87 posts categorized "Climate Change"

Click here to visit the 2013 Hunger Report website and explore the issues.

Sometimes the best way to communicate information is through pictures instead of text. And our new 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach: Global Development Goals, offers a good balance for the eyes. Enjoy this colorful gallery of photos that tells the graphical tale of hunger and the ongoing struggle to end it across the world (I fully endorse viewing it full screen). Then maybe dive deeper into the Report to encounter the incredible stories and struggles waiting just behind the faces. Maybe download it to your e-reader? 

On Twitter? Follow @BreadInstitute and stay current on hourly hunger-fighting news, data, stories, and solutions. 

 
Derek Schwabe is the 2013 Hunger Report project fellow at Bread for the World Institute.

With only three years left to the expiration date of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015, efforts towards building a new global development agenda are intensifying. According to Bread for the World Institute’s 2013 Hunger Report- Within Reach: Global Development Goals, getting things done is easier with specific goals. For example, the global rate of extreme poverty has been cut in half with the help of the MDGs – a great example of the power of goal-setting. But now it’s time to step up progress on global hunger by setting a renewed goal: to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger by 2040.

This week, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) endorsed a change in the Organization's first global goal- from merely reducing hunger to its eradication. This is what “Zero Hunger” should be about.

This announcement could not have come at a better time. The recently released 2012 State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) states that almost 870 million people were chronically undernourished in 2010–12. The vast majority of them- 850 million people- live in low-income countries. A staggering reality is that of Sub-saharan Africa.  For the last decade- at the same time when the continent is said to have been experiencing strong economic growth, the absolute number of hungry people has been rising alarmingly as shown:

• between 1991 and 2000- increasing at about 2million a year
•  between 2000 and 2005- about 1million a year
• between 2005 and  2008- about 3.5m a year
• between 2008 and 2011- about 6m a year.

Hunger trends in the developing regions

 Source: FAO

Are we missing the point?

It is increasingly clear that while economic growth is necessary, it is not sufficient to accelerate reduction of hunger and malnutrition. This reality demands that we rethink agriculture and food security strategies if progress and improvements to the well-being and nutritional status of poor people are to be realized. As a result of growing food price volatility and food price spikes, in part driven by land, water, and energy scarcity, local communities need greater control over and access to productive resources. As natural resources become scarcer, how land and water rights are allocated will have increasing implications for the social and economic development of countries and their citizens, and particular impacts on the livelihoods of poor people around the world.

We know that high levels of hunger are generally found in those countries and regions where access and property rights to land, water, and energy are limited or contested. Therefore, the unacceptably high number of hungry people --though disappointing-- should not be surprising since preliminary studies on cases of land acquisition are showing that the rights of small farmers and marginalized groups have so far not been sufficiently taken into account.

In order to avoid a food cliff, more holistic strategies for dealing with land, water, energy, and food can reduce the adverse impacts of natural disasters and policy incoherence across these areas and promote the sharing of successful innovation.

Greater collaboration is quite important -- among government ministries as well as with communities, civil society, and the private sector in policy design, implementation, and monitoring. It is crucial to monitor both the human and the environmental outcomes of developments in the land, water, and energy sectors and of alternative agricultural and food and nutrition strategies.

  Faustine Wabwire is senior foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

In our world of acronyms, chances are that like myself, you have found yourself in that awkward situation -– when you stumble across a mysterious acronym, and with a good degree of embarasssment you recite it, still wondering what it means. You all know how that goes. Fortunately, this blog post is virtually an acronym-free zone, so that you dont leave still wondering whether you missed something. It is about a critical concept in development --resilience.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defines resilience as the ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth. Resilience should be about preventing repeated humanitarian interventions by bringing humanitarian and development goals closer and making people much less vulnerable.

This week- in Washington D.C, USAID launched its first-ever policy guidance on building resilience to recurrent crisis. The new Resiliency Policy seeks to act on the root causes of people’s vulnerability -- not just make people better able to bear the effects. The policy also comes at a critical time, when it could help to make resilience a part of the post-2015 development framework. According to Bread for the World Institute's 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach: Global Development Goals, the world has made great progress in reducing hunger and poverty. But food price volatility, increasing demographic pressures, resource scarcity, and other shocks remind us of how fleeting those gains are.

