Global hunger -UN |
A call has gone out to countries to implement and scale up interventions
aimed at guaranteeing access to nutritious foods and breaking the
intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. This was contained in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in
the World 2018 released recently.
The report says policies must pay special attention to groups who are
the most vulnerable to the harmful consequences of poor food access: infants,
children aged under five, school-aged children, adolescent girls, and women,
adding that new evidence continues to signal that the number of
hungry people in the world is growing, reaching 821 million in 2017 or one in
every nine people.
It also urged that at the same time, a sustainable shift must be made
towards nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems that can provide safe
and high-quality food for all.
The report also calls for greater efforts to build climate resilience
through policies that promote climate change adaptation and mitigation, and
disaster risk reduction.
The report says limited progress was also being made in addressing the
multiple forms of malnutrition, ranging from child stunting to adult obesity,
putting the health of hundreds of millions of people at risk.
It states that hunger had been on the rise over the past three
years, returning to levels from a decade ago and notes that: ”This reversal in
progress sends a clear warning that more must be done and urgently if the
Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger is to be achieved by 2030”.
It says the situation was worsening in South America and most
regions of Africa, while the decreasing trend in undernourishment that
characterized Asia seems to be slowing down significantly.
The annual UN report found that climate variability affecting
rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, and climate extremes such as
droughts and floods are among the key drivers behind the rise in hunger,
together with conflict and economic slowdowns.
“The alarming signs of increasing food insecurity and high levels
of different forms of malnutrition are a clear warning that there is
considerable work to be done to make sure we ‘leave no one behind’ on the road
towards achieving the SDG goals on food security and improved nutrition,” the
heads of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund
for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World
Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in their
joint foreword to the report.
“If we are to achieve a world without hunger and malnutrition in
all its forms by 2030, it is imperative that we accelerate and scale up actions
to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of food systems and people’s
livelihoods in response to climate variability and extremes,” the leaders
said.
The rest of the report states:Changes in climate are already
undermining production of major crops such as wheat, rice and maize in tropical
and temperate regions and, without building climate resilience, this is
expected to worsen as temperatures increase and become more extreme.
Analysis in the report shows that the prevalence and number of
undernourished people tend to be higher in countries highly exposed to climate
extremes. Undernourishment is higher again when exposure to climate extremes is
compounded by a high proportion of the population depending on agricultural
systems that are highly sensitive to rainfall and temperature
variability.
Temperature anomalies over agricultural cropping areas continued
to be higher than the long-term mean throughout 2011–2016, leading to more
frequent spells of extreme heat in the last five years. The nature of rainfall
seasons is also changing, such as the late or early start of rainy seasons and
the unequal distribution of rainfall within a season.
The harm to agricultural production contributes to shortfalls in
food availability, with knock-on effects causing food price hikes and income
losses that reduce people’s access to food.
Poor progress has been made in reducing child stunting, the report says,
with nearly 151 million children aged under five too short for their age due to
malnutrition in 2017, compared to 165 million in 2012. Globally, Africa and
Asia accounted for 39 percent and 55 percent of all stunted children,
respectively.
Prevalence of child wasting remains extremely high in Asia where
almost one in 10 children under five has low weight for their height, compared
to just one in 100 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The report describes as “shameful” the fact that one in three
women of reproductive age globally is affected by anaemia, which has
significant health and development consequences for both women and their
children. No region has shown a decline in anaemia among women of reproductive
age, and the prevalence in Africa and Asia is nearly three times higher than in
North America.
Rates of exclusive breastfeeding in Africa and Asia are 1.5 times
higher than those in North America where only 26 percent of infants fewer than
six months receive breast milk exclusively.
Adult obesity is worsening, and more than one in eight adults in
the world is obese. The problem is most significant in North America, but
Africa and Asia are also experiencing an upward trend, the report shows.
Undernutrition and obesity coexist in many countries, and can even
be seen side by side in the same household. Poor access to nutritious food due
to its higher cost, the stress of living with food insecurity, and
physiological adaptations to food deprivation help explain why food-insecure
families may have a higher risk of overweight and obesity.
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