The global goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 is "dangerously off track" due to the "toxic combination" caused by the climate crisis, covid-19 and increasingly severe and protracted violent conflicts, an international report warned Friday.
"Progress toward the goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, already too slow, is showing signs of stalling or even being reversed," reads the 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI), a document released this Friday that is produced annually by the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide to analyze the state of world hunger.
The IGF's data and projections indicate that the world as a whole - in particular 47 countries, largely located in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia - will not achieve a low level of hunger by 2030, meaning that the global goal of eradicating hunger, one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda outlined by the United Nations (UN), will be compromised.
"Conflict, climate change, and the covid-19 pandemic - three of the most powerful and toxic forces driving hunger - threaten to destroy any progress that has been made against hunger in recent years," the document stresses, stressing that violent conflicts, "which are deeply intertwined with hunger," show no signs of abating.
In relation to the negative consequences of climate change, the NGOs that authored the document point out that these are "increasingly apparent and costly," but, they warn, "the world has not developed any effective mechanism to mitigate, let alone reverse this situation.
As for the pandemic of the new coronavirus, which still marks daily life worldwide, the report states that this crisis has shown how vulnerable countries and their populations are "to global contagion and the damage to health, social, and economic consequences."
"As a result of these factors - as well as a host of underlying factors, such as poverty, inequality, unsustainable food systems, lack of investment in agriculture and rural development, inadequate safety nets, and poor governance - progress in the fight against hunger shows signs of stagnation or even regression," the NGOs reinforce.
Although the report shows that global hunger has been on the decline since 2000, the NGOs warn that these signs "suggest future problems."
"By 2020, 155 million people were highly food insecure, an increase of nearly 20 million people from the previous year," the document points out, warning that inequality in the nutritional status of populations within countries is widespread and that children are suffering "from inadequate diets and poor health in every corner of the world."
In the NGO's analysis, this persistent inequality even within country borders has become more pressing due to movement restrictions and service disruptions associated with the still ongoing pandemic.
"The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on poor and vulnerable people is widening the gap between rich and poor," the organizations stress.
Among the 135 countries analyzed in the 2021 edition of the IGF (of which 19 did not have sufficient data), one country, Somalia, has an "extremely alarming" level of hunger.
In five other countries - Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Yemen - alarming levels of hunger have been identified.
These are joined by Burundi, Comoros, South Sudan, and Syria, countries where hunger is provisionally classified as "alarming."
The report adds that hunger has been identified as "severe" in another 31 countries, a list that includes Angola, Mozambique, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and India, and is provisionally classified as "severe" in six more countries.
"Since 2012, hunger has increased in 10 countries with moderate, severe or alarming levels of hunger, in some cases reflecting a stagnation of progress and in others signaling an intensification of an already precarious situation," the document stresses, also highlighting that 14 countries have achieved "significant progress in the fight against hunger, with a reduction of 25% or more" over the past nine years.
The IGF ranks and scores countries' hunger situations on a 100-point scale: values below 10.0 reflect "low" hunger and values of 50.0 and above are "extremely alarming.
Lusa Agency