By External Source
Oct 14 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 
The world’s farmers produce enough food to feed more than the global population.

Yet around 733 million people are facing hunger in the world.

In 2023, nearly 282 million people across 59 countries faced acute food insecurity.

This was an increase of 24 million people since 2022.

Several factors exacerbate the problem.

Weather shocks to global conflicts impact the poor and vulnerable most severely.

So do economic downturns, enduring inequality, and the legacy of a global pandemic.

Many of the affected are agricultural households – reflecting widening inequality everywhere.

Food is the third most basic human need after air and water.

Everyone should have the right to adequate food.

This right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Yet 2.8 billion people in the world are unable to afford a healthy diet.

Unhealthy diets are the leading cause of all forms of malnutrition.

Undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity now exist in most countries.

Malnutrition is now cutting across socio-economic classes.

More vulnerable people are often forced to rely on staple foods or less expensive foods.

Others suffer from the unavailability of fresh or varied foods.

For those fortunate enough, opting for convenience is simple.

Importantly, the information they need to choose a healthy diet is scarce.

This year’s World Food Day theme is based on the “Right to foods for a better life and better future”.

A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, in our markets, and on our tables.

For the benefit of all.

By Danielle Nierenberg
BALTIMORE, Maryland USA, Oct 14 2024 – World Food Day seems like it should be a time to celebrate. A day to eat delicious meals and enjoy the rich traditions and cultures of food around the globe.

But it’s difficult to celebrate when conflict, the climate crisis, and our biodiversity loss crisis leave at least 733 million people hungry around the world. Dr. Evan Fraser from the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph calls these cascading crises. And the results are dire.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in 2023, one in 11 people worldwide faced hunger last year. And one in five people in Africa experience hunger.

If current trends continue, more than 582 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, with half of these folks living on the continent of Africa, according to FAO and four additional United Agencies. That’s less than 6 years away, which means we have a lot of work to do.

Fortunately, we already know what works. The theme of this year’s World Food Day is Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future. Everyone deserves healthy, nutrient rich, safe, and delicious food.

And the United Nations says, “A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, in our markets, and on our tables, for the benefit of all.” I would add that we also need a diversity of people, practices and thought to help feed the world.

This year the prestigious World Food Prize will be awarded to the Special Envoy for Food Security, Dr. Cary Fowler, and agricultural scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin. These two individuals, according to the World Food Prize Foundation, are being awarded for “their extraordinary leadership in preserving and protecting the world’s heritage of crop biodiversity and mobilizing this critical resource to defend against threats to global food security.”

And Dr. Fowler is working to encourage farmers and governments to grow “opportunity crops” like cowpea, millet, sorghum, and other ancient and resilient foods. These crops have often been overlooked in favor of maize, rice, and other so-called staples, but they have, again, the opportunity to solve a multitude of problems. They build soil health and if storage and processing can improve in places like sub-Saharan Africa, they can be profitable.

Another solution—and it should be obvious—is empowering women and girls. We are systematically underutilizing at least 50 percent of the world’s population. Equal rights for women are not only an ethical and moral imperative, but can help solve the hunger crisis.

According to FAO, if women had the same access to resources as men—education, access to credit and financial services, extension, and respect—they could lift as many as 100 million people out of hunger. And equal rights are good for the economy. And according to Betty Chinyamunyamu of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, “gender integration makes good business sense.”

In addition, women are often growing the foods that are actually nutritious—including those opportunity crops, but also fruits and vegetables that contribute to agrobiodiversity. “Women’s empowerment has a positive impact on agricultural production, food security, diets and child nutrition,” states FAO’s Status of Women in Agrifood Systems. Making sure that women are empowered in all aspects of their lives just makes common sense.

Moreover, farmers—small, medium, and large—literally need a seat at the table, from in person input at international dialogues like COP29, the U.N. Climate Change Conference, to co-creating technologies with scientists and entrepreneurs that will actually solve the problems that farmers are experiencing in fields and ranches.