From left to right: His Excellency Elkanah Odembo, Kenyan Ambassador to the U.S; Neal Keny-Guyer, CEO- Mercy Corps; Nancy Lindborg, Assistant Administrator- Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID; David Beckmann, President- Bread for the World; and Carolyn Woo, President & CEO - Catholic Relief Services at the launch. Photo/Alex Loken- Bread for the World

Amid drought in the Horn of Africa, floods in Southeast Asia, and the current crisis in the Sahel, the importance of an integrated approach to sustainable development cannot be overemphasized. The ongoing drought in the Sahel and the famine in the Horn of Africa both reinforce the role of social safety net programs in providing a broad package of support for the most vulnerable — from specialized nutrition products to protect the minds and bodies of young children, to investments in sustainable land management that help communities build resilience to drought and other shocks.

Evidence shows that such investments are cost-effective, and they save millions of lives. For example, when food prices rose in 2008, hasty responses such as some countries' bans on exporting food contributed to driving 100 million people into poverty — the first increase in decades. When food prices rose again in 2011, however, the world avoided poor policy responses and invested instead in long-term food security. During the world’s worst drought in 60 years, this approach was validated by Kenya's and Ethiopia’s ability to avoid famine, thanks in part to President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative and its emphasis on building resilience through agricultural development.

Moving forward, the new resilience policy could help to ensure that the process of reaching agreement on post-2015 global development goals is open and includes a wide range of development actors, including emerging donors, civil society, the private sector, and most importantly-- the vulnerable communities themselves.

Faustine Wabwire is senior foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

As the annual conference of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change regroups this week in Doha, Qatar, Americans on the other side of the world continue to pick up the pieces left behind more than a month ago by Hurricane Sandy. Many Americans are still waiting for electricity to return to their homes.

It may be premature to blame events like Sandy entirely on rising greenhouse gas levels, but experts are clear that the timing is no coincidence. The United States is only the latest “ground zero” in an unprecedented string of natural disasters that are hitting communities around the world with increased frequency. And our country is among the most resilient, thanks to a well-developed disaster response system. Many are not so fortunate, and cost is high in both lives and livelihoods.

The causal relationship is now nearly undeniable:

Emissions induced by industrialization.→ Rising global temps.→ Millions of threatened lives.    

The World Bank is already pleading with national leaders to take swift action to cap rising temperatures: “Without further commitments and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is likely to warm by more than 3°C above the preindustrial climate.” If that number reaches 4°C, we would see “unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services.” 

Poor and hungry people stand to lose the most, and leaders at Doha cannot forget that. 

Mapping the World by Carbon Emissions in 2008 

The negotiations at Doha this week will not debate the reality of the crisis—but rather who will have to make the necessary emissioncuts. Industrialized countries are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions (click here to view full map). And the tricky fact remains that very few high-income countries were able to develop their economies and raise standards of living without relying heavily on fossil fuels. But now that fossil fuels—still considered a basic ingredient of economic development—have been proven the main cause of harmful climate changes, how are optimistic newcomers like China, India, and Brazil—now in the midst of the development process—to respond? Should they be expected to stall their growth because industrialized countries led them down an unsustainable path to development?

As this adorable video-clip illustrates—a sustainable and pro-growth solution will be quite the job for our Doha delegates from both sides. Domestic interests will make it difficult for industrialized countries to take responsibility—but the health of our global ecosystem and human populations demands it. Negotiations must prioritize our highest obligation—the millions of lives of the most vulnerable. And rich countries have a clear responsibility to take the lead.  

For more on this and other hunger-related issues, explore the 2013 Hunger Report website, which includes infographics, like the one above, photos, videos, and more.

Derek Schwabe is the 2013 Hunger Report project fellow at Bread for the World Institute.

Bread for the World Institute’s 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach – Global Development Goals, was released today. The report argues that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are within reach by 2015. With three years left before the the goals are set to expire, now is the time to double down and focus on getting the job done.

In the report we highlight the good news—and there is plenty of it. In 2012, for example, we learned that the MDG poverty target has already been met. We’re not on track to meet the hunger target, but we are closer than we thought we’d be just a couple of years ago. To reach the hunger target, the share of the world’s population that is hungry would have to fall to 11.6 percent. At the current rate, we would expect 12.5 percent to be hungry in 2015.  

The keys to achieving the 2015 targets depend on investments in smallholder agriculture and social protection. Most of the people in the world who are hungry are smallholder farmers. They may grow enough to feed themselves and their family but earn no more than $1.25 per day and in some cases much less. Poverty prevents them from diversifying their diets, investing in their children’s education, taking advantage of health care and other services. By providing smallholders with farm inputs such as seeds and fertilizer, preventing post-harvest losses by building basic storage facilities, or roads that allow them to gain access to a larger market, they can earn the additional income they need to improve their living conditions.

