The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World The State of Food and Agriculture high-level briefing

 

 

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World The State of Food and Agriculture
high-level briefing 

José Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General

 

Your Excellency María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73rd Session of the General Assembly

Your Excellency Maria Angela Zappia, Chair of the Group of Friends of Food Security, Permanent Representative of Italy

Your Excellency Lorena Aguilar Revelo, Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations and Worship of Costa Rica

Your Excellency Ambassador Dian Triansyah Djani, Permanent Representative of Indonesia

Your Excellency Antonio Gumende, Permanent Representative of Mozambique

Mr. Gilbert Houngbo, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development

Mr. David Beasley, Executive Director of World Food Programme

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

We are here to present the conclusions of two flagship reports which are related to daily dramatic situations; two of them are alive and kicking.

One is now happening in Yemen, as brightly warned by the Secretary-General last Friday.

There, the international community is failing.

We are watching before our eyes an unprecedented human tragedy.

In July 2017, I had already alerted to the UN Security Council: the solution for Yemen was not only to provide food assistance, which is immediately required to prevent this famine, but also to address conflict, which was – and continues now - to affect local food production.

In this context, Yemen is a living proof of an apocalyptical equation introduced by the State of Food Security and Nutrition 2018, the SOFI: conflict and food security goes hand in hand; and when conflicts are exacerbated by climate change, famine is already in the horizon. This is happening not only in Yemen but many other countries, particularly in the Sahel Region in Africa.

According to SOFI 2018, hunger and malnutrition in the world continues to rise – after more than a decade declining - for the third year in a row: 821 million people were undernourished in 2017.

This number represents a huge increase since 2015, when 784 million were suffering from hunger.

It is an addition of 37 million hungry people, which is the equivalent of the population of Canada.

As shown in Yemen, conflicts and climate change are reversing the progress achieved since of the beginning of this century.

The key drivers behind this reversal continue to pose immense challenges on a global and regional scale with no easy and quick solutions.

In the other edge of SOFI’s conclusion, the report shows a paradoxical but also very worrisome form of malnutrition: obesity and overweight affected 672 million people in 2017.

This number involves people in distinct contexts: women and men, rich and poor, young and old. At both developed and developing nations.

This number is certainly larger today as the gap between hungry and obese people is narrowing: if we don’t put in place adequate policies to stop this pandemic, soon we will have more obese than hungry people in the world. 

According to the World Health Organization, the cost of obesity is equivalent to that of conflict or of smoking, about 3 trillion dollars per year.

It is astonishing to note that Africa, a continent previously known by its stunting children, is now the one that mostly suffer by the obesity epidemic.

This is mainly due to their dependence on food import, often processed, cheap, unhealthy food.

And, after all, while some progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, the decline has slowed and levels are still unacceptably high.

Nearly 151 million children under five (over 22%) are affected by stunting in 2017.

A contrasting but impactful dilemma, for sure.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

World is also experiencing another humanitarian issue; the distressed migration, as currently observed with the migrant caravans from Central Americans to the United States.

This appealing episode puts a spotlight on what is behind this massive displacement.

The root causes of this forced migration are often linked to extreme poverty and social disruption. But it is absolutely necessary to see the most important root cause for this American tragedy: climate change and food insecurity.

Violence may be in the big picture, but as rightly said by a professor from the American University to The Guardian some days ago: “the main reason people are moving is because they don’t have anything to eat.

This has a strong link to climate change – we are seeing tremendous climate instability that is radically changing food security in the region”.

Those migrants, including many indigenous people, are abandoning their after repeated crop failures, attributed to prolonged drought and changing weather patterns.

This rise of migration is at the global picture of the State of Food and Agriculture 2018, the SOFA: the stock of international migrants went from 153 million in 1990 to over 250 million today.

As the same causes of hunger, many people move to escape life-threatening situations caused by conflicts or climate-related disasters.

One of the main findings of SOFA is that in low-income countries internal migrants are five times more likely to migrate internationally than individuals who have not moved.

Another important conclusion is that rural migration accounts for at least 50% of all internal movements, especially in regions with high urbanization rates. In sub-Saharan Africa this share can be up to 75%.

But allow me to conclude with an optimistic message, by highlighting the positive role of migration in reducing inequalities.

We must remember that people also choose to move in search of better opportunities.

Migrating can mean higher incomes, access to better social services, and improved livelihoods. It can also mean that households in rural areas receive remittances.

The basic challenge is to maximize the benefits of migration while ensuring that it is never an act of desperation.

In order to do this, we need to better understand migration: what it is, what its magnitude is, what drives it and what the impacts are.

A first step is realizing that migration within countries is a much larger phenomenon than international migration, and the two are interconnected.

The SOFA 2018 report aims to contribute to a better understanding of both internal and international migration, and how these are linked to economic transformation.

The objective must be to make migration a choice, not a necessity, and to maximize the positive impacts while minimizing the negative ones.

In many situations it makes sense to facilitate migration and allow prospective migrants to take advantage of the opportunities that migration offers.

This can help promote economic, social and human development.

For this to happen, we need not only to address the root causes of migration but also understand its positive consequences.

It is in your hands and it is a responsibility of all of us.

Thank you for your attention.