According to the latest United Nations report on food security, the number of hungry people in the world continues to rise. To date, 821 million people are affected, and over 150 million children are stunted. This regression means that more needs to be done if we are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger by 2030.
Hunger has been on the rise for the past three years. It is busy returning to where it was almost 10 years ago..
Limited progress has been made in combating the various forms of malnutrition, ranging from childhood stunting to adult obesity, a situation that threatens the health of hundreds of millions of people.
The situation is worsening in South America and most of Africa. The downward trend in undernourishment rates that characterized Asia seems to be slowing sharply.
According to the UN's annual report, climate variability affecting rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, and extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, are among the key factors explaining the rise in hunger, not to mention conflicts and economic crises.
The heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in the preface to their report that "the alarming signs of rising food insecurity and various forms of malnutrition clearly mean that consistent efforts must be made to ensure that no one is left behind and that the Sustainable Development Goals related to food security and nutrition are achieved. "
Exposure to more complex, more frequent more complex, more frequent and more intense threaten to erode the progress made in combating in the fight against hunger and malnutrition, or even reverse the trend.
Climate change
The analyses proposed in the report reveal that the prevalence and number of undernourished people tend to be higher in countries highly exposed to climatic extremes.
Climate change is already compromising the production of important crops such as wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, and unless climate resilience is strengthened, the situation is set to worsen as temperatures rise and become more extreme.
The rate of undernourishment is even greater when exposure to climate extremes is associated with a high proportion of the population depending on agricultural systems that are particularly sensitive to rainfall and climate variability.
Affecting agricultural growing areas, temperatures continue to exceed the long-term average for the period from 2011 to 2016,leading toan increase in periods of extreme heat over the last five years. Rainy seasons are also changing, with early and late starts and uneven rainfall distribution from one season to the next.
Agricultural production is heavily affected by this situation, which also leads to food shortages, with repercussions on rising food prices, falling incomes and people's access to food.
Slow progress in the fight against malnutrition
Globally, Africa and Asia account for 39% and 55% respectively of all stunted children. Nearly 151 million children under the age of five were too small for their age due to malnutrition in 2017. This compares with 165 million in 2012. The prevalence of childhood wasting remains extremely high in Asia, where almost one in ten children under the age of five weighs too little for their height. The figure is one in a hundred in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Wasting continues to affect more than 50 million children under the age of 5 worldwide. with higher morbidity and mortality rates. In addition, over 38 million children under 5 are overweight.
Obesity on the rise
Adult obesity is getting worse. More than one in eight adults worldwide is obese. The problem is particularly acute in North America, but according to the report, Africa and Asia are also experiencing an upward trend.
Undernourishment and obesity coexist in many countries, and can even be seen side by side in the same household. Limited access to healthy food due to high costs, the stress of food insecurity and physiological adaptations to lack of food help explain why families facing food insecurity are probably even more vulnerable to the risks of overweight and obesity.
Act
The authors of the report call for the implementation and intensification of interventions aimed at guaranteeing access to nutritious food. According to them, policies must pay particular attention to the groups most vulnerable to the disastrous consequences of limited access to food: infants, children under five, school-age children, adolescent girls and women.
At the same time, we need to move sustainably towards a more nutrition-conscious agriculture, and towards food systems capable of providing safe, good-quality food for all.
The report's authors also call for greater efforts to build climate resilience, through policies that encourage initiatives to adapt to and mitigate climate change, and reduce disaster risk.