840 million level it was at in 1996.
“Basically, the decline in the severity of the situation has been insignificant.” Riddle said. “No matter how you look at it, it would not be possible to close the gap by the deadline.”
He said it is significant that FAO has now identified human actions, rather than natural disasters, as the main reason for the persistence of widespread hunger in the world.
“It is human action that causes it, our own doing, and human action could resolve it,” said Riddle. “I think the FAO message is a bit stronger this time because so little progress is being made and time is clearly making it impossible to meet the target.”
He said it is obvious many of the countries and leaders that pledged action in 1996 and 2000 did not take their pledges seriously or at least did not translate those promises into action.
The report on the potential impact of climate change on world hunger predicts that millions of acres of land will become too dry to be productive.
“Sixty-five developing countries, home to more than half the developing world’s total population in 1995, risk losing about 280 million tonnes of potential cereal production as a result of climate change,” the FAO said. “This loss would have a value of $56 billion US, equivalent to 16 percent of the agricultural gross domestic product of these countries in 1995.”
In Asia, the FAO estimates India will see cereal production fall by as much as 125 million tonnes, 18 percent of its typical harvest.
However, the report suggests that China, already a blossoming world food producing giant, will benefit from climate change.
It said China’s cereal potential will increase by more than 50 million tonnes.
