The number of world hungry has dropped to one in eight people, making the goal of halving hunger by 2015 possible despite continued problems in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, the UN food agency said yesterday.
At the global level, 842 million people — 12 percent of the world’s population — did not have enough food for an active and healthy life, down from 868 million for the period 2010 to last year.
The Rome-based Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said it now appeared possible to attain the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving world hunger from its 1990 level by 2015.
Photo: AFP
A FAO report said the main reasons were higher economic growth in developing countries, an increase in farm productivity rates and more private and public investments in agriculture.
It also said that remittances from emigrants, which have risen to three times higher than development aid globally, were helping improve diets in countries like Bangladesh and Tajikistan.
“With a final push in the next couple of years, we can still reach the MDG target,” FAO director Jose Grazing da Silva said, along with the heads of the UN rural poverty and UN food aid agencies.
“Policies aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and increasing food availability, especially when smallholders are targeted, can achieve hunger reduction even where poverty is widespread,” they said in the report.
The report said 62 countries have already reached the target of halving the proportion of hunger. Despite overall progress, marked differences across regions persist, the report said.
“Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with more than one in five people estimated to be undernourished,” it found.
Sub-Saharan Africa is currently performing the worst on the hunger scale, though there has been some improvement over the last two decades, with hunger declining from 32.7 percent to 24.8 percent.
In terms of numbers rather than percentages, Southern Asia had the highest number of undernourished people — 295 million — followed by sub-Saharan Africa with 223 million and Eastern Asia with 167 million, the report said.
Progress in Northern Africa, which has been impacted by the economic fall-out from the Arab Spring revolutions, has been slow.
Western Asia meanwhile showed no progress in tackling undernourishment: While there are fewer people going hungry here than in other parts of the region, the level of undernourishment has risen steadily since the 1990 to 1992 period.
The FAO said there had, however, been significant reductions in the estimated number of people going hungry in Latin America and Eastern Asia.
The most rapid progress was recorded in fast-growing economies of Southeastern Asia, where since 1990 the proportion of hungry people has dropped from 31.1 percent to 10.7 percent.
“Those that have experienced conflict during the past two decades are more likely to have seen significant setbacks in reducing hunger,” FAO said.
“Landlocked countries face persistent challenges in accessing world markets, while countries with poor infrastructure and weak institutions face additional constraints,” it added.
As a whole, FAO said the total number of undernourished in developing countries had fallen since 1990 to 1992 by 17 percentage points from 995.5 million to the current level of 826.6 million.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese