ASIA AND THE PACIFIC Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2022: Statistics and Trends

1.1 PREVALENCE OF UNDERNOURISHMENT

FAO derives its Prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator from country data on food supply, food consumption and energy needs, while considering demographic characteristics such as age, gender and levels of physical activity. Designed to capture a state of energy deprivation lasting over a year, the indicator does not reflect the short-lived effects of temporary crises or a temporarily inadequate intake of essential nutrients.

FAO always strives to improve the accuracy of the PoU estimates by taking into account new information; the entire historical series is updated for each report. For this reason, only the current series of estimates should be used, including for values in past years.^{1 1} For more detail see FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2022. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022. Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc0639en

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of undernourished in the Asia and the Pacific region increased from 370 million in 2020 to 396 million in 2021 (Figure 1). Of the 767.9 million undernourished in the world, 52 percent are in the region and 83 percent of them are in Southern Asia (Table 2).

The PoU in Asia and the Pacific was 9.1 percent in 2021 (Table 1). While this is a significant improvement from 14.3 percent in 2000, reflecting two decades of economic development, it is still an increase of 0.6 percentage point over 2020. This percentage is slightly below the world average of 9.8 percent. Notably, progress had slowed in recent years, even before the pandemic. The slowdown was already evident from 2010–2015, which was the period leading up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Between 2015 and 2019, after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the PoU decreased marginally from 8.0 to 7.3 percent. During this period, South-eastern Asia showed a higher decrease in PoU measurements when compared to Southern Asia, which showed marginal decreases. The absolute numbers also decreased significantly in South-eastern Asia (Table 2) but not by much in Southern Asia during this period.

In 2021, the prevalence was highest in Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand (18.2 percent), followed by Southern Asia (16.9 percent), South-eastern Asia (6.3 percent) and Eastern Asia (less than 2.5 percent). The highest increase in the Prevalence of undernourishment in 2021 was in Southern Asia, where the prevalence increased by one percentage point, from 15.9 percent in 2020 to 16.9 percent in 2021.

The estimates of the PoU show that the slowdown in the fight against hunger continues and the number of the hungry in the region will continue to rise. This trend is deeply concerning and points to the need to step up investment in agriculture, both public and private, particularly for smallholder and family farmers.

Figure 2 shows that the PoU averages are highest for Afghanistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Timor-Leste (all higher than 30 percent) equivalent or higher than the 2013–2015 averages. The Global Report on Food Crises 2022 shows that populations in parts of Afghanistan, due to its protracted conflict face Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) along with three other countries – Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. The figure reflects the contributions of individual countries to the regional trends already observed since 2020, with an earlier slowdown in progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.