Social protection is another key piece of puzzle that we focus on in the Hunger Report. Social protection is a broad term but it basically means systems of support that allow vulnerable people to manage risks. Poor people are highly vulnerable to risk. No one is more exposed to the risks associated with climate change than a smallholder farmer. When poor families are better able to manage the risks in their life, we find they are more inclined to invest in their children’s development: sending them to school, for example, rather than to the fields.

There is a gender dimension to achieving the MDGs that we also discuss in the report. Women do the majority of farming in poor countries. By supporting smallholder farmers we are supporting women—and their children. We know that when assistance is provided directly to women more of it goes towards improvements that benefit the whole family.    

Beyond 2015, the post-MDG agenda should include new development goals. Goal 1, once again, should be focused on hunger and poverty. The Hunger Report calls for the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty within a generation. As recently as a decade ago this may have sounded like a pipe dream. But not any longer. In light of the progress so many countries have made in recent decades, we’d be underestimating our own capacity by shooting for less. We don’t have to spend trillions of dollars or wait for scientific breakthroughs that have eluded us. The tools are already available, but we have to be willing to deploy them. Mostly it depends on a concerted and sustained push by government leaders and civil society organizations working together.

The U.S. government has a role to play in this and we highlight that in the report. U.S. government leadership won’t be the decisive factor in whether we meet the hunger goal by 2015 or eradicate hunger in a generation, but as the most generous donor of development assistance it can set an example for other donors and alert partners in developing countries that we intend to be reliable partners in the realization of these goals.

The launch of the 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach-Global Development Goals, is coming up on November 19. Last week I previewed the main messages in the report and told you how to reserve a seat for the launch at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. In this post, I want to explain how hunger is interconnected with all of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and why progress against hunger accelerates progress on the other MDGs.

MDG 1 – End Poverty and Hunger
Human capital development is crucial to giving poor children a chance to escape poverty as adults. Hunger erodes human capital development through irreversible effects on cognitive and physical development.

Adults who experienced hunger throughout their lives, especially those who were stunted by hunger as children, earn almost 20 percent less on average than those who didn’t experience hunger.

MDG 2 – Achieve Universal Primary Schooling
Evidence shows that when food is scarce or unaffordable, parents pull children out of school and send them to work in order to help the household afford food. 

Even when children are not pulled from school, hunger undermines the value of their education. Hungry children have a much harder time concentrating in school. Iodine deficiency, caused by a lack of this specific nutrient in one’s diet, affects one-third of schoolchildren in developing countries and is associated with a loss of 10–15 IQ points. 

MDG 3 – Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Women and girls are half the world’s population but make up 60 percent of people who are hungry.

Promoting gender equality benefits everyone.  If women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, raising the total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, and in turn reducing the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent.

MDG 4 – Reduce Child Mortality
Hunger is linked to a third of all deaths among children under 5. 

In one study of child deaths in 20 countries, malnutrition was an underlying cause of 51 percent of diarrhea deaths, 57 percent of malaria deaths, 52 percent of pneumonia deaths, and 45 percent of measles deaths.  

MDG 5 – Improve Maternal Health
Hunger increases the risk of women dying in childbirth. 

Malnourished women give birth to malnourished children who are also at greater risk of dying during childbirth.  Malnutrition also increases the risk that a pregnant woman who is HIV-positive will pass the virus on to her baby.

MDG 6 – Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases
The World Health Organization has called poor nutrition the single most important threat to the world’s health.  Estimates suggest that 11 percent of the total global disease burden is related to malnutrition.     

MDG 7 – Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Urban hunger is no small matter, but the vast majority of hungry people still live in rural areas and work predominantly as farmers, fishers, and pastoralists. Sustainable solutions to hunger are the only solutions that matter to people who rely on the natural environment to earn a living.

Goal 7 is also about improving access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Hunger aggravates the barriers to access—for example, as mentioned above, many child deaths from diarrhea, mostly caused by contaminated drinking water, are linked to malnutrition.

MDG 8 – Develop a Global Partnership for Development
It is possible to end global hunger -- but not without partnerships between wealthier nations and those which remain quite poor. In fact, partnership is the key piece of the puzzle to end hunger.

