Political Dimensions of World Hunger

Speech as delivered at Harvard University - Kennedy School of Government
30 January 2003

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Food is absolutely fundamental to human existence. One of the great successes of the twentieth century was a rate of growth in food output that considerably surpassed the unprecedented rate of population growth. Today, we can pride ourselves on the fact that we have the capacity to produce enough food for everyone on the planet to be adequately fed. If all food produced in the world were to be divided equally among its inhabitants, every woman, man and child would consume almost 2800 Calories per day, which is 17% more Calories than 30 years ago, despite the fact that the population has grown by 70 percent over the last 30 years.

In the midst of all this abundance, however, there are still 800 million people in the developing world who do not have enough to eat. Under-nourishment takes a heavy toll on the health and productivity of individuals, communities and nations. About 6 million children under five years of age die every year as a result of hunger and undernutrition. Many of them die from diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria or measles, but could survive if they were better nourished. Vitamin A deficiency is responsible for blindness in 250 to 500 thousand children each year. Twenty million people worldwide are mentally handicapped as a result of iodine deficiency, and each year 100 000 babies are born with irreversible brain damage as a result of maternal iodine insufficiency. FAO has estimated that developing countries have lost, on average, one percentage point from their economic growth each year as a result of insufficient energy intake.

In an overall context of affluence, the fact that so many of our fellow beings are not adequately fed - and therefore not able to lead a full life - suggests that there is something fundamentally flawed about the way in which our world is being managed. The world hunger problem is clearly political, not technical. This is my first message to you today.

Developing countries have made major advances in food consumption in the last 30 years. In spite of a near doubling of their population during this period, average per capita food consumption in the developing countries increased by 30 percent. This was partly due to increased food imports, but growth in food production was significantly higher in developing countries than the world average, both in aggregate and in per capita terms.

Yield increases have contributed nearly 80 percent to the growth in food production in the last three decades and these trends are largely expected to continue. But, at the same time, we are faced with a paradox that the very success of modern agriculture has contributed most to the perpetuation of food insecurity. The enormous productivity gains attainable with modern agriculture, coupled with huge subsidy and support systems in OECD countries, have exerted downward pressure on international cereal prices. While falling food prices have undoubtedly had aggregate welfare benefits, they have also contributed to the impoverishment of many small farmers in developing countries. These are the farmers who, for structural reasons, have been unable to shift out of traditional technologies and production systems. Their production continues to fluctuate with the vagaries of the climate. Many do not have control over water, nor access to modern inputs such as high-yielding varieties, fertiliser, vaccines and animal feed. The result is that they cannot compete in the face of declining commodity prices.

A large proportion of the chronically hungry are precisely these small farmers and also landless people living in rural areas. Many of the urban hungry are first generation migrants from the consequent rural deprivation. Hence, my second message to you is that agricultural gains in the last decades have not been translated into food for all. Unless action on the political level is taken, there is no guarantee that things will be different in the future.

Nobody would dispute the fact that people need to have access to adequate and sufficient food. In 1996, all 186 countries represented at the World Food Summit adopted seven major commitments and pledged themselves to achieving the goal of halving the number of under-nourished people by 2015. Some even called for the adoption of the much more ambitious target of eradicating hunger by that date.

So why, then, is there such a gap between commitments and subsequent action? Why, in so many countries, are vast numbers of people brought to the brink of starvation - and sometimes beyond it - before remedial measures are taken? Why, given the global consensus to fight chronic hunger, are so few countries able to claim success? And why, in spite of the pledges made, has international financial and technical support for agricultural and rural development and related measures to improve food security been declining? This situation continued even in the years following the Summit where solemn commitments were made. In the face of the enormous hunger problem it is scandalous that development assistance to agriculture has fallen 50 % in real terms since the late 1980s.

These are the critical questions. We should try to understand why the political will to rid the world of hunger, so strongly expressed in 1996, has not been reflected in subsequent action by governments and the international community. There are many possible explanations, although all of them are bound to appear as lame excuses to future generations. As they look back, they will realise the remarkable advances in science and technology, in global communications, and the enormous accumulation of wealth in some parts of the world. Yet these future generations will also see the stark difference between those achievements and the failure to harness man's ingenuity to meet mankind's most basic need.

Let me mention some of the reasons:

