‘Drought tsunami’ puts 350 million at starvation risk
Food is now the most important economic, political and security issue globally, with many leaders at the recent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) enumerating its heavy toll. UNGA is the UN’s main policy-making organ comprising all 193 member states.
The World Food Programme (WFP) executive director, David Beasley, said the world is facing “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude,” with up to 345 million people facing starvation — and 70 million close to hunger.
Speaking mid this month, on September 15, he told the UN Security Council that the 345 million people facing acute food insecurity in 82 countries where the agency operates, is two-and-a-half times the number of food insecure people before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Some 50 million of those people in 45 countries are suffering from malnutrition and are “knocking on famine’s door.” Last year, most of the 140 million people suffering acute hunger lived in just 10 countries (five in Africa): Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
“What was a wave of hunger is now a tsunami,” he said, pointing to rising conflict, the pandemic’s economic ripple effects, climate change, rising fuel prices and the war in Ukraine. Since Russia invaded its neighbour on February 24, Beasley said, soaring prices of food, fuel and fertiliser have driven 70 million people closer to starvation.
Multiple famines
Despite an agreement in July allowing Ukraine grain to be shipped from three Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia, and continuing efforts to get Russian fertiliser back to global markets, “there is a real and dangerous risk of multiple famines this year,” he said, adding: “And in 2023, the food price crisis could become a food availability crisis.”
The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye, was set up to reintroduce vital food and fertiliser exports from Ukraine to the rest of the world. Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, normally supplies around 45 million tonnes of grain to the global market every year. Now mountains of grains have built up in silos, with ships unable to secure safe passage and land routes unable to compensate. This has contributed to a jump in the price of staple foods around the world, combined with increases in the cost of energy.
On Friday September 16, the International Day of Peace, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders: “Today, peace is under assault… the poison of war is infecting our world by jeopardising millions of lives, turning people against each other, pitting nation against nation, eroding security and wellbeing, [and] reversing development. ... Instead of fighting, humanity should be tackling common challenges including poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change, biodiversity loss, and Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative was signed on July 22 by the UN, the Russian Federation, Türkiye and Ukraine. A Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) is implementing the deal, which has allowed exports from Ukraine of grain, other foodstuffs, and fertiliser.
The Security Council is focusing on conflict-induced food insecurity in Ethiopia, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. Beasley and UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths have also warned that the food crisis in Somalia and Afghanistan is high on the list.
“Famine will happen in Somalia and other places in the region,” Griffiths says. Hundreds of thousands of people face catastrophic levels of hunger — at the worst “famine” level. Beasley recalled his warning to the council in April 2020 that “we were then facing famine, starvation of biblical proportions.”
“We are on the edge once again, even worse, and we must do all that we can ... The hungry people of the world are counting on us, and we must not let them down”, he said.
Griffiths said the widespread and increasing food insecurity is a result of the direct and indirect impact of conflict and violence that kills and injures civilians, forces families to flee the land they depend on for income and leads to economic decline and rising food prices.
Shock instrument
As food prices spike across the world, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is considering a new financing instrument. Around 50 countries could receive funds under the new food shock instrument, said IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva on September 13.
“The high cost of living is a problem everywhere. But the part that concerns food and its availability is the most dramatic,” she said in an interview at the Centre for Global Development. “What we are experiencing is an era of shocks. Pandemics, wars, and now cost of living crisