46 posts categorized "Climate Change"

The new government of President Otto Perez Molina has initiated a program called “Hunger Zero” to combat chronic malnutrition in Guatemala.  Despite being a so-called Middle Income Country (a rung above the poorest countries, as measured by the size of the national economy), chronic malnutrition remains a persistent problem, with rates in certain areas as high as those in the poorest countries in Africa.

According to the head of the Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat (SESAN), Luis Enrique Monterroso, the project will begin in the hardest-hit municipalities and then expand to all 166 municipalities affected significantly by hunger. Included in the Hunger Zero program are nutrition interventions focused on the 1,000 Days "window of opportunity," from pregnancy until a child's second birthday. The government has also created the Dignity Triangle program, which focuses on food availability, access, and nutrition education.

Bread for the World is a strong supporter of the 1,000 Days Partnership and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which advocate for improved nutrition in pregnant women and children during this critical period. At this stage of life, the effects of malnutrition can cause irreversible damage to brain development, cognitive abilities, and resistance to diseases. Guatemala is also a supporter of these initiatives, which share key objectives with the new government’s anti-hunger programs.

The recently appointed head of SESAN happens to be a friend of Bread for the World! When Bread hosted the SUN Civil Society Working Group meeting that followed our 2011 National Gathering, Luis Enrique was there representing his country. His skills and commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition in Guatemala were evident to Otto Perez during his election campaign. He was asked to head this very important office, which is responsible for coordinating the efforts of 13 government ministries and reports directly to Guatemala's Vice President.

Todd Post, editor of Bread for the World Institute's Hunger Report, and I recently traveled to Guatemala and were able to meet with Luis Enrique in his new capacity. He is excited about the challenge before him and expressed his thanks for Bread for the World's support in giving him the opportunity to learn about SUN, which is just getting started in Guatemala.  He has already set an ambitious goal: reducing hunger by 10 percent within four years. He has also begun to work on Hunger Zero by identifying the 166 most malnourished of the country's 366 municipalities.

Guatemala is a country that faces many challenges – social, political, and economic. It is also a country that has correctly identified addressing the root causes of malnutrition as key to its future success.  Let’s follow the developments there and wish “our man in Guatemala” great success!

    Scott Bleggi is a senior international policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

The 2012 Hunger Report executive summary is Bread for the World Institute’s overview of the state of hunger.

Tomorrow night, President Obama will deliver his 2012 State of the Union address, laying out his national priorities based on current conditions in the United States.

Will he discuss the 15 percent of Americans who wonder whether they will have enough to eat this month? Will he say it’s a top priority to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry?

2012 is a particularly important year for hungry people in the United States because Congress is scheduled to reauthorize the farm bill, which will define U.S. farm policies for the next five years. The bill shows exactly how much our country values nutritious food for all as a goal of our farm policies.

Bread for the World Institute’s 2012 Hunger Report recommends effective ways for the U.S. government to respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of 2012 and beyond. Read an excerpt from the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies to learn what we hope President Obama will say in the 2012 State of the Union:

The global agricultural system faces many daunting challenges. Seven billion people currently inhabit the Earth, and the population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Food production must increase as climate change puts additional stress on natural resources. Nearly one billion people around the world suffer from hunger, and in the United States one in four people participate in a federal nutrition program. U.S. food and farm policies absolutely need to be aligned.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for the federal government to better respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of today and tomorrow. Normally change in food and farm policy occurs incrementally. The 2012 Hunger Report calls for bolder, more determined thinking about how U.S. food and farm policies can meet the global and domestic challenges of the 21st century.

Farm policies should significantly increase production of healthy foods. But farm policies alone can’t automatically improve access to nutritious foods for low-income families. Strengthening the nutrition safety net is also critical. Nutrition programs need to do more than provide food for hungry people; they must ensure that healthy food is available to all.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for U.S. development assistance and food aid programs to work together more efficiently. Food aid programs should follow the lead of Feed the Future—the new U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative—by focusing more deliberately on improving nutrition outcomes for the most vulnerable people, especially pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of 2. This will help achieve the strongest possible nutrition outcomes with the limited resources available.

On the eve of 2012, Congress is negotiating dramatic cuts in the federal budget. Cuts to programs designed to overcome the effects of poverty are in neither the short- nor the long-term interests of the nation. The recommendations in the2012 Hunger Report are all the more relevant because the budget decisions are so urgent.

+To read more, download the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policy.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

Two successive droughts in the Horn of Africa have left both farmers and pastoralists unable to produce food for their families. Photo United Nations/Albert Gonzalez Farran.

Durban, South Africa, is currently hosting 30,000 delegates from all over the world, gathered for 12 days of talks organized under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In one sense, of course, climate change affects everyone since we all live on this planet. But in another sense, it is poor people in developing countries who are suffering most of its effects -- even though they contribute the least to the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

As Dr. Kumi Naidoo, international  executive director of Greenpeace, said at the Durban conference, “We are living in a global state of environmental apartheid. Separated along the lines of rich and poor, the rich consume as they please and the poor suffer from their consumption.”

"Environmental apartheid." Dr. Naidoo was for years a leading anti-apartheid activist in his native South Africa -- this is not a comparison he would make lightly.

This year, the most severe hunger emergency in the world is in the Horn of Africa, where 13 million people are at risk and it is believed that at least 50,000 children younger than 5 have already died. The worst suffering is concentrated in Somalia and among Somali refugees who have reached Kenya or Ethiopia.

Is climate change to blame? Oxfam International examined this question in detail in its briefing paper Horn of Africa Drought: Climate Change and Future Impacts on Food Security. The short answer, in the words of the U.K. government's chief scientific adviser, is that "such events [the more frequent and more severe droughts in the Horn] have a higher probability of occurring as a result of climate change."

Oxfam, Bread for the World, and others emphasize that drought does not have to lead to famine. A host of factors collided to produce famine in Somalia -- including  drought, crop failure, widespread deaths among herd animals, continuous conflict, government neglect, deep poverty, lack of transportation infrastructure, and inequality. Other parts of the Horn also experienced the droughts and significant increases in hunger, but nowhere else did droughts lead to full-fledged famine.

It goes without saying that prompt measures to prevent further climate change must be implemented -- easier said than done, as the delegates in Durban must know. Another, even more urgent, part of the global response must be to reduce the vulnerability of poor people in poor countries who are bearing the brunt of the current phase of climate change -- the part that can no longer be prevented.

As the Institute's recently released 2012 Hunger Report points out in a section called “Sustainable, Productive Agriculture amid Climate Change," data from West Africa shows that children born in drought years are far more likely to be malnourished. Using data such as this, analysts calculate that if current trends continue,  climate change could increase child malnutrition by  20 percent by 2050.  Other recent Hunger Reports also offer insight into the connection between climate change and hunger -- and what can be done to break that connection. 

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org

Michele Learner is associate editor for Bread for the World Institute.

According to information released this morning by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), famine will persist for at least another month in areas of Somalia. Due to the consistent delivery of food aid and emergency supplies since the crisis began, some areas previously have been downgraded from Integrated Food Security and Phase Classification (IPC) 5, meaning “famine”, to IPC Phase 4 “emergency”.

However, according to FEWS NET officials nearly 250,000 people continue to face imminent starvation and death rates, especially among children, remain extremely high, in part due to continuing outbreaks of measles, cholera and malaria. The death toll thus far is “tens of thousands”, and food security in Somalia is the worst since the 1991/92 famine. A continued multi-sectoral response (food, water, sanitation, health, security) is still required and any significant interruption to deliveries will result in a return to famine.

The ongoing famine results from the complete lack of rain during two traditional rainy periods (Oct-Dec 2010, and Apr-Jun 2011) that contributed to crop failures, high levels of animal mortality and very high food prices. While continued, large-scale responses are critical, the flow of local and donated cereals to markets in Somalia indicate that earlier market-based interventions are working.

As we gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving, let’s say a prayer for the return of rain to Somalia and an end to the ongoing crisis there.

Scott Bleggi is the senior international policy analyst in Bread for the World Institute

A Somali woman hands her severely malnourished child to a medical officer of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an active regional peacekeeping mission operated by the African Union with the approval of the United Nations. Somalia is affected by a severe drought that has ravaged large swaths of the Horn of Africa, leaving an estimated 11 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Photo credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

The anti-poverty campaign group ONE has released a new short film, “The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity,” about the hunger emergency in the Horn of Africa. In my post on August 1, “The F-Word is Famine,” I emphasize what might seem obvious, but is not always acted on: preventing such disasters is better and cheaper than waiting until tens of thousands of young children have died. This is true even though prevention efforts take time, and Bread for the World and many other groups have been making the point that development programs need to produce -- and measure -- results.

The harsh reality is that disasters are bound to happen, especially as climate change continues to put additional pressure on natural resources. We must recognize that reducing the risk they pose to human life is not optional.

Families in poor countries, as in rich ones, need social safety nets against hunger and poverty and a viable “plan B” if their primary means of earning a living fails them. Instability and famine in Somalia continue to disrupt the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock -- which is key to food security in the region. The result is a mass exodus of refugees into neighboring countries, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia. These countries, already themselves affected by the region’s severe drought, must deal with additional strain on their economies’ limited resources.

Kenya’s Ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Elkanah Odembo, will speak at the launch of the 2012 Hunger Report, Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies, this coming Monday, November 21. The report emphasizes that short-term relief must be linked to building long-term sustainability. This means ensuring that development assistance and food aid programs work together effectively. For example, U.S. food aid programs should dovetail with the Feed the Future model -- which aims to address the root causes of hunger while also establishing long-term solutions through country-owned investment processes.

We cannot achieve food security without investing in agriculture. The report highlights that— in the Horn of Africa as in the rest of the world -- we must invest in an agricultural transformation that builds the resilience of rural livelihoods and minimizes the damage done by future crises. This means support for climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming, and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need, with a special focus on the 1,000 Days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday. The right nutrition during this 1,000-day window can profoundly improve children’s ability to grow, learn, and work their way out of poverty.

This is not all new, but agricultural development efforts are just beginning to recover from decades of neglect by both national governments and the global community. Keeping the new commitments to agricultural development is what will sustain the momentum that already exists and prevent future famines. It is because of the importance of agriculture on the African continent that the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development established the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) back in July 2003. Under CAADP, member states are moving towards the attainment of Millennium Development Goal One, to cut hunger and poverty by half by 2015.

 +The 2012 Hunger Report will be released Monday, November 21, at www.hungerreport.org.

Faustine Wabwire is a foreign assistance policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

Bread for the World Institute policy analysts Faustine Wabwire and Scott Bleggi were invited to a roll out of USAID’s new campaign called “FWD”, which stands for Famine, War, and Drought.  They participated in a briefing by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and senior White House officials Gayle Smith and Jon Carson on how to help others learn about these issues, and to announce that information from the site may be freely used by individuals in social media and on personal web sites.

Shah addressed two issues that Bread for the World is strongly advocating – improving the nutritional value of food aid provided by the United States and elevating nutrition in Feed the Future programming.  He said food aid is being prepositioned around the world so that it can be delivered more quickly, and new, more nutritious formulations of Corn Soy Blend - the product most often provided in general distribution food aid - are being made available to donor organizations.  USAID’s Feed the Future initiative is a major development assistance effort to reduce poverty and malnutrition by sustainably improving economic, environmental and human security. 

A video produced in cooperation with the AdCouncil was also released faeaturing celebrity advocates:

Forward the information so others can become advocates for famine, war and drought relief in Africa!

Scott Bleggi is a senior international policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

Former presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have been selected to jointly receive the 2011 World Food Prize for their personal commitment and visionary leadership while serving as the presidents of Ghana and Brazil, respectively. Their exemplary leadership demonstrates the crucial role of effective policies, proper institutional foundations, and partnerships in driving development progress.

Under President Kufuor's leadership, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to meet Millennium Development Goal 1 – by cutting in half both the proportion of its people suffering from hunger and the proportion living on less than $1 a day. Ghana saw a reduction in its poverty rate from 51.7 percent in 1991 to 26.5 percent in 2008, while hunger decreased from 34 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2004.

President Kufuor’s economic reforms, including the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy, provided incentives and strengthened public investments in the agriculture and food sector — the backbone of Ghana’s economy — which grew at a rate of 5.5 percent between 2003 and 2008. Growth in the agricultural sector drove expansion in the national economy, with GDP quadrupling by 2008.

Under President Kufuor, the Agricultural Extension Service was reactivated and special attention paid to educating farmers on best practices. As a result, Ghana’s cocoa production doubled between 2002 and 2005. Production of food crops such as maize, cassava, yams, and plantains, as well as livestock production, also increased significantly.

