THIRD WORLD NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICE ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

United Nations: Spike in world hunger under the shadow of COVID-19
Published in SUNS #9387 dated 14 July 2021

Geneva, 13 Jul (Kanaga Raja) – World hunger has increased under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, with between 720 and 811 million people in the world facing hunger in 2020, according to the United Nations.

In its State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 report, the UN said that considering the middle of the projected range (768 million), around 118 million more people were facing hunger in 2020 than in 2019 – or as many as 161 million more people, when considering the upper bound of the range.

It said that conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns (now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic) are major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition that continue to increase in both frequency and intensity, and are occurring more frequently in combination.

The report was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were already not on track to meet our commitments to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Now, the pandemic has made this significantly more challenging,” said the report.

Globally, the world is not on track to achieve targets for any of the nutrition indicators by 2030, it added.

The current rate of progress on child stunting, exclusive breast-feeding and low birth weight is insufficient, and progress on child overweight, child wasting, anaemia in women of reproductive age and adult obesity is stalled or the situation is worsening, the report said.

At a virtual media briefing on 12 July, Mr Marco Sanchez, Deputy Director of the Agrifood Economics Division at FAO and a co-author of the report, said that “we have been observing since 2017” that conflicts have become more frequent, intense and widespread.

In 2018, he said, we were talking about climate extremes which were also having an impact (on food insecurity and malnutrition), while in 2019 we were talking about economic slowdowns and downturns having an impact on the trends in food insecurity, and then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic came.

Basically, he said, what has been done this year is to try to understand these different drivers in combination, and not in isolation.

Mr Sanchez noted that measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in an unprecedented economic downturn.

The drivers are there and what we have tried to do in this report is to unpack what is going on and try to understand the drivers in an integrated manner. It is clear that they interact and are making our lives more complicated, he said.

The joint multi-agency report, in reference to the global prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) as highlighted in SDG Indicator 2.1.1, said there is no doubt that the number of people in the world affected by hunger continued to increase in 2020 under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After remaining virtually unchanged from 2014 to 2019, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) increased from 8.4 percent to around 9.9 percent between 2019 and 2020, heightening the challenge of achieving the Zero Hunger target by 2030. The estimate for 2020 ranges from 9.2 to 10.4 percent, it said.

In terms of population, it is estimated that between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020.

Considering the middle of the projected range (768 million), 118 million more people were facing hunger in 2020 than in 2019, with estimates ranging from 70 to 161 million.

While the COVID-19 pandemic surely was a contributing factor, changes observed from 2019 to 2020 cannot be attributed only to the pandemic given the many other factors at play, said the report.

Notwithstanding, the increase in hunger in 2020 is consistent with existing evidence of the economic hardships induced by the COVID-19 crisis that have likely aggravated inequalities in access to food, it added.

The World Bank estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic pushed an additional 119 million to 124 million people into extreme poverty in 2020. Surveys by the World Bank and others reveal staggering proportions of both urban and rural households that reported a decrease in their income after the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.

This is despite an unprecedented response by countries worldwide to implement social protection measures.

However, the speed, coverage, generosity and duration of the social protection responses varied across regions and countries, as did their effectiveness in mitigating the impacts of the pandemic on poverty, said the report.

With some exceptions, data suggest that coverage has been relatively short-lived. On average, responses lasted just over three months, and roughly 40 percent of programmes consisted of one-time payments.

According to the report, the numbers show enduring and troubling regional inequalities. About one in five people (21 percent of the population) was facing hunger in Africa in 2020 – more than double the proportion of any other region, representing an increase of 3 percentage points in one year.

This is followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (9.1 percent) and Asia (9.0 percent), with increases of 2.0 and 1.1 percentage points, respectively, between 2019 and 2020.

Of the total number of undernourished people in 2020 (768 million), more than half (418 million) live in Asia and more than one-third (282 million) in Africa, while Latin America and the Caribbean accounts for about 8 percent (60 million), said the report.

Compared with 2019, 46 million more people in Africa, almost 57 million more in Asia, and about 14 million more in Latin America and the Caribbean were affected by hunger in 2020.

In Asia, the PoU in 2020 ranges from below 2.5 percent in Eastern Asia to a high of 15.8 percent in Southern Asia, which also has the highest number of undernourished people – nearly 306 million.

The prevalence of undernourishment in Western Asia (15.1 percent) is nearly on par with that of Southern Asia.

The report said that all sub-regions of Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, and most sub-regions of Asia, show increases in the PoU from 2019 to 2020, likely reflecting the way the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre- existing drivers of food insecurity and impacted food access by the end of 2020.

According to the report, the sharpest increase in undernourishment was in Western Africa, of 5.8 percentage points in just one year, corresponding to 24.6 million more people.

SHARP RISE IN FOOD INSECURITY

According to the report, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 2.1 challenges the world to go beyond just ending hunger.