	The Summits of the 1990s, culminating in the Millennium Summit in 2000, set an admirable agenda for achieving a better and more just and equitable world. However, the agenda as such, does not identify priorities. No matter how desirable these comprehensive and holistic approaches to development are, they run the risk of making everything a priority without any assurance of adequate means to enable their implementation. In this context, the paramount importance of adequate food, along with that of clean water, health and education, should be recognised as the pillars in the fight against poverty.
	The conventional view in development circles - reflected in guidance to countries embarking on the formulation of Poverty Reduction Strategies - is to look at the eradication of hunger as a consequence rather than a cause of economic growth. This results in low priority to investment in food production, most distressingly in rural areas where 70% of the poor live. While poverty reduction is essential for hunger eradication, the reverse is also true. As long as widespread hunger exists in a country, the engine of economic growth cannot reach full power. With more than half of the population chronically undernourished, unable to study or work properly and prone to ill health, it seems obvious that a country's growth prospects would be inhibited.
	This critical thrust seems to have been missed by many development practitioners and Ministers for Finance, even to the point of resisting attempts to incorporate the WFS goal among the OECD's International Development Goals. But there are hopeful signs of change: hunger reduction constitutes one of the targets in the Millennium Development Goals; the 2001 G-8 Summit in Genoa attached great importance to hunger reduction and food security. Also the importance of food security is now being recognised by major international and regional financing institutions and also by bilateral donor agencies.
	Development priorities tend to reflect the political agenda and attitudes in developed countries where public opinion, too often, only associates hunger with emergencies, conflict and natural calamities. These are real and acute problems, but there needs to be more awareness of the chronic dimensions of food insecurity and its links with poverty.
	The ample global availability of food, combined with declining food prices and the perception that food production technology has an unlimited potential to keep up with the increasing demand, may have created the wrong impression that "enough food for everybody means that everyone has enough to eat". Thus hunger is not widely perceived as a major problem.
	With few exceptions, hunger, its origins and effects, are not on the mainstream scientific and policy research agenda. As a result, the magnitude and seriousness of the problem and the positive experiences of a number of countries have not been analysed and documented widely enough.
	The poor track record of past agricultural and integrated rural development programmes, often cited as a reason for reduced investment, ignores the fact that we are learning from mistakes and designing these programmes with lower cost and higher efficiency.
	Growing urban poverty and the political weight of urban populations may have been other important factors which have shaped a pro-urban bias in developing policies and investments. The hungry have a weak political voice and suffer from a lack of institutions to articulate their needs. At the same time, the majority of the very poor are dispersed in rural areas and their involvement in a myriad of activities makes political organisation difficult.
	Political and institutional capacities of developing countries are also over-stretched by demands and conditions imposed by donors.

I have addressed some of the reasons for the gap between political will and action in the global fight against hunger. Now I would like to turn to the more utilitarian - how much investment is needed to achieve the goal of cutting hunger in half by 2015. In the "Anti-Hunger Programme", a paper prepared for the WFS:fyl, FAO estimated that the benefits of halving hunger by 2015 could amount to about 120 billion dollars per year in additional global GDP. This benefit would result from longer, healthier and more productive lives. The investments needed to achieve these gains are relatively small by comparison, including policy reforms and incremental public spending of $24 billion per year. Of this amount, $16 billion per year should be directed to agriculture and rural development, while $5 billion to food assistance and nutrition programmes and $3 billion for loans at market conditions.

Funding for the additional investment should reflect a partnership between developing country governments and international donors. Of the $16 billion, about half should be financed by national governments of developing countries, which implies, on average, only a 20% increase in their agricultural budgets, and $8 billion by concessional flows from donors by bringing the share of agriculture in ODA back to the 1990 level.

Both this incremental public spending and a conducive policy framework are essential to provide the incentives for the private sector to mobilise its own resources which will be critical in ending hunger.

The international community, though, must contribute more than concessional aid. An international trading system based on a "level playing field," which gives due consideration to the food security of developing countries, will go a long way in allowing them to meet the WFS goal. Hand-in-hand with wider access to markets, developing countries also need to build capacity to meet the increasingly demanding standards and rules, in particular those relating to food safety and quality, and also to plant and animal health. With proper assistance from richer countries, these trade standards can be transformed from a threat to an opportunity: meeting standards set under the WTO Agreements on SPS and TBT allows developing countries to expand exports as well as better safeguard their own consumers.

In this context, it is both urgent and realistic to reverse the declining trends in official development assistance and loans to agriculture and rural development which have been halved since the early 1990s. This reduction is now clearly recognised as a mistake. I am encouraged by recent statements here in the United States and by representatives of other major donors and financing institutions, expressing a new commitment to reverse the trend.

The incremental $ 24 billion of public investment which will guarantee meeting the WFS goal is a negligible share of the total income of the rich countries. It is even quite small compared to the equivalent of $ 300 billion per year that OECD countries provide in subsidies to their own agriculture. It is this concern over the need to start bridging the yawning gap between the financing requirements to achieve the WFS goal and the current availability of international funding that has prompted FAO to urge all concerned to take more deliberate measures against hunger.

But it is not just about economics. Hunger and extreme poverty bring about conflicts, especially over ownership of and access to resources; recurrent emergencies; and problems of migration, international crime and the drug trade which affect all of us.

I hope that my comments will lead you to the same conclusion, beyond being a moral imperative, it is in the self-interest of all countries - rich and poor alike - to move quickly towards achieving the World Food Summit target. The political dimensions of world hunger are really about how to translate this self-interest into determined action, backed by adequate resources. Thank you for your kind attention.

	We will ensure an enabling political, social, and economic environment designed to create the best conditions for the eradication of poverty and for durable peace, based on full and equal participation of women and men, which is most conducive to achieving sustainable food security for all.
	We will implement policies aimed at eradicating poverty and inequality and improving physical and economic access by all, at all times, to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food and its effective utilization.
	We will pursue participatory and sustainable food, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development policies and practices in high and low potential areas, which are essential to adequate and reliable food supplies at the household, national, regional and global levels, and combat pests, drought and desertification, considering the multifunctional character of agriculture.
	We will strive to ensure that food, agricultural trade and overall trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all through a fair and market-oriented world trade system.
	We will endeavour to prevent and be prepared for natural disasters and man-made emergencies and to meet transitory and emergency food requirements in ways that encourage recovery, rehabilitation, development and a capacity to satisfy future needs.
	We will promote optimal allocation and use of public and private investments to foster human resources, sustainable food, agriculture, fisheries and forestry systems, and rural development, in high and low potential areas.
	We will implement, monitor, and follow-up this Plan of Action at all levels in cooperation with the international community.

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