The coronavirus pandemic has been making people suffer across the world and it has also posed several crucial challenges before the government. One among these important challenges is regarding access to food by communities across the world and the rising levels of hunger and malnutrition that have been threatening to impact millions of more people around the world.
It is in this context that the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition report becomes extremely important. The report highlights and underlines how millions of people are being compelled to go hungry and are facing the threat of malnutrition and thus it may be impossible to achieve the goal of making the world hunger free by 2030. This is from one of the world’s most respected and watched out for reports on food security and nutrition and therefore its findings have a lot to offer to us.
Global trends suggest that access to food is becoming more of a privilege in these times of the pandemic and as a result malnutrition and hunger have become an all pervasive reality. Given these realities, it is becoming more and more difficult to eradicate hunger from the world and the pandemic seems to have pushed us far behind in the struggle to eliminate hunger globally.
The report warns us that due to the all pervading hunger and malnutrition in the world, the goal of achieving zero hunger by 2030 may become a difficult vision to achieve. The report has estimated that while 690 million people remained hungry in 2019, these numbers were raised by almost 10 million compared to what it was in 2018 but these numbers have risen to more than 60 million in just five years. This means that for millions of people around the world, affording nutritious and healthy food has become increasingly difficult and while the largest number of hungry people can be found in Asia, this is followed by Africa. If one were to look at global forecasts, these suggest that more than 130 million more people could be pushed into chronic hunger by the end of 2020. The report warns us that by 2030, more than 890 million people across the globe could be affected by hunger, amounting to 9.8 percent of the world’s population.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition report has been one of the most widely recognised authorities on global hunger and it has constantly been tracking the progress of the world towards ending hunger and malnutrition. It has been produced together along with FAO, UNICEF, FAD, WFP and WHO. The makers of the report warn us that it is high times that nation-states across the world strive to urgently ensure that people are able to make an access to nutritious food and healthy diets. The pandemic has caused a rapid disruption of food supply chains, people’s access to livelihoods have been curtailed and as a result the most poorest and vulnerable sections of the population have become more vulnerable that ever.
The report reminds us that the pandemic has indeed made people more vulnerable and exposed our inadequacies in ensuring nutritious food to all people.
As food systems around the word are heavily impacted and people are pushed further into poverty, the report warns that the vision of attaining a hunger free world by 2030 may be impossible now.
