For those with a heart that beats for realising universal and humanitarian goals, it is indeed difficult to stomach the fact that about 735 million people worldwide faced chronic hunger in 2022. This dismal situation threatens progress towards the larger global goal to end hunger by 2030, as per the United Nations’ State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report released on Wednesday. A multi-year upward trend in hunger rates levelled off last year as many countries recovered economically from the pandemic, but the war in Ukraine and its pressure on food and energy prices offset some of those gains, the UN said in its annual report, jointly produced with IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO.
This report is crucial for policymakers as it provides updates on broad indicators of global progress towards the targets of ending hunger (SDG Target 2.1) and all forms of malnutrition (SDG Target 2.2) and estimates on the number of people who are unable to afford a healthy diet.
Going by the latest analyses, between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, with a mid-range of 735 million. Over 122 million more people are facing hunger in the world since 2019 due to the pandemic as well as repeated weather shocks and conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, and, therefore, the world is “far off track” to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030. Worse still, the report projects that 600 million people will be undernourished in 2030. These figures suggest that a substantial portion of the efforts made over the past five years to improve global food security and nutrition status has not yielded expected results. For, this report, since its 2017 edition, has repeatedly highlighted that the intensification and interaction of conflict, climate extremes and economic slowdowns and downturns, combined with highly unaffordable nutritious foods and growing inequality, are pushing the globe off track when it comes to meeting the SDG 2 targets. From the standpoint of urbanization, new evidence shows that food purchases in some countries are no longer high only among urban households but also among rural households. Consumption of highly processed foods is also increasing in peri-urban and rural areas of some countries. These changes are affecting people’s food security and nutrition in ways that differ depending on where they live across the rural-urban continuum.
Maximo Torero Cullen, chief economist of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, has gone on record: “We are seeing that hunger is stabilizing at a high level, which is bad news.”
The saving grace is that some parts of the world have seen hunger decline, including South America and most regions in Asia. But in the Caribbean, Western Asia, and Africa, hunger is rising. Africa remains the worst-affected region with one in five people facing hunger on the continent, more than twice the global average. The proportion of people hungry in Africa and Oceania likely increased last year to 19.7% and 7%, respectively, contributing to rising global hunger since before the pandemic, according to FAO.
Reflecting the grim food security and nutrition situation in 2022, the report states that approximately 29.6 per cent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, did not have ‘constant access to food’, as measured by the prevalence of ‘moderate food insecurity’ (when people face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food and have been forced to reduce, at times during the year, the quality and/or quantity of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources) or ‘severe food insecurity’ (when people have run out of food, experienced hunger and at the most extreme, gone without food for a day or more). Among the 2.4 billion people who did not have constant access to food, around 900 million individuals faced severe food insecurity.
Another unhealthy trend is that the capacity of people to access healthy diets has deteriorated across the world: more than 3.1 billion people in the world – or 42 per cent – were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021. This represents an overall increase of 134 million people compared to 2019. Millions of children under five continue to suffer from malnutrition: in 2022, 148 million children under five years of age (22.3 per cent) were stunted, 45 million (6.8 per cent) were wasted, and 37 million (5.6 per cent) were overweight. Some progress has been seen in exclusive breastfeeding with 48 per cent of infants under 6-months of age benefiting from this practice, close to the 2025 target.
With India surpassing China in population, it is imperative to achieve national food security goals. As per the 2023 Global Food Security (GFS) Index, India ranks 68th, along with Algeria, with an overall score of 58.9. China ranks 25th with a score of 74.2. India was ranked 71st in GFS Index 2021 of 113 countries with an overall score of 57.2 points.
According to GFS Index 2022 (contested by New Delhi), India has a prevalence of undernutrition of 16.3%. Further, 30.9% of children in India are stunted, 33.4% are underweight, and 3.8% are obese. India’s Human Development Index is 0.65. In the 2022 Global Hunger Index (contested by New Delhi), India slipped six places and ranked 107, out of 121 countries. With a score of 29.1, the GHI found the level of hunger in India ‘serious’. According to the index, at 19.3%, child wasting – or the share of children under 5 years who have low weight for their height, indicating undernourishment – in country is the highest in the world.
India may have had a point in contesting skewed indices and biased reports. It may have reason to ignore even the latest UN report of food security and nutrition. Still, it cannot wish away the dire need to improve food security and nutritional status of its vast population living without constant access to food. There is no room for complacency in a nation where incontestable data on food security and nutrition is scarce.