Good Nature Agro in Zambia, for example, is developing with farmers ways to prevent post-harvest losses and more sustainably manage their farmland. And the organization Global Alliance of Latinos in Agriculture aims to create a world where farmers and ranchers thrive globally—and they plan to bring hundreds of producers to COP30 in Belem, Brazil next year.

This World Food Day (October 16), the Arrell Food Institute is bringing together agri-food leaders and experts dive into solutions like diversity, empowering women, and putting farmers in the drivers’ seat to create a more safe and sustainable global food system. A food system that works for everyone.

Hopefully, in the not-so-distant future, World Food Day will actually be a day to celebrate.

Danielle Nierenberg is President and Founder, Food Tank, which describes itself as a global community that inspires, motivates, and activates positive transformation in how we produce and consume food.

IPS UN Bureau

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World Food Day 2024

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Oct 14 2024 – The Pacific Islands region is both the frontline of the wrath that climate change is lashing on the environment and human life and the drive for innovation and solutions to stem the destruction and strengthen island environments for the future. The survival of life, even nations, in the Pacific depends on it.

“The world has much to learn from you… Plastic pollution is choking sea life. Greenhouse gases are causing ocean heating, acidification and rising seas. But Pacific Islands are showing the way to protect our climate, our planet and our ocean,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said during his visit to Tonga in August.

And the Pacific Community’s PROTÉGÉ Project (the name means ‘protect’ in French) is doing just that. Launched six years ago with funding by the European Development Fund (EDF), it is striving to advance climate resilient development through protecting and better managing biodiversity and natural renewable resources, such as freshwater, in the three French overseas territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna, as well as the British overseas territory of Pitcairn, in the Pacific. To achieve this, it has brought together provincial and local-level governments, consulting firms, non-government organizations, and local communities and is led and coordinated by science and development experts from the regional development organization, Pacific Community (SPC), that works for 22 Pacific island governments and territories.

It honors the interconnected nature of island ecosystems through the four focus areas of the project: agriculture and forestry, coastal fisheries and aquaculture, invasive species and water. For instance, “in an integrated watershed management approach, what happens in the mountains ends up in the rivers and eventually in the sea,” Peggy Roudaut, SPC’s PROTÉGÉ Project Manager in Noumea, New Caledonia, told IPS.

A community worker replants and maintains the forest. Reforestation develops long-term climate-resilient environments. Credit: SPC

Healthy forests are the lungs of flourishing natural ecosystems and biodiversity, with forest maintenance at the heart of the PROTÉGÉ Project. Credit: SPC

“The water theme is central,” she continued. “By working on the sustainability of water resources and supporting the water policies of the territories, while also promoting actions to make aquaculture and agriculture more sustainable, we contribute to making the overseas countries and territories more resilient to the effects of climate change.”

While the Pacific Islands are surrounded by a vast 161.76 million square kilometers of ocean, their sources of freshwater are fragile. Most islanders who live in rural areas have to choose from limited groundwater lenses, streams or rainwater harvesting. Ninety-two percent of Pacific islanders living in urban centers have access to clean drinking water, declining to 44 percent in rural communities, reports the Pacific Community (SPC).

Improving water security is a priority in the national development goals of Pacific Island countries, but real progress is being undermined by population growth, which is rapidly increasing demand, and the worsening impacts of climate change. Rising air and sea temperatures, more heatwaves and unreliable rainfall with rising sea levels that are driving coastal erosion are all taking their toll on the region, reports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In the western Pacific, temperatures are predicted to increase by 2-4.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, while most Pacific Island states will witness a sea level rise 10-30 percent higher than the global mean, which is projected to be 38 centimeters by the end of the century, according to the United Nations.

And then there’s pollution. “For many rural and remote and even urban communities, water sources that were once safe to drink or use for farming have become unsafe due to pollutants, including improper waste disposal and agricultural runoff,” Professor Dan Orcherton, Professor in Sciences at the University of Fiji, told IPS, emphasizing “that freshwater security in the Pacific Islands is quite precarious, reflecting a complex interplay of natural and human induced factors.”

