If there is poverty and hunger in the world it is mainly due to indifference and not lack of awareness. There are two related World Days, one for food (October 16) and the other for hunger (May 28), that help keep these issues on the global and national agendas.
Speaking during the launching of this year’s edition of Tisjir mill-Qalb, the President of Malta said that it was his specific intention to use the launch of a recipe book to highlight the lack of food that many Maltese individuals and families were experiencing.
George Abela called for the updating of the Caritas’ study on poverty and welcomed the strategy against poverty and social exclusion being launched by the Government.
Given the small size of our society, it is possible that our country’s efforts to eradicate hunger and fight poverty serve as best practice to the rest of the world.
On the eve of the new millennium, the UN rightly deemed that the best gift it could give to mankind, to mark the event, was to set ambitious Development Goals. These included reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half within the next 15 years. Progress to reduce the proportion of hungry people in the world has been slow and, in all probability, this target will not be reached.
Efforts are being frustrated by the recent financial and economic crisis in the West as well as higher energy costs, which are, regretfully, accelerating the growth of a class of ‘new’ poor in the more affluent countries themselves. Today, some 850 million people still suffer chronic hunger. Children are the main victims, with over two million dying every year, while other millions face a life of intellectual and physical deficiency due to undernourishment.
Recently, I discovered that there also exists an index on global hunger (GHI).
Modern society seems to have a passion for indices but, often, their neatness and simplicity conceals the complexity of the underlying phenomena.
First released in 2006, the GHI is published by the International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with two NGOs, Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. This index seeks to describe the situation, and to measure progress, in the fight against hunger of some 120 countries. In this context, hunger is not some abstract concept but relates to a person being unable to consume enough ‘good’ food to permit a healthy and productive life.
In preparing such an index, data collection presents a nightmare. The 2012 report relies on statistics relating to 2005-2010 and, as the publishers themselves admit, the index is “a snapshot not of the present but of the recent past”.
The GHI combines three equally-weighted indicators: the proportion of the undernourished as a percentage of total population; the prevalence of underweight children under five years and the mortality rate of children under the same age.
About one third of the annual global production of food is lost or wasted
According to the latest GHI report, 20 countries (mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa) still have levels of hunger that are “alarming” or “extremely alarming”. Particularly troubling is the fact that, despite strong economic growth, a country such as India is still unable to improve its GHI score. India practically doubled its real gross national income between 1995–97 and 2008–10. This reflects one of the primary underlying causes of hunger – extreme levels of inequality, both within and between, countries.
Ending hunger is possible.
It is estimated that ensuring that every person has enough to eat requires just one per cent of the current global food supply. According to FAO, about one third of the annual global production of food is lost or wasted.
Global population growth (which is expected to rise from seven billion people to nine billion by 2050, mostly in the poorer countries) and global warming present grave challenges but the world can still feed itself.
The report argues that feeding this increased population will, however, require an integrated approach to the use of land, water and energy.
The rich countries are part of both the solution and the problem of tackling global hunger. The shift towards biofuels to quench the thirst of the West for energy is competing directly with food production, forcing up prices for poor people. Also, rich country greenhouse gas emissions are leading to temperature rises that threaten tropical agriculture.
Rich societies need to change their addiction to consumerism and opt for resource-conserving lifestyles.
Richer societies have to stop trying to supply the fish and instead should endeavour to provide the fishing rod to enable poorer countries to become self-reliant. The latter, on their part, have to forget about grandiose projects promoting large-scale agriculture.
Rather, the solution lies in assisting small farmers. These feed about 70 per cent of the global population but are among the poorest and most food-insecure people in the world.
Luckily for many of us, hunger is a distant reality. Still, if we really care, it should be unacceptable that even a single child goes to bed with an empty stomach. It is true that, as stated by our President, “The State is ultimately responsible to guarantee that everyone lives in dignity” (Times of Malta, October 14), but each one of us is in duty bound to create a just society that makes hunger a thing of the past.
fms18@onvol.net