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Addis event plots road map to zero hunger

Photo credit: ©FAO/IFAD/WFP/Patterik Wiggers
15/07/2015

FAO-IFAD-WFP report prompts call for investments needed to end global hunger and poverty at Financing for Development conference

A major new report by FAO, IFAD and WFP, the UN Rome-based agencies, estimating the cost of investments needed to eliminate hunger and extreme poverty, was the focus of a side event on the margins of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development(FfD3) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 15 July. 

Co-organized by the Rome agencies in collaboration with the Government of Guyana and the UN Regional Economic Commissions, the event, Achieving Zero Hunger: The Critical Role of Investments in Social Protection and Agriculture, drew a large number of delegates, less than a week after the report was launched at a press conference in Rome.

“As a contribution to the financing for development process, we present today a study on the figures that we need to eradicate hunger and poverty by 2030,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.  “Combining social protection and pro-poor investments, the report found that the total amount is about $267 billion per year on average between 2016 and 2030. This means that for each poor person, we need an extra investment of only $160 a year, the equivalent of the price of a cellphone.”

José Graziano da Silva, who was accompanied on the panel by Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of IFAD and Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of WFP, underlined the importance of the findings as governments and stakeholders meet in Addis to discuss ways of financing sustainable development for the next 15 years. The three Rome-agency principals agreed that more support to smallholder farmers, who are part of the private sector, was key to achieving zero hunger.    

Along with presenting the report’s findings, the objective of the side event was to facilitate discussion among a wide range of stakeholders on actions needed to achieve zero hunger. Based on the estimates presented, panellists - Shamshad Akhtar, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Ambassador Eduardo Galvez, General Director for Multilateral and Global Affairs of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Chile, and Hans Herren, President of Biovision and the Millennium Institute - discussed the investments required to end hunger and the potential sources of investments.

They recognized that the report’s conclusions could play a significant part in plans to end hunger and poverty, the first two major objectives of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals that will be adopted at the summit on the post-2015 development agenda in September.

Takeaway

There was general consensus that explicit political commitments with follow-up will be fundamental to ensure that ending hunger and poverty becomes an international, national and government-wide priority. Among other insights at the event were:

Improving nutrition should enable the poor to engage more productively in economic activities, improving their incomes and livelihoods;

Focused interventions would include enabling and encouraging smallholder family farmer output increases through agricultural research and development, vocational education and extension services, transport and communication infrastructure, land and water management, and activities that promote rural employment generation;

While private investors, especially farmers themselves, contribute the largest financial investment in rural areas, public investment in public goods – such as institution building, productivity-enhancing research, rural transport, health, education and social protection – is essential to ensure food security and nutrition and inclusive sustainable development.

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