For optimal health and well-being, it is imperative to ensure access for all to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round. SDG Indicator 2.1.2 – the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) – has been specifically chosen to monitor progress towards ensuring access to adequate food for all, it said.

Since FAO first started collecting FIES data in 2014, moderate or severe food insecurity at the global level has been slowly on the rise, from 22.6 percent in 2014 to 26.6 percent in 2019, said the report.

Then in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, it rose nearly as much as in the previous five years combined, to 30.4 percent.

Thus, nearly one in three people in the world did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of 320 million people in just one year, from 2.05 to 2.37 billion, said the report.

It noted that nearly 40 percent of those people – 11.9 percent of the global population, or almost 928 million – faced food insecurity at severe levels, indicating they had run out of food and, at worst, gone a day without eating.

The increase in the prevalence of severe food insecurity from 2019 to 2020 was also equal to the total increase from 2014 to 2019 – close to 148 million more people were severely food insecure in 2020, said the report.

The increases in moderate or severe food insecurity from 2019 to 2020 were sharpest in Latin America and the Caribbean (9 percentage points) and Africa (5.4 percentage points), compared with a 3.1-point increase in Asia.

However, Africa still has the highest prevalence of food insecurity at both levels of severity, said the report.

Nearly 60 percent of the population of Africa was affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, and 26 percent faced severe food insecurity.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 41 percent of the population was moderately or severely food insecure in 2020, and 14 percent was severely food insecure.

The food insecurity situation was comparatively better in Asia, where 26 percent of the population was affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, and 10 percent was facing severe food insecurity.

Nevertheless, because of the size of its population, Asia still accounts for half the moderately or severely food insecure people in the world, said the report.

Even in Northern America and Europe, where the lowest rates of food insecurity are found, the prevalence of food insecurity increased for the first time in 2020 since the beginning of FIES data collection in 2014.

In 2020, 8.8 percent of the population of Northern America and Europe was moderately or severely food insecure, and 1.4 percent was severely food insecure, compared with 7.7 and 1.0 percent in 2019, respectively.

The rates were slightly higher in Oceania: 12 percent of the population was affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, including 2.6 percent who were facing severe levels of food insecurity.

The report said from a total of 2.37 billion suffering from food insecurity, half (1.2 billion) are in Asia; one-third (799 million) are in Africa; and 11 percent (267 million) are in Latin America and the Caribbean.

At the sub-regional level, the report said in Africa, moderate or severe food insecurity increased significantly in the Western sub-region, from 54.2 percent in 2019 to 68.3 percent in 2020, surpassing the level observed in Eastern Africa (65.3 percent) where the increase was smaller.

Severe food insecurity in those two sub-regions mirrored the same trends, increasing sharply in Western Africa from 19.6 to 28.8 percent during 2019-2020, but much less so in Eastern Africa, from 26 to 28.7 percent.

Moderate increases were seen in Southern Africa, where the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity rose from 44.3 to 49.7 percent, and severe food insecurity increased from 19.2 to 22.7 percent.

Much smaller increases of around 1 percentage point were observed in Northern Africa, where 30.2 percent of the population was affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, about one-third of whom were facing severe food insecurity (9.5 percent of the population), said the report.

In Asia, the largest increases occurred in the Southern sub-region, where moderate or severe food insecurity jumped from 37.6 percent in 2019 to 43.8 percent in 2020.

There was already a notable increase in this sub-region since 2017 when the prevalence was 29.4 percent, said the report.

Severe food insecurity also rose in Southern Asia in one year, from 18.3 percent to nearly 19.9 percent. There was a small increase in moderate or severe food insecurity in Western Asia, which has the second highest prevalence of food insecurity in the region – 28.3 percent in 2020.

A small increase in severe food insecurity was also observed, from 8.8 percent in 2019 to 8.9 percent in 2020.

Relatively large increases in food insecurity were observed from 2019 to 2020 in Central Asia, from 13.2 to 18 percent for moderate or severe, and 2.3 to 4.7 percent for severe only.

Despite the increase, the sub-region is second only to Eastern Asia in having the lowest food insecurity rates in the region, followed by South-eastern Asia, said the report.

Marked increases in food insecurity were observed in most sub-regions of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Central and South America, less than 40 percent of the population is facing moderate or severe food insecurity, and levels of severe food insecurity are 11 and 13 percent, respectively.

However, both sub-regions registered 9-point increases in moderate or severe food insecurity, and 4-point increases in severe food insecurity, in 2020.

In the Caribbean sub-region, for which estimates are being reported this year for the first time, the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity was 71.3 percent in 2020 – nearly three-quarters of the population. Of those, more than half faced severe food insecurity – 39 percent of the population.

The lowest levels of food insecurity in Northern America and Europe – and in the world – are found in Northern and Western Europe, where about 4 percent of the population is affected by moderate or severe food insecurity, said the report.

