With just one year left before the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals, The 2014 Global Hunger Index (GHI) reveals 805 million people worldwide continue to experience hunger and that serious problems remain with the 'hidden hunger' or 'micronutrient deficiency,' which impacts some 2 billion people worldwide.
While the GHI reports that hunger has fallen by 39 percent in developing countries, 16 countries continue to experience hunger which is considered "alarming" or "extremely alarming."
Areas in Africa which lie south of the Sahara merit “alarming” GHI scores. Rankings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia were challenged due to lack of available data.
The largest improvements in GHI ranking were evidenced in Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chad, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has produced an interactive version of the GHI, with specifics on the Challenges of Hidden Hunger.
The report stresses the urgent need for governments along with multilateral institutions to commit to ending hidden hunger through committing finances, coordination and transparency to ensure adequate systems for monitoring and evaluating nutrition capacity. Regulations to ensure good nutrition could incentivize investments in public health to expedite the production of nutrient rich seeds and foods.
Hidden hunger can coexist with adequate or even excessive consumption of dietary energy from macronutrients, such as fats and carbohydrates, and therefore also with overweight /obesity in one person or community.
Poor diet, disease, impaired absorption, and increased micronutrient needs during certain life stages, such as pregnancy, lactation, and infancy, are among the causes of hidden hunger, which may “invisibly” affect the health and development of a population.
Possible solutions to hidden hunger include food-based approaches: dietary diversification, which might involve growing more diverse crops in a home garden; fortification of commercial foods; and biofortification, in which food crops are bred with increased micronutrient content. Food-based measures will require long-term, sustained, and coordinated efforts to make a lasting difference. In the short term, vitamin and mineral supplements can help vulnerable populations combat hidden hunger.
The 9th GHI report issued since 1990 represents the first time the focus has included an evaluation of both climate and agricultural models to determine the impact of climate change on the international food supply.
WorldWatch Institute reports today that the impact of climate change on crops is expected to result in a 20-percent rise in child malnutrition.
While dramatically impacting crop yields, increasing global temperatures will also alter global precipitation patterns and exacerbate the spread of insects and weeds which threaten the viability of food crops. Rice, maize, wheat, sorghum and millet crops, those most essential to meet the nutritional needs huge swaths of the world's population, will be most effected.
Most severely affected will be the wheat-growing regions of South Asia, Europe and Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, where production is projected to decline by 46, 47, and 35 percent, respectively. Also under threat are Middle Eastern rice paddies, where production is expected to fall by 36 percent.
The regions that would benefit from climate change would experience relatively smaller changes. The analysis estimates that wheat production in Latin America will grow by 13 percent and that millet production will increase in the East Asia and Pacific region and in Latin America and the Caribbean, by 6 and 8 percent, respectively.
Experts in the field of food security and climate change are recommending the allocation of at least $7 billion to assist developing countries adapt to climate change by supporting research on food security, improving irrigation and expanding roads in rural regions.
According to the World Bank's 2010 World Development Report an estimated $75 billion must be allocated on an annual basis to adapt to agriculture, sea-level rise and the increase in tropical diseases as a result of climate change.
The Eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire next year, focus on issues such as reducing global poverty by 50%, promoting gender equity and empowering women, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing universal primary education. The 1st, and perhaps primary, MDG, is to "Eradicate eradicate extreme poverty and hunger." The UN has been working on the
Post-2015 development agenda in which
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) expound upon the MDGs as they take into account a more nuanced picture of the world's most pressing problems as they are currently compounded by the impacts of climate change and the alarming growth in disparity between the world's rich and poor.
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