Long-term hunger looms large for millions of people in the world’s fastest-growing region, the Asia-Pacific, unless governments invest heavily in agricultural production and put more money in the hands of the poor, a leading economist has warned.
Poverty-stricken rural communities are paying more for their food than people in urban centres, seeing their farm land shrinking due to urbanisation and, despite impressive economic growth, cannot find alternative employment, Hafiz Pasha, former UN diplomat and now dean of the School of Social Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, told legislators at the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarians’ Forum on Inequality and Hunger in Sri Lanka on 16 and 17 February 2009.
“The region has made incredible progress in achieving MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] , but hunger is not one of them,” said Pasha, adding that most governments had focused on achieving economic growth and neglected food security. The MDGs are development targets that world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015.
The UN estimates that 61 percent or 615 million of the world’s 923 million undernourished people are in Asian and Pacific nations, a staggering figure when considered against the robust growth rates seen in countries such as India and China.
According to the UN, more than 50 percent of the world’s undernourished children are in South Asia, predominantly in rural areas. “Yet, despite the scale of the problem, the plight of the hungry goes relatively unreported and unaddressed,” according to the conference.
“The complacency that [economic] growth will be able to solve all problems is beginning to diminish,” Pasha said, observing that the benefits of “relentlessly pursuing high growth rates” had failed to trickle down to the poorest. Food prices, which spiralled in 2008, would remain high for some time unless there was equitable and sustainable rural development, he said.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohan Munasinghe told the forum that hunger was one among multiple global issues needing an integrated solution - nations might not be able to meet their MDG targets if the problem of global warming was not addressed quickly.
The specialists were addressing parliamentarians from 14 countries across the region at the forum jointly organised by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Millennium Campaign and the Bangkok-based Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.
“Jobless growth”
Calling for pro-poor policies that would directly benefit the 615 million chronically hungry people who live in Asia, Pasha charged that abolishing hunger had not been sufficiently addressed, despite some countries improving other MDG statistics such as in health and education.
The failure to create employment opportunities had resulted in “jobless growth”, Pasha said, taking the example of China, which had an average annual growth rate of 10 percent until recently but annual employment growth of just 1 percent.
He cautioned politicians that they risked losing votes, especially in rural constituencies, if the prices of basic food items remained high or rose further.
Among the recommendations he made to legislators was to ensure that national budgets allocated ample resources for rural development, instituting price-support mechanisms and social protection programmes and modernising legislation regarding marketing and distribution.
UNDP and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have launched a campaign to address the growing problem with a seven-point action plan that includes targeted interventions such as school-feeding programmes, linking development outcomes to the impact on hunger and providing staple foods to the poor.
cj/bj/mw
Poverty-stricken rural communities are paying more for their food than people in urban centres, seeing their farm land shrinking due to urbanisation and, despite impressive economic growth, cannot find alternative employment, Hafiz Pasha, former UN diplomat and now dean of the School of Social Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, told legislators at the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarians’ Forum on Inequality and Hunger in Sri Lanka on 16 and 17 February 2009.
“The region has made incredible progress in achieving MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] , but hunger is not one of them,” said Pasha, adding that most governments had focused on achieving economic growth and neglected food security. The MDGs are development targets that world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015.
The UN estimates that 61 percent or 615 million of the world’s 923 million undernourished people are in Asian and Pacific nations, a staggering figure when considered against the robust growth rates seen in countries such as India and China.
According to the UN, more than 50 percent of the world’s undernourished children are in South Asia, predominantly in rural areas. “Yet, despite the scale of the problem, the plight of the hungry goes relatively unreported and unaddressed,” according to the conference.
“The complacency that [economic] growth will be able to solve all problems is beginning to diminish,” Pasha said, observing that the benefits of “relentlessly pursuing high growth rates” had failed to trickle down to the poorest. Food prices, which spiralled in 2008, would remain high for some time unless there was equitable and sustainable rural development, he said.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohan Munasinghe told the forum that hunger was one among multiple global issues needing an integrated solution - nations might not be able to meet their MDG targets if the problem of global warming was not addressed quickly.
The specialists were addressing parliamentarians from 14 countries across the region at the forum jointly organised by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Millennium Campaign and the Bangkok-based Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.
“Jobless growth”
Calling for pro-poor policies that would directly benefit the 615 million chronically hungry people who live in Asia, Pasha charged that abolishing hunger had not been sufficiently addressed, despite some countries improving other MDG statistics such as in health and education.
The failure to create employment opportunities had resulted in “jobless growth”, Pasha said, taking the example of China, which had an average annual growth rate of 10 percent until recently but annual employment growth of just 1 percent.
He cautioned politicians that they risked losing votes, especially in rural constituencies, if the prices of basic food items remained high or rose further.
Among the recommendations he made to legislators was to ensure that national budgets allocated ample resources for rural development, instituting price-support mechanisms and social protection programmes and modernising legislation regarding marketing and distribution.
UNDP and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have launched a campaign to address the growing problem with a seven-point action plan that includes targeted interventions such as school-feeding programmes, linking development outcomes to the impact on hunger and providing staple foods to the poor.
cj/bj/mw
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