In fact, moderate or severe food insecurity declined slightly in these sub-regions in 2020. In Northern America and Southern Europe, however, moderate or severe food insecurity rose slightly from 2019 to 2020, reaching 7.8 and 9.2 percent, respectively.

A notable rise in moderate or severe food insecurity was observed in Eastern Europe in the same period, from 10.4 to 14.8 percent.

Severe food insecurity has remained low in all sub-regions, with increases from 2019 to 2020 in all but Northern America. The largest increases occurred in Eastern Europe (from 1.3 to 2.2 percent) and Southern Europe (from 1.6 to 2.3 percent).

The report summarized that the estimates based on the FIES point to a worse food security situation in 2020 compared with 2019 in most parts of the world.

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to this deterioration of people’s access to food, it said.

The report also found that as a result of the high cost of healthy diets, coupled with persistent high levels of income inequality, it is estimated that around 3 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2019.

Most of these people live in Asia (1.85 billion) and Africa (1.0 billion), although a healthy diet is also out of reach for millions living in Latin America and the Caribbean (113.0 million) and Northern America and Europe (17.3 million), it said.

MALNUTRITION REMAINS A CHALLENGE

According to the report, globally, malnutrition in all its forms remains a challenge. Although it is not yet possible to fully account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic due to data limitations, in 2020, it is estimated that 22.0 percent (149.2 million) of children under 5 years of age were affected by stunting, 6.7 percent (45.4 million) were suffering from wasting and 5.7 percent (38.9 million) were affected by overweight, it said.

In 2020, nearly three-quarters of the world’s stunted children lived in just two regions: Central and Southern Asia (37 percent) and sub-Saharan Africa (37 percent).

Eastern Asia and South-eastern Asia have made the greatest progress over the past two decades, with stunting prevalence declining by nearly half, from 26.1 percent in 2000 to 13.4 percent in 2020.

Progress on stunting has been slower in Africa, declining from 41.5 percent in 2000 to 30.7 percent in 2020 (only a 26 percent decline in relative terms).

In 2020, 45.4 million children under five years (6.7 percent) were wasted. Nearly one-quarter lived in sub-Saharan Africa and more than half lived in Southern Asia, the sub-region with the highest prevalence of wasting – above 14 percent, said the report.

The report said that this form of malnutrition is the most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in the short term, as it is an acute condition with potential to manifest quickly in the face of shocks. The pandemic has likely shifted the global prevalence even further from the global targets, it added.

In 2020, 5.7 percent (38.9 million) of children under five years were overweight. There has been little change at the global level in two decades – 5.7 percent in 2020 compared with 5.4 percent in 2000 – and trends in some regions and in many settings are on the rise, said the report.

While the prevalence of child overweight in Africa is similar to the global prevalence (5.3 percent in 2020), sub-regional levels show differences, reaching 13.0 and 12.1 percent in Northern Africa and Southern Africa, respectively.

There have been notable increases in child overweight between 2000 and 2020, especially in two regions, Eastern and South-eastern Asia, and Australia and New Zealand, where levels have increased from 5.2 to 7.7 percent and from 7.7 to 16.9 percent, respectively.

The report said that hundreds of millions of people were already suffering from hunger and malnutrition before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the long term, without large-scale coordinated action, the combined effects of COVID-19 infection, as well as corresponding mitigation measures and the emerging global recession, could disrupt the functioning of food systems with disastrous consequences for health and nutrition, it added.

“New projections confirm that hunger will not be eradicated by 2030 unless bold actions are taken to accelerate progress, especially actions to address inequality in access to food. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the discouraging trends that already existed prior to the crisis.”

Projections that consider the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that, following a peak of more than 760 million people in 2020, global hunger will decline slowly to fewer than 660 million in 2030.

Nevertheless, said the report, this represents 30 million more people than projected for 2030 had the pandemic not occurred, revealing lasting effects of the pandemic on global food security.

While a substantial reduction in hunger is projected for Asia by 2030 (from 418 million in 2020 to 300 million people), a significant increase is forecasted for Africa (from more than 280 to 300 million people), placing it by 2030 on par with Asia as the region with the highest number of undernourished people.

Globally, progress is being made for some forms of malnutrition, but the world is not on track to achieve targets for any of the nutrition indicators by 2030, said the report. The current rate of progress on child stunting, exclusive breast-feeding and low birth weight is insufficient, and progress on child overweight, child wasting, anaemia in women of reproductive age and adult obesity is stalled or the situation is worsening, it added.

The report recommended six possible pathways through which food systems could be transformed to address the major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition and ensure access to affordable healthy diets for all, sustainably and inclusively.

These include: (1) integrating humanitarian, development and peacebuilding policies in conflict-affected areas; (2) scaling up climate resilience across food systems; (3) strengthening the resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity; (4) intervening along the food supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods; (5) tackling poverty and structural inequalities, ensuring interventions are pro-poor and inclusive; and (6) strengthening food environments and changing consumer behaviour to promote dietary patterns with positive impacts on human health and the environment.