A declaration to be made at next week’s world food summit in Rome will not mention a target to eradicate hunger by 2025 nor a commitment to spend $44-billion a year in agricultural aid, according to a final draft seen by Reuters.
The two targets were among the most divisive issues at the centre of pre-summit negotiations, according to diplomats.
World leaders and top government officials at the November 16 to 18 summit will simply reaffirm their commitment to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 — a target that is unlikely to be reached.
”We commit to take action towards sustainably eradicating hunger at the earliest possible date,” said the draft of the declaration, to be adopted on Monday barring last-minute amendments.
According to the draft, the leaders will also commit to ”substantially increase the share of ODA [official development assistance] devoted to agriculture and food security based on country-led requests”, without setting a target or a timeframe.
The summit, hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), had aimed to win broad support on the need to boost the percentage of official aid spent on agricultural development to 17% — or about $44-billion a year — from 5% now.
At a news conference on Wednesday, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf reiterated that aim, saying bringing agricultural aid back to the 1980 level was crucial to fight global hunger.
The number of hungry people has topped one billion for the first time since records were established in 1970. An attempt to include in the declaration a new proposal to eradicate hunger by 2025 was met with scepticism by many who felt that it would amount to giving up on the UN target — subscribed by world leaders in 2000 — of halving the number of hungry people by 2015.
”There is no point in setting a new target when we have not reached the old one,” one diplomat said.
However, with the global financial crisis and food price spikes last year pushing 100-million more people into hunger this year, even UN experts say the 2015 deadline is going to be missed — and the goal may not be reached until mid-2040 at the earliest.
Threat to peace
Since last year’s record levels, the prices of staple commodities like rice, corn and wheat have fallen.
But in developing countries they are still high and according to several experts new spikes are all but inevitable. FAO says the number of hungry people this year rose to 1,02-billion people, more than at any other time in history and up 100-million from last year.
A child dies of malnutrition every six seconds despite the fact that the world produces more than enough food for everybody — cereals crops in 2009 are expected to be the second largest ever, after a record 2008.
”This scourge is not just a moral outrage and economic absurdity, but also represents a threat for our peace and security,” Diouf said.
”Hungry people are a serious potential source of conflict and forced migration,” Diouf, who is Senegalese, told reporters.
Previous food summits and meetings have been long on rhetoric and short on concrete action, and whatever promises were made have gone largely unfulfilled.
In 2000 world leaders subscribed to the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015, and next week’s summit will reaffirm commitment to that target.
FAO has not released a list of participants, but even its most optimistic estimates indicate than less than one third of the 193 heads of state and government invited will attend.
Crucially, most G8 leaders or even top government officials will skip the summit, although there will be several heads of state from Latin America and Africa. The United States, the world’s biggest food aid donor and a driving force in the fight against hunger under President Barack Obama, is sending the acting head of the US Agency for International Development, whose new boss has just been named.
Winners and losers in the war on hunger
Below are some countries which have succeeded in reducing hunger, and others which have not.
Brazil
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made it his aim to eradicate hunger. In six years his Zero Hunger programme has slashed child malnutrition by 73% using food banks, community kitchens and locally procured school meals.
The government has promoted redistribution of land and supported small farmers. Brazil’s Constitution enshrines the right to food, monitored by a National Council on Food and Nutrition Security sanctioned in 2006. Anti-poverty agency ActionAid ranks Brazil as the top nation in the war on hunger.
China
The Asian giant slashed the number of undernourished people by 58-million between 1992 and 2003, reducing the population classified as hungry by one-third.
Having already undertaken major land reform, the government has invested heavily in poor farmers and rural infrastructure. Part of its success is due to guaranteeing women land rights.
Although only 9% of its land is arable, China can now feed its 1,3-billion people: less than 9% of its population is ranked as hungry.
Ghana
The West African state, although classified as a low-income country, has made strides in reducing hunger through support to smallholder farmers amid years of stable, democratic government.
Ghana is the only sub-Saharan Africa country to have met the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015, reducing hungry people from 5,4-million in 1990 to 1,9-million in 2005.
Malawi
Despite being one of the world’s poorest nations, Malawi has doubled food output in just three years, halting a famine which threatened a third of its people. The number of undernourished fell from 45% in 1990-92 to 29% in 2004-06.
By reintroducing subsidies on inputs such as seeds and fertilisers — scrapped under a World Bank scheme — Malawi tripled maize production between 2005 and 2007, going from a 43% food deficit to a 57% surplus. By 2009, it had become the main maize exporter in Southern Africa.
India
Despite high levels of economic growth comparable with China, India has failed to make progress in fighting hunger.
Since the mid-1990s, despite rising per capita GDP, 30-million more people in India have been added to the ranks of the hungry. India is currently in the midst of a drought crisis with 46% of the country’s children underweight.
Ethiopia
The Horn of Africa country is again under the shadow of famine, with 7,5-million Ethiopians short of food. Despite agricultural investment by President Meles Zenawi, reliance on rain-fed crops dogs the drought-prone country and rising food production has not kept pace with population growth. Land reforms discouraged many farmers from investing. A 2005 scheme gives seven million Ethiopians — nearly one in 10 — food or cash.
Democratic Republic of Congo
With 76% of its population chronically hungry, the DRC has the worst hunger statistics in the world. Most of the 5-million people who have died in its decade-old conflict have perished from hunger and disease. The violence handicaps efforts to tackle hunger: of seven million hectares of potentially productive land, only one million is currently in use. — Reuters