The Ghana School Feeding Program launched by President Kufuor provided one nutritious locally produced meal a day for school children in kindergarten to junior high school (ages 4 through 14). By ensuring nutritious food at school, the program dramatically reduced the level of chronic hunger and malnutrition while improving school attendance. By the end of 2010, more than 1 million primary school children were participating and benefiting from this program.

Photo: Office of former President John Kufuor

Ghana’s political stability, economic reforms, agricultural development, and significant reduction of hunger and poverty led to an award of $547 million from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation in 2006. The Kufuor government applied the entire grant toward modernizing agriculture for rural development, increasing the production and productivity of high-value cash and food staple crops, and raising farmers' incomes.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a commitment that fighting hunger and poverty would be a top priority of his government. He called upon all elements of Brazilian society to embrace his goals of ensuring three meals a day for all citizens, alleviating poverty, enhancing educational opportunities for children, and achieving greater inclusion of poor people in society.

President Lula da Silva’s national initiatives — embodied in his Zero Hunger strategy — were well aligned with the Millennium Development Goals. During his tenure, MDG 1 was exceeded before the 2015 deadline, as Brazil reduced by half its proportion of hungry people and also reduced the percentage of Brazilians living in extreme poverty from 12 percent in 2003 to 4.8 percent in 2009.

More than 10 government ministries were focused on the expansive Zero Hunger programs, which provided greater access to food, strengthened family farms and rural incomes, and increased school enrollment among children of primary school age. President Lula da Silva encouraged state and municipal governments to work together with civil society and the private sector--a strategy that was central to the rapid and significant decrease in the levels of poverty and hunger across the country.

Zero Hunger quickly became one of the most successful food and nutritional security policies in the world through its broad network of programs, including the Bolsa Familia Program, the Food Purchase Program, and the School Feeding Program.

Photo: Amy Margolies, Congressional Hunger Center

The Bolsa Familia Program, set up to provide cash aid to poor families, has been a major contributor to the reduction of poverty. Another important pillar of Zero Hunger was the Food Purchase Program, which linked local production directly with expanding food consumption and contributed to rural development by acquiring food directly from smallholder farmers. Distribution of food to poor families was through public schools, community restaurants, assisted living facilities, daycare centers, and related organizations. 

The national School Feeding Program has had a far-reaching impact on reducing child malnutrition by providing nutritious meals to children in all grades of Brazilian public schools. In 2010, 47 million students were being served and a minimum of 30 percent of the food was being supplied by local farms. Child malnutrition fell 61.9 percent between 2003 and 2009, and all age groups improved their access to quality food.

We can end hunger and poverty in our time!

Today, more than 13 million people in the Horn of Africa region are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance. Emergency support is vital right now, as the crisis is expected to worsen in the coming months- escalating malnutrition, food insecurity, and displacement of people. According to the U.N, 750,000 people in Somalia are at risk of dying if they do not receive urgent intervention.

U.N. estimates indicate that the financial need for immediate, short-term drought relief assistance is $2.4 billion. While international appeals have resulted in $1.4 billion in pledges, there is still a gap of $1 billion.

Addressing short-term needs for these millions of people also calls for funding long-term recovery efforts- through programs such as Feed the Future and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). These initiatives aim to boost the resilience of communities by emphasizing the importance of agriculture and Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) to build healthy societies- so that humanitarian crises do not become cyclical. Reducing chronic hunger is essential to build a foundation for investments in health, education and economic growth.

Last week, the World Bank increased its support to the countries in the Horn of Africa that are facing a severe drought and conflict in Somalia. The revised World Bank allocation represents nearly four times the more than $500 million it initially announced in July. The allocation is based on a preliminary needs assessments conducted by Bank disaster experts in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somali Refugee camps and Uganda.

The resources will be allocated over a three-phase response period, which includes: rapid response ($288 million) in fiscal year 2012 (ends June 30), economic recovery ($384 million) through fiscal year 2014, and drought resilience ($1.2 billion) in the long-term.

The hunger and refugee crisis in the Horn of Africa is still growing, but regional U.S. aid programs, coupled with efforts by countries in the region, are saving lives. According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, investments in food security are paying off. In an August 11 speech at the International Food Policy Research Institute, she said that the United States is now “doing development differently.”

