Global hunger declines for first time in 15 yrs
Rome, Sept. 14: The number of undernourished people around the world has declined by nearly 10 per cent in the last one year, the first time a drop in famine has been recorded since 1995, the UN food agency said on Tuesday.
A total of 925 million people are undernourished in 2010 compared with 1.023 billion in 2009, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a hunger report, revealing a drop of 9.6 per cent.
However the FAO insisted that “the number of undernourished people in the world remains unacceptably high.”
The decline, the first in 15 years, “is largely attributable to a more favourable economic environment in 2010 — particularly in developing countries — and the fall in both international and domestic food prices since 2008.”
However, “the fact that nearly a billion people remain hungry, even after the recent food and financial crises have largely passed, indicates a deeper structural problem,” the report said.
Analysis of hunger during financial crisis and recovery also brought to the fore “the insufficient resilience to economic shocks of many poor countries and households,” the FAO warned.
“Lack of appropriate mechanisms to deal with the shocks or to protect the most vulnerable populations from their effects result in large swings in hunger following crises,” it said.
Another report by an international aid agency ActionAid, ahead of a UN summit on development said the effects of hunger could be costing developing countries $450 billion a year.
Reduced worker productivity, poor health and lost education caused by malnourishment were all hitting some of world’s poorest nations in the pocket, said the report. Lack of investment in agriculture and rural development contributed to the problem.
The report, which looked at hunger reduction efforts in 28 developing countries, found the majority were failing in their efforts to halve hunger by 2015, a key development goal.
Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Lesotho came out worst in their efforts to cut rates of hunger, according to ActionAid’s analysis.
“Fighting hunger now will be ten times cheaper than ignoring it,” urged ActionAid chief executive, Ms Joanna Kerr.
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