138 posts categorized "Millennium Development Goals"

Legalization, a path to citizenship, and secure borders—these are perhaps the most notable elements of recent  immigration reform proposals, proposals that seem to be moving  with surprising swiftness after a long period of inaction. The growing prospect of comprehensive immigration reform will finally allow the U.S. government to “hit the reset button” and legally recognize the 11 or so million people who live and work in this country without legal status. Yet, much like the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the current legislative proposals offer few answers for the next wave of Latin Americans who are sure to arrive —whether over, around, or through the tighter U.S.  borders.

So far, none of the proposals effectively address the glaring reason immigrants have always come, and why they’ll keep coming — opportunity. Persecuted English or Dutch people in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, famished Irish potato farmers in the 1840s, or European survivors of World War II—all were willing to leave their familiar homelands for opportunity. For 20^th and 21^st century Hispanics the motive has not changed.

After World War I, far fewer Europeans were allowed to legally enter the United States than wanted to. (1921, political cartoon)

We don’t hear much these days about unauthorized immigration from Western Europe. That’s because economic opportunities there are comparable or better than those in this country. Yet very little attention has been paid to the conditions that drive people in Latin America to enter the United States illegally. Migration for economic opportunities is a time-honored strategy for escaping poverty. Despite the hazards of life as an unauthorized immigrant, and the less than dazzling jobs such immigrants are able to secure, the United States still offers far better work prospects than the rural areas of Mexico and Central America where the majority of migrants are coming from.

Until economic opportunities improve in Latin America, we can expect immigrants to keep coming. Solutions to the complex questions of legal amnesty, pathways to citizenship, and border security are long overdue. But these efforts must be accompanied by serious conversations among U.S. leaders about Latin American development and economic growth. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have shaped efforts to improve the lives of poor people for 13 years now, with half-hearted U.S. participation. If the United States is serious about finding better answers to  the immigration question, it is time for us to step up our commitments to global development, particularly in the poorest rural areas of Mexico and Central America.

For more on development and immigration policy, read the 2013 Hunger Report: Within Reach, Global Development Goals.

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

What do a former U.S. Senator (Tom Daschle), an industry organization executive (Charlotte Hebebrand), a chief economist and former USDA Under Secretary (JB Penn), and two World Food Prize laureates (Pedro Sanchez, in 2002, and Jo Luck, who was Bread President David Beckmann's co-laureate in 2010) have in common? No, it’s not the beginning of a joke. Each of these people is serving on DuPont’s Advisory Committee on Agricultural Innovation and Productivity. They recently released a statement on how best to deal with what they are calling the “food cliff,” along the same lines as the “fiscal cliff” that is still very much on everyone’s mind.

The group says that a string of global fiscal and economic crises is drawing attention away from larger issues. This includes the food cliff, which is caused by a “perfect storm” of global challenges. These are: 

• climate change and associated weather volatility, including droughts such as the 2012 U.S. drought, the worst in decades, and flooding in other parts of the world;
• the burden of 870 million people who suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition, which kills more people each year than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined, and the need to feed a projected additional 2 billion people by the year 2050; and
• resource depletion, caused by growing ever-increasing amounts of food in areas that are susceptible to weather volatility; this in turn leads to food market volatility.

Food and nutrition security is not typically at the top of the list for policy makers, but these factors mean that they should be. Breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition pays lifelong dividends in better education and less susceptibility to disease; it also strengthens national economies. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director general Graziano da Silva said it best: “If we don’t invest today, we will pay the price tomorrow.”

Jane Sebbi is a farmer with 12 acres in Uganda. See our video, “Jane’s Beans,” here. Photo: Laura Elizabeth Pohl/ Bread for the World

We’re happy to see “food and nutrition security” replacing just “food security” in discussions. The momentum on nutrition in the past few years has been nothing short of remarkable. U.S. political leadership is particularly noteworthy – beginning with President Obama, who included the topic in his 2009 inaugural address and proposed a global pledge of $22 billion from G-8 leaders to help resolve the underlying causes of hunger, including $3.5 billion from the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been a vocal champion of nutrition for pregnant women and children, launching the 1,000 Days Partnership with the government of Ireland to support the Scaling Up Nutrition movement and elevating nutrition’s role in U.S. development assistance in the Feed the Future and Global Health initiatives.