The Pacific Community (SPC) is working to protect, manage and support countries to monitor freshwater reserves across the entire Pacific region.  PROTÉGÉ, specifically focused on Pacific territories, has been supporting this work by regenerating forests and vegetation in their vicinity and developing long-term climate-resilient management plans.

The quality of drinking water is also being improved through closely studying detrimental factors, such as construction and development, and decontaminating rivers and wells that are polluted by waste and landfills.

Healthy forests are the lungs of flourishing natural ecosystems and biodiversity that, in turn, regulate the local climate, protect natural watersheds and prevent soil erosion. Forests cover 43.7 percent of the five archipelagos in French Polynesia, which is regularly battered by cyclones, droughts and sea level rise. Meanwhile, in Wallis and Futuna, a small group of volcanic islands in the central Pacific with scarce freshwater, deforestation due to forest clearing, and soil erosion are serious problems.

Closer to the east coast of Australia, forest covers 45.9 percent of the islands of New Caledonia. Here, water resources are being affected by nickel mining, forest fires and soil erosion. Scientists forecast that, against predicted climate change impacts, 87-96 percent of native tree species in New Caledonia could decline by 2070.

The broader community, including children, are also involved in the reforestation projects. Credit: SPC

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a partner in a project being rolled out in the district of Dumbea, north of the capital, Noumea. Credit: SPC

Roudaut spoke of three projects in New Caledonia that, together, boosted the reforestation of 27 hectares, the replanting of vegetation around drinking water supply catchments and put in place 3,460 meters of fencing around water sources that will prevent damage, whether by fires or wildlife, such as deer and wild boars. Local communities were vital to their success, with 190 islanders, many of whom were women and youths, involved in making the projects a reality on the ground.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a partner in one being rolled out in the district of Dumbea, north of the capital, Noumea. The project focuses on the Montagne des Sources upstream of the Dumbea dam, which provides water to 110,000 people, or 40 percent of New Caledonia’s population.

Solène Verda, Head of WWF’s Forestry Program in the territory, told IPS that the incidence of forest fires, as well as floods and droughts, which also affect water security, will only intensify with climate change. “Every year in New Caledonia, fires destroy around 20,000 hectares of vegetation, which is a disaster regarding the islands’ surface; in ten years, 10 percent of the main island has already burned,” she said. “The predictions are not cheery for New Caledonian forests and, thus, the freshwater resources.”

Improving water security is a priority in the national development goals of Pacific Island countries. Credit: SPC

The PROTÉGÉ initiative is tackling one of the greatest inhibitors to combating climate damage, which is limited technical and management capacity. Due to “the remoteness of these islands and small populations… combined with the emigration of skilled professionals out of the region, there is minimal capacity within regional countries to respond to the day-to-day vulnerability threats, let alone the frequent natural disasters experienced,” reports the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

“Thanks to SPC’s PROTÉGÉ, we had the opportunity to test different forest restoration techniques on our degraded watersheds… and it has given us a clearer idea of the methods best suited to our context,” Verda said.

It is a key issue understood by the EU, which has supported the initiative with 36 million euros, in addition to 128,000 euros contributed by the three French territories.

PROTÉGÉ is part of our “commitment to environmental sustainability, climate resilience and sustainable economic autonomy for these small, often vulnerable island territories in line with the Green Deal,” Georges Dehoux, Deputy Head of the Office of the European Union (EU) in the Pacific in Noumea, told IPS. The Green Deal is the EU’s ambition to achieve net zero emissions and non-resource equitable economic growth to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

All Pacific Island countries and territories “are facing the same environmental and economic challenges, and a combined and coordinated response at the regional level will ensure better resilience to these challenges,” Dehoux added.

Those working with the project have a sense of urgency about what they are aiming to achieve. For, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) advises, “We can still reverse some of the damage we have inflicted on our precious planet. But time is running out. If we don’t take decisive action in the next 10-20 years, the damage will have passed irreversible tipping points.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 2024 – On October 11, the United Nations (UN) and its affiliated organizations hosted a conference discussing the increasingly dangerous and exploitative environment that plagues the internet and what can be done to protect children from being exposed to it. Speakers at this conference detailed the developing technologies that threaten children, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), which often facilitates sexual abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking. In a world that is centered around digitization and innovation, it is crucial to keep the internet a safe space for the most vulnerable population, children.

“The EU (European Union) believes that access to digital technology is of crucial importance to children to participate in the digital decade and enact online citizenship”, stated Ambassador Hedda Samson, Deputy Head of Delegation of the EU.

Throughout the past two decades, the internet has been a fundamental tool for the education and development of children, helping to build critical social skills and fostering career initiatives. According to Mama Fatima Singhateh, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Sale, Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children, almost 80 percent of people ages 15 to 24 are the driving force of connectivity, globally.

However, the digital age has also brought forth a rise in violent or sexually explicit content, which is linked to negative developmental effects on young brains. Samson adds that “In the past twenty years, the volume of online child sexual abuse material has increased dramatically and as we navigate the global-digital transition, we need to step up our game to ensure that children and young people are protected and empowered to face the challenges of the digital sphere”.

The rapid development of AI technology, as well as its increasing use in the past four years, has been of great concern for humanitarian organizations and children’s rights activists. Deepfake technology has made it possible for online predators to create and distribute realistic child sexual abuse material on a large scale. Additionally, many AI tools are unregulated, exposing children to potentially harmful content.

“While AI provides enormous potential to improve child protection, it simultaneously presents significant risks when used for illicit purposes. In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received over 4,700 reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, and in within nine months, a single dark web forum sold the upload of over 3,500 new AI created child sexual abuse images. This alarming trend underscores the urgent need for robust global frameworks to govern AI use”, stated the Ministry of Interior of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

During the conference, Irakli Beridze, Head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) discussed the UAE and the UN’s new collaborative effort titled “AI For Safer Children Global Hub” which monitors AI programs in an effort to increase transparency, accountability, and privacy, allowing for safe and responsible use.

This initiative uses over 90 AI tools to combat sexually abusive content and assist law enforcement, including image and text analysis, object recognition, voice detection, and facial mapping. Specialized training began in May of 2023 to prepare over 2,250 officers from over 28 countries to investigate children’s rights violations on the internet.

Some social media platforms have already begun initiatives to protect under age users from being exposed to graphic content. On September 17th, Instagram introduced their “teen accounts”, which are private accounts with more restricted features and increased parental control. Young users, including those who may attempt to lie about their age, are placed into private accounts where they can only interact with users that they follow. Additionally, Instagram has taken measures to restrict sexually abusive content, as well as content that promotes violence, self-harm, and disordered eating.

In April 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched Know2Protect, Together We Can Stop Online Child Exploitation, a public awareness campaign that partners with technology companies and youth organizations to increase national education on safe internet practices and signs of child exploitation. Know2Protect’s primary educational program, Project iGuardian, has provided over 82,000 children, parents, and educators with 950 presentations on internet safety and protective measures, resulting in over 41 victim disclosures of sexual exploitation and over 72 punitive investigations for offenders.

It is crucial to raise awareness among children and guardians, especially when considering that AI is evolving in its versatility and effectiveness on a daily basis. This issue demands an adaptive conversation that is accessible to children all around the world, particularly vulnerable populations, such as girls, children in developing countries, and LGBTQ children.

“We need to continue talking about sexual abuse and exploitation in the digital space. Especially in marginalized communities, like the Global South and least developed countries. I would like to see more harmonized laws so that perpetrators would not look for gaps or loopholes in respective laws to take advantage (of children)”, stated Fatima Singhateh.

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 2024 – A landmark report released last July by five UN agencies— the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN children’s agency UNICEF—outlined the setbacks in fighting global hunger and warned that the world has fallen behind by more than 15 years in its relentless battle against food scarcities, with levels of undernourishment comparable to those in 2008-2009.

The future seems virtually bleak, particularly if current trends continue, when over 582 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, half of them in Africa. And the UN is also unlikely to meet Goal 2 of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ending hunger worldwide by 2030.

The UN also points out a cruel paradox: that the world produces enough food to feed everyone, but nearly 20% of it is lost or wasted before it’s eaten.