  
 Photo Credit: IFPRI

Clinton was referring to the Feed the Future initiative, which focuses heavily on strengthening smallholder agriculture, improving nutrition, and involving local governments and building their capacity so that development efforts can be sustained after donor funding runs out. The difference between the current drought in Ethiopia and the last occurrence of a drought this severe (2002-2003), is notable. Last time, more than 13 million Ethiopians faced starvation. Today’s figure is less than 5 million.

“That is still an unacceptably large number, but it is also an astonishing improvement in a relatively short period of time,” said Clinton. “And it is evidence that investments in food security can pay off powerfully.”

In 2005, the government of Ethiopia established the Productive Safety Net Program, with support from the United States and other donors. Its focus is on smallholder farmers—helping them diversify their crops, manage water resources, and improve their nutrition.

Clinton said, “More than 7.6 million farmers and herders have now been helped by this program, people who are not among those in need of emergency aid today.”

More broadly, the governments of both Ethiopia and Kenya have stepped up their investments in agricultural development to nearly 10 percent of their respective national budgets. 

Feed the Future’s goals in Ethiopia include moving 1 million people out of hunger and allowing 430,000 children to benefit from improved nutrition. In Kenya, the goals are to raise the incomes of 800,000 smallholder farmers and improve nutrition throughout the country.

Programs such as the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), which enables analysts to anticipate food shortages related to weather and other conditions, are also beginning to change the impact of extreme weather on human life. FEWS NET supplied data as early as last August that raised concerns about the impact in the Horn of Africa of last fall’s drought; agencies were able to pre-position food aid so that it could be quickly sent to those in need. FEWS NET and other tools offer opportunities to mitigate the impact of drought and prevent some of the related suffering and death, although in the case of the current crisis, the international humanitarian response was not as swift and generous as was needed.

U.S.-led efforts in the G-20 group of states with significant economies resulted in the creation of the World Bank’s Global Agricultural Food Security Program. Thus far, seven donor countries and the Gates Foundation have awarded $510 million to 12 developing countries for food security initiatives. Scaling Up Nutrition and the 1,000 Days Partnership followed. Both emphasize the importance of better nutrition during the critical period of pregnancy through a child’s second birthday. Malnutrition at this stage of human development causes damage that is preventable but irreversible.

According to Clinton, after the great successes of the Green Revolution, whose agricultural investments helped lead millions of people out of hunger and poverty, particularly in Asia, it seems we have “lost our way” in supporting critical agricultural research and development programs. Feed the Future is one effort to get back on track by supporting country-led sustainable development programs and smallholder farmers in building resiliency that can help them cope with crises, whether natural or created by human actions.

The militant group Shabab, closely linked to Al Qaeda, controls large parts of southern Somalia, including famine-stricken areas and sections of the capital city, Mogadishu. In what is being described as a glimmer of hope in the growing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, Shabab has now pulled out of Mogadishu, where an estimated 100,000 malnourished people have arrived to seek help. According to The New York Times, relief workers are hopeful that food supplies and other assistance will now be able to reach starving people in the city.

As a “failed state” that has lacked an effective central government since the early 1990s, Somalia has been largely unable to provide its people with basic public services. The transitional government is now in control of the capital for the first time in years. Yet its own troops are reported to have killed people and looted sacks of grain during a recent riot over emergency food supplies, adding to the concern of relief organizations.

Elsewhere in the region, people who have fled to southeast Ethiopia’s refugee camps are facing an outbreak of measles on top of severe malnutrition. According to health workers, more than a dozen people in the Kobe camp have already died of the disease, which rarely kills healthy people but is often fatal to those who are weak from malnutrition. The conditions in refugee camps are ripe for diseases such as measles and illnesses related to sanitation, such as dysentery. Bread for the World Institute’s own Faustine Wabwire said in an interview on August 5 that her greatest fear was “increased mortality from potential disease outbreaks.” On August 8, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees added that he “fears the outbreak could lead to high mortality and serious illness in an already vulnerable refugee population whose overall health was already fragile.”

Vaccination teams need to reach as many refugee children as possible. Experts are on their way to the camp to help with the vaccination effort, scheduled to begin August 9. The Dollo Ado camp in southeast Ethiopia is host to 118,400 refugees, 78,000 of whom arrived this year because of the drought and ensuing hunger emergency.