On June 10, 2013, Bread for the World Institute will host an international nutrition meeting during Bread’s biannual National Gathering. We hope to have participation from nearly all of the 33 SUN countries; the meeting is intended to help SUN countries advance their own national nutrition policies. Bread’s grassroots organizers will be in Washington, DC, for the Gathering, giving them the opportunity to learn about the latest developments in global nutrition and talk with U.S. government leaders, United Nations officials, and SUN country representatives.

After the June 10 meeting in Washington, DC, there will be a Hunger Summit later in the week in London, just before this year’s G-8 meeting  in Northern Ireland. We’ll be strongly advocating for a continued high level of funding and commitment to improved nutrition policies and programs.

  Scott Bleggi is Bread for the World Institute's International Policy Analyst.

Climate change -- the long-term shifts in temperature now taking place, and the results of those shifts -- is expected to increase the frequency of shocks such as flooding and drought. The threat associated with climate change is both real and global. This infographic shows some of the evidence.

Source: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

The 2012 U.S drought, which covered almost 62 percent of the land area of the 48 contiguous states, is said to be second in size only to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.  A report from a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that 2012 was the warmest year ever documented in records that go back to 1895 for the 48 states. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. corn production fell 13 percent (to 272.4 million metric tons) in 2012-2013, while the soybean harvest fell 4 percent (to 80.9 million tons). As of January 1 of this year, parts of Iowa -- a state that produces almost twice as much corn as Argentina and almost as many soybeans as China-- was still in extreme drought.

Around the world, climate change is damaging food and water security in significant and highly unpredictable ways. There are strong indications that developing countries will continue to bear the brunt of the consequences -- largely because they have high poverty rates and weak capacity to adapt to the changes.  In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture — the mainstay of rural livelihoods — is already under threat because the adaptive capacity of poor rural smallholders is extremely low. The agriculture sector is, of course, particularly vulnerable to climate change. The success of farming has always depended heavily on weather conditions, and African farming is still primarily reliant on rainfall -- not irrigation. 

All of these factors and more make climate change an urgent problem. Responding effectively demands strong and organized political leadership, infrastructure, and resources at all levels -- local, regional, national, and international. Investments in strengthening local capacity to create and implement informed, effective adaptation measures will help poor communities build the  resilience they need to cope with climate shocks. It's difficult to imagine any of this happening, however, as long as local capacity remains limited and communities are perpetually in crisis mode.

One sign of hope is President Obama's promise, in the inauguration address for his second term, to “respond to the threat of climate change” lest we “betray our children and grandchildren.” This year’s State of the Union address, to take place February 12, would be a great platform to turn this ambition into action.

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

In London this week, a coalition of more than 100 U.K. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched the Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign. Its mission is to urge the U.K. government to use its 2013 presidency of the G-8 to push for more action on food security and nutrition in the developing world. Events will be held between now and the G-8 summit in June in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, and the campaign will reportedly extend into the autumn with work around the U.N. General Assembly in September and World Food Day in October.

Here is how the IF campaign describes its primary goals:

The ‘IF’ movement challenges the leaders of the G-8 countries to tackle 4 big IFs to provide everyone in the world with access to food:

• IF we stop poor farmers being forced off their land, and use the available agricultural land to grow food for people, not biofuels for cars.
• IF governments keep their promises on aid, invest to stop children dying from malnutrition and help the poorest people feed themselves through investment in small farmers.
• IF governments stop big companies dodging tax in poor countries, so that millions of people can free themselves from hunger.
• IF we force governments and investors to be honest and open about the deals they make in the poorest countries that stop people getting enough food.

It is encouraging that such a broad coalition in the United Kingdom has seized this opportunity and rallied around specific “asks” that ensure that the next G-8 summit advances progress on global hunger. The call for member countries to honor their previous commitments to increase development assistance, particularly those made at the 2008 G-8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy is important both to continued progress toward the Millennium Development Goals and to the G-8’s credibility.

The Institute’s 2013 Hunger Report stresses the need for such national and international coordination, reminding us of the kind of progress the world is capable of under globally shared initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

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

Tammanna Akter and her child Joy, 18 months, pose for photographs in Char Baria village, Barisal, Bangladesh. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World.

Meeting in Rome, the governing council of the U.N. Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) expanded its first global goal -- from merely reducing hunger, to eradicating it.

"This unequivocal commitment sets our sights where they should be," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva. "We cannot accept anything less than the eradication of hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition."