Social protections are vitally important: some of the best examples of significant progress against hunger and malnutrition have come from countries that have invested in effective social protection policies to reach vulnerable families. People living in rich countries may take for granted social protections, such as the WIC program for mothers, infants, and young children in the United States; subsidized school meals; various forms of support for people with physical and mental disabilities; or programs for seniors such as Social Security and Medicare.

Social protection programs may exist in some skeletal form or another in poor countries, but rarely ever do they have the kind of reach to protect all those in need. That’s where partnerships with wealthier countries can make a huge difference in expanding coverage. And they have—for example, Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), a partnership between the Ethiopian government and ten donors, which allowed millions of people who might have been devastated by recent steep hikes in food prices to weather these shocks. 

Within Reach – Global Development Goals, the 2013 edition of the Hunger Report, will be available starting November 19. Pick up a free copy at the launch if you’re in DC on November 19, or order online here. RSVP to Cheryle Adams at Bread for the World Institute to guarantee a seat at the launch and for additional details about the event.

The progress report highlights how Feed the Future is already making a difference in people’s lives in low-income countries. The scorecard, on the other hand, tracks how the U.S government is changing its development and engagement process to more effectively meet its development goals. According to the report, so far Feed the Future has helped 1.8 million food producers adopt improved technologies or management practices that can lead to more resilient crops, higher yields, and increased incomes. Additionally, the initiative has also reached nearly 9 million children through nutrition programs, which can prevent and treat undernutrition and improve child survival.

In his address at the World Food Prize ceremony, Shah said, “We have built some remarkable momentum since President Obama helped rally the world behind the need to dramatically reinvest in agriculture at the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy. Through the president’s Feed the Future initiative, we are tackling the persistent problem of chronic hunger and malnutrition around the world.” He added, “Already delivering meaningful results, this presidential initiative brings together the private sector, NGOs, women’s cooperatives, and local communities to support groundbreaking approaches to advance global food security.”

Building on the successes highlighted in the report, Shah also talked about several new USAID efforts to support inclusive agriculture-led economic growth under Feed the Future.

Partnering with the Private Sector to Change Lives

Under Feed the Future, the U.S. government will continue to support Solutions for African Food Enterprises, an alliance with the nonprofit Partners in Food Solutions that links the technical and business expertise of volunteer employees at three private companies (General Mills, Cargill, and DSM) with small- and medium-sized mills and food processors in the developing world. Over the next five years, USAID, Partners in Food Solutions, and implementing partner TechnoServe will work together to help African food processors improve their ability to produce high-quality, nutritious, and safe food at affordable prices.

Shah also announced that USAID’s Development Credit Authority will support two new lending facilities to help smallholder farmer organizations in Africa. In one, USAID will partially back private loans made to smallholder farmer organizations, including those with contracts from the World Food Programme-Purchase for Progress initiative. This means that qualifying smallholder farmer organizations can use their forward delivery and direct contracts to obtain private local financing.

In addition to these existing initiatives, USAID will also support a new lending facility for Root Capital, a nonprofit social investment fund, to make loans to small and growing agricultural businesses that are improving food security and nutrition. The credit enhancement will allow Root Capital, operating throughout Africa, to disburse more than $50 million in loans, reaching more than 1 million small-scale farmers, over the next five years. The loans will be targeted to small agribusinesses to help improve yields, reduce post-harvest losses, and process nutritious foods for local markets.

Given these realities, the risks of relying on agriculture for one’s livelihood, especially the risks borne by smallholder farmers, can be overwhelming. Today, therefore, the challenge – and the opportunity – is both to reduce and diffuse these risks. One way is to promote sustainable food production in poor, food-importing countries such as Tanzania, where there is often huge potential to improve production. Doing so would make more food available in local markets at affordable prices, and it would provide jobs and income in the rural areas where 70 percent of the world’s poor people live.

Agricultural growth remains key to reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. That is why, in 2003, African heads of state rallied to form the pan-African Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), which works for sustained public spending on agriculture-led growth. This unprecedented political and financial commitment in Africa demands sustained support to take the potential of agriculture on the continent to scale. Despite signs of increasing productivity, agricultural potential remains largely untapped on the continent.

Recognizing both the challenges and opportunities in Africa's agriculture, last week, September 26-28, the 2012 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) was held in Arusha. The forum aimed to provide a platform to discuss current national and global efforts to invest in Africa's potential for sustainable agricultural growth and poverty reduction. Bread for the World was among the over one thousand participants who joined heads of state and government ministers, business leaders, grassroots organizations, farmers, global thought leaders, and other stakeholders at the AGRF.

Bread for the World Senior Policy Analyst Faustine Wabwire and other AGRF participants visit a small holder farm in Arusha Photo Credit: Bread for the World Institute

AGRF 2012, under the theme: Scaling investment and innovation for sustainable agricultural growth and food security set the stage for African and world leaders to promote investments and policy support to increase agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers. Key topics of discussion included:

• Revolutionizing agricultural finance: reducing risk, scaling up, and reaching out;
•  Rethinking public- private partnerships: catalytic policy interventions for transformative change;
• Strategic partnerships to build African science and technology capacity for agricultural development; and
•  Making regional agricultural markets work.

The 2012 AGRF agenda builds on already existing global efforts to end hunger and poverty. At the 2012 G-8 Summit in Camp David, global leaders made bold new commitments to unite the power of the public and private-sectors, launching the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The approach is clear. The plan specifically is to help 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty over the next 10 years.

But simply drawing excellent plans without keeping promises will not put food on the table for the millions of people who suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition.

National governments, civil society, the private sector and the international community must sustain this momentum by investing in Africa's potential for rapid and sustainable agricultural growth. The right policies are also needed to increase this public and private investment. And, of course, people need decent jobs and incomes so that they can afford the food they need and help themselves and their children escape from poverty.

AGRF 2012 was chaired by His Excellency Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and chair of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and hosted by His Excellency Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, president of the Republic of Tanzania.

The only promises that matter are the promises that are kept.

Faustine Wabwire is senior foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

It is not what you have been hearing about Somalia since famine struck last year.

At this time last year, the United Nations had declared that conditions in six areas of Somalia met the definition of famine. Among the people worst-affected were small farmers and agro-pastoralists who had no reserve supplies of cereals and could not afford to purchase these staple foods. Across Somalia, in just one year, the prices of the two major food crops produced domestically—red sorghum and white maize—had increased by between 30 and 240 percent, and 50 and 154 percent, respectively. Somalia also has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world.

Somalia has experienced several years of civil war and has been without a central government since 1991. In 2009, 3.2 million people were in need of food assistance as a result of internal displacement, conflict, and drought. The same combination of causes is responsible for the 2011 famine, only this time it was much worse because food was so much more expensive.

But today I have encouraging news.

Somalia's Parliament just elected a new President of the country, a move that members of the international community say is a key step toward the country's transition from a war-torn failed state. According to Parliament Speaker Mohamed Osman Jawari, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a political newcomer, won the election against outgoing President Sheik Sharif Sheikh Ahmed by the legislative vote of 190 to 79.

This is definitely a big step in the right direction. But Somalia remains a fragile state with enormous challenges, as do other fragile nations. 

As the world celebrates progress on the global fight against poverty, a group of 45 countries in situations of acute fragility- including Somalia, continue to fall behind. The tragedy is that not one low-income country affected by conflict has achieved a single Millenium Development Goal (MDG). Children living in a country affected by conflict are twice as likely to be hungry and nearly three times as likely to be out of school as children in a low-income country that is free of conflict. In addition, the global financial crisis, social unrest, growing population pressures and environmental degradation may lead to new or renewed situations of fragility.

The importance of promoting community stability and resilience cannot be overemphasized, in countries like Somalia. As I pointed out in Bread for the World Institutes's Briefing Paper- Making Development Assitance Work Better, fragile and conflict-affected states present very specific challenges to aid effectiveness efforts as well as to other humanitarian and development needs. For the development and stabilization of these countries, aid is one part of the equation. The coherence of global policies on agriculture, trade, investment, security, energy, migration and other key sectors matters just as much as aid volumes. At the same time, aid can have a vital, countercyclical role, particularly in times of turmoil. For this role to be realized, however, aid needs to be targeted towards strengthening institutions as well as peacebuilding initiatives.

A sobering reality is that while over a third of total Official Development Assistance (ODA) goes to fragile states, the monitoring survey of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness shows that the quality of this aid is markedly poorer than in other developing countries. Although contexts in fragile states are indeed characterized by high level of need and limited capacity of institutions, it is for these very reasons that aid should be more effective.

Evidence suggests that helping a country emerge from its status as a fragile state takes years of patient capital and cooperation.This also means that successful efforts to strengthen institutions in countries like Somalia will be built upon effective  coordination, both within national governments and the international community. This cooperation must be participatory and promote the constructive involvement of civil society as well as the private sector, and a willingness to make hard long-term commitments to achieve results.

They may be fragile, but not broken.