Poor storage facilities on farms can lead to crop loss due to pests and mold. In rich countries, food waste often happens in the kitchen when food is prepared but not eaten, or left to spoil in the fridge.

Providing a different perspective, Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS in addition to the environment, climate change, technologies, social organization and conflict, population remains a major factor impacting the food crisis in many countries.

Rapid population growth, he pointed out, intensifies the overall demand for food. World population growth means that food production needs to increase to meet demand.

“Rapid population growth can lead to increasing levels of food insecurity due to a scarcity of resources. While the world produces enough food to feed its current population of 8 billion, too often this food does not reach those in need or they cannot access it,” said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Over the past five decades, the world’s population doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion today. And as world population has increased, the number of people in the world facing food insecurity has increased, with more than 800 million people going to bed hungry each night.

Even in developed countries, he pointed out, too many people face food insecurity because they cannot afford to purchase food or have limited access to food resources.

By 2060 world population is projected to increase to 10 billion with most of that growth occurring in countries with the highest levels of food insecurity.

With the highest proportion facing hunger, Africa’s current population of 1.5 billion is growing rapidly and is expected to reach 2 billion in a dozen years and 3 billion in forty years, he said.

“Unfortunately, a world free of hunger by 2030, Goal 2 of the SDGs, is unlikely to be achieved due to major global and national trends, including rapid population growth in many developing countries”, declared Chamie.

Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), and UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights said: “These hunger figures are a major wakeup call.”

Global hunger remains catastrophically high, with 733 million people still going to bed hungry every day – 36% more than a decade ago. And 2.8 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet – meaning for one in three, wages are too low or social protection too weak to have adequate nutrition, he said.

“This is not just a blip, the global industrial food system is disastrously vulnerable to increasing climate, conflict and economic shocks – with climate change increasingly pounding farmers. Building climate-resilient food systems is now a life-or-death matter. As is establishing social protection floors and ensuring workers are paid living wages.

“We desperately need a new recipe for addressing hunger – based on diverse agroecological food production and localized food markets instead of global industrial food chains, and social protection schemes that guarantee the right to food for the world’s poorest,” declared De Schutter.

Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director, The Oakland Institute, a progressive think tank headquartered in Oakland, California, told IPS despite the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine, the world has produced all-time records of food in recent years, which has not prevented the rise in food prices and the persistence of an unbearable level of world hunger.

Reducing waste is important but should not let governments lose sight of two fundamental policy issues that require decisive action, he noted.

First, the use of food commodities for non-food uses is massive and growing fast, with animal feed and agrofuels representing respectively 38 percent 18 percent of cereals used in the world.

“This is happening at a high cost for humanity, with commodities unavailable for human consumption but also land grabbed from Indigenous and local communities, the devastation of forests, waters, and biodiversity and the pollution by chemical and fossil-fuel based intensive industrial agriculture”.

Second, he pointed out, whereas food is available, it is often not affordable for poor households, even in wealthy countries where hunger is on the rise. Several international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have showed that the 2022 rise in food prices, which threatened access to food for billions around the world, was due to a large extent to the significant increase in profit margins for agri-food corporations.

All the large transnational actors in the sector have enjoyed record profits in the past few years after increasing their sale prices.

Consumers can relatively easily reduce their own food waste but this should not be a distraction from the real challenge, which is for them to mobilize as citizens and take back control of their food systems, he said.

“Governments have mostly overlooked the above issues and many prominent ones, starting with the Biden administration, keep calling for more food production. This is a case of willful blindness, which goes against all the evidence that the problem is not the amount of food produced but what we do with it and who controls and benefits from the production and the trade of food commodities”.

Time has come for a global treaty on the non-proliferation of industrial meat production and agrofuels to curb the seemingly endless expansion of agricultural production for non-food uses, Mousseau argued

“The other urgency is to act more decisively on a global taxation mechanism of the large food and agro-chemical corporations that would limit their speculative behaviours and redistribute part of their revenues as global solidarity to address both world hunger and the climate crisis,” he declared.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

World Food Day 2024