Bread for the World Institute's 2013 Hunger Report,  Within Reach – Global Development Goals, also calls for the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty. The report argues that setting a goal and a deadline will help make this happen, just as the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are helping the world make significant progress on hunger, extreme poverty, child mortality, and other MDG targets. 

The deadline for eradication should be 2040. In other words, mass hunger can be ended within a generation.

Why this timeframe? Just 50 years ago, one person in three around the world was malnourished. Now, hunger affects one person in six. There is certainly more work to do when one-sixth of the global population is hungry. But it’s a big improvement over a time — still in living memory — when twice as many people were hungry.  

The dramatic reductions in global hunger and extreme poverty over the past two generations prove that — now, if not in the past — it is well within human capabilities for us to end mass hunger and extreme poverty within a generation. One of several important results: the deaths from malnutrition of hundreds of thousands of young children every year will become not just “preventable,” but prevented.

As Todd Post, senior editor of the Hunger Report, pointed out when the report was released on November 19, "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."

"No government or organization alone can overcome hunger. It is a goal that needs to be embraced by all. Civil society organizations, the private sector and other actors have important roles to play in our quest for a hunger-free sustainable world," said Graziano da Silva.

Maria Otero and me at the SID Gala Dinner Last Week

Hunger and poverty are cumbersome, tangled, and unruly concepts—that much is clear on the surface. The hundreds of millions of people who struggle to disentangle themselves for the sake of daily survival know this in their bodies, minds, and souls. And those of us who work on hunger and poverty each day share just a portion of their frustration. Whether you labor at a food bank to meet the endless lines of need, confront deadly international phenomena like food insecurity and malnutrition, or even brave the policy front to sort out the root causes—you understand the moments of disappointment. And if you are honest, you’ll admit that they can at times bring you to the troughs of exhaustion and despair, where you doubt the utility of your work and even the basic truths that inspired it.

Last week, I was in a trough—around the same time that I attended the Society for International Development’s annual Gala Dinner here in Washington, DC, an event held to honor the dedicated work of development superstars who live out  the basic truths that we sometimes doubt. This year the spotlight rested on the person of the State Department’s Maria Otero (Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights) and with her, on the concept of human dignity. Webster defines dignity as “the quality of being worthy…” We say every human being is worthy because every human being possesses an innate capacity to flourish—to live a robust, productive, and fulfilling life—and to contribute to the greater flourishing of all humanity.

Every human being.

If you accept, really accept, this concept, then an assessment of things as they are can and should outrage you. The injustice—that the place and time of one’s birth are the most important factors in determining how life will unfold—seems to stand in direct defiance of human dignity. But, as Otero reminded us, we can’t ever settle for this injustice. She is a person who fully understood the ongoing conflict between reality and our ideals—but creatively worked to coerce the former into submission to latter. As president of ACCION International, she introduced the world to microfinance, now considered a fundamental poverty-fighting tool that empowers people with few material resources with loans to build their own productive businesses. She says it’s an idea she was once considered crazy for, because it rests entirely on human dignity. It says that a loan to a materially poor person can work, because that person is worthy of it—capable, creative, and dedicated.

Access to Microcredit has grown dramatically since the 1990s

Today, more than 70 million of the world’s poorest families have access to microcredit, and that number has been growing by more than 35 percent each year. The story of microfinance is a story of human dignity. Otero and people like her have bet their lives on it. We must too, if we are to meet the problems of hunger and poverty with the seriousness, determination, and hope that they demand.

So thank you, Maria Otero, for pulling me out of the trough. 

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

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.

Human potential is an asset that we are losing each day. It’s there, ready and waiting in the unique mind and personality of each human being. And with it, not so far out of reach, lies the reality of a better life for all of us. Solutions to problems like hunger and poverty are part of that awaiting reality, wrapped up in the opportunity of human potential.

Potential is often hard to quantify. Then there are cases when it isn’t. Stunting is one of those cases. The evidence of stunting is literally standing in front of you: a child, shorter than she should be. When children don’t get the right nutrients; they lose—not only in physical size, but in mental and social capacity, and in ability to lead a successful, productive life. And we lose. We lose the mental energy that could have brought a family out of poverty, helped build a national economy, or even flagged the end of hunger.

Bread for the World Institute is calling world leaders to take stunting more seriously. When one in four children in the world is stunted—the lifelong losses are too great to ignore. Our new stunting infographic (below) tells the story. Read more about the often overlooked threats of stunting and severe acute malnutrition in the 2013 Hunger Report.

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