COVID-19 pushes world “off track” to achieve Zero Hunger goal by 2030

14 Jul 2020 --- Global hunger rates are on the rise, despite the UN’s aim to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) by 2030. This is the primary concern raised in the annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published this week. The Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger project used data from the UN report to highlight that an additional US$10 billion is urgently needed to prevent millions more people becoming food insecure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are two main reasons why COVID-19 is increasing hunger. Firstly, the pandemic and resulting economic downturn have left millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia without work and unable to buy enough food. The loss of income is the main driver of increased hunger. Secondly, supply disruptions – such as problems transporting food to market, labor shortages due to restrictions on migrant workers or COVID-19 outbreaks in factories –  are also contributing to a rise in hunger,” Carin Smaller, Co-Director of Ceres2030, tells NutritionInsight.

Smaller is also the Director of Agriculture, Trade and Investment at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which co-produced the Ceres2030 report together with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Cornell University. “If we do not act now, we predict that a further 95 million will go hungry in 2020, [representing] a dramatic 14 percent spike in the number of hungry compared to last year,” she warns.

Nearly half the global population affected
The SOFI study tracking progress toward ending hunger and malnutrition is produced jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO).

Social protection programs are Ceres2030's response to battle the ongoing malnutrition and hunger crisis.According to the 320-paged SOFI report, there are currently 690 million undernourished or hungry people in the world and 840 million people are forecast to be hungry in 2030 on current trends. Moreover, 750 million people are severely food insecure while 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet – the latter two figures alone amounting to nearly half of the current global population.

There are several threats to progress, the UN report details – the past three years have recorded conflict climate variability and extremes as well as economic slowdowns and downturns as the main contributing factors. Furthermore, the pandemic and the unprecedented Desert Locust outbreaks in Eastern Africa of 2020 are obscuring economic prospects “in ways no one could have anticipated.” 

Addressing these complex challenges requires a systemic approach to food security through more and better investments in rural development and social protection, outlined in Ceres2030’s report.

Investing in social protection programs
The Ceres2030 project used a global computable general equilibrium model that combines epidemiologic, macroeconomic and household data in a multi-country, multi-sectoral model. It was adapted for the current crisis to estimate both the macroeconomic and microeconomic impacts of the pandemic. 

Smaller of the Ceres2030 project pinpoints that investing in social protection programs – US$10 billion to be exact – can serve to provide food or cash to address the hunger and nutrition impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the most vulnerable populations. Of this, at least US$5 billion must come from donor governments as aid, with the rest provided by developing countries themselves, the report details.

Investing in nutrition helps households ensure their children are sent to school and get the health care they need.“If this money is not spent, we could lose almost two decades of progress in eradicating hunger and poverty. This money is needed both to address the current COVD-19 crisis for longer-term investments to boost incomes for the worst off,” Smaller outlines. 

Along these lines, a report published by the Chatham House recently investigated how malnutrition is costing businesses in low- and middle-income countries US$850 billion in productivity losses.

The benefits of this sort of investment are evident: people affected by the economic downturn could have the means to buy nutritious food, send children to school and get the healthcare they need. It can also help prevent people having to sell off livestock or other assets to pay for their next meal or from being unable to feed their children, which can have permanent economic and social consequences. “These measures are not only the right thing to do, but will also ensure a more productive and prosperous workforce,” she adds.

Notably, Ethiopia has one of the most effective social protection schemes in Africa, says Smaller. “It uses a combination of cash transfers for those who cannot work and training and public job schemes for those who can to boost agricultural production and tackle hunger. Research has shown its impact is equivalent to reducing the length of the hungry season by one third.”

Balancing COVID-19 and malnutrition costs
When asked whether tackling malnutrition or combating COVID-19 should take priority at the moment, Smaller says: “Responding to the health emergency is the first essential government action. Yet on the heels of the health response, governments cannot ignore the secondary threats for their citizens and hunger is the most severe secondary threat. So governments must take action to combat COVID-19 and tackle hunger and malnutrition.”

Amid a ballooning global population, governments must take combat COVID-19 and tackle hunger and malnutrition.Following a similar sentiment, IFAD President Gilbert Houngbo commented that “world problems are interconnected and the solutions are intertwined. We cannot continue thinking of agriculture, the environment, health, poverty and hunger in isolation. The current pandemic is a wake-up call to all of us.”Smaller flags that even before the pandemic, “too little was being done” globally to end hunger.

“Projections for 2030, even without considering the potential impact of COVID-19, serve as a warning that the current level of effort is not enough to reach Zero Hunger ten years from now,” the SOFI report alerts.

NutritionInsight has continuously been covering the emerging link between COVID-19 and nutrition. From the effect of stockpiling on nutrition to exacerbated African malnutrition issues and the important role of dieticians in helping to improve COVID-19 outcomes, the coronavirus crisis has greatly impacted the nutrition industry on a global scale. 

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By Anni Schleicher