Editorials

Fight hunger

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-18 08:04

With nearly one billion people around the world still suffering from food shortages, World Food Day on Oct 16 offered little to rejoice about.

Instead, it served as a stark reminder of the need for the international community to take a united and effective stand against hunger in the face of climate change and the worst global financial and economic crisis in more than half a century. Otherwise, hunger will remain one of the world's largest tragedies and scandals.

A joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN World Food Program indicates that the number of chronically hungry people around the world may fall for the first time in 15 years, dropping from just over one billion last year to 925 million this year.

Such a small change in the number of people who would otherwise struggle to feed their families, no matter how temporary it may be, is still cause for celebration.

However, the forecast also highlights the dire fact that about one in six people around the world still does not have enough food everyday. This in itself has laid bare how far the international community has lagged behind the globally agreed Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people to 10 percent by 2015.

Worse, the recent slight dip is a result of economic recovery in developing countries, falling food prices and a better-than-expected global harvest, rather than international efforts to find lasting solutions to hunger and malnutrition.

These are not long-term solutions. Though there have been good harvests in recent years, harvests are subject to natural disasters and extreme weather, which is likely to be intensified by climate change in coming years.

Greater long-term investment in agriculture is badly needed to ensure that farming plays a large role in mitigating climate change's effects instead of exacerbating them. Yet, the stalled global climate talks have so far allowed rich countries to drag their heels on giving the poor countries the technology and money they need to develop the low-carbon agriculture that would ensure enough food for all.

At the same time, some debt-laden developed countries' attempts to print more money to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis are a menace to both economic growth in developing countries and falling food prices.

If the international community cannot promptly reform the global financial system to prevent this flood of liquidity from triggering a global food crisis, the poorest in the developing world may be pushed into hunger again soon.

The World Food Day should not be just an event to raise awareness of the global fight against hunger. It should also be a call for action to uphold the universal right to food. Let's make it a top priority for global governance.

(China Daily 10/18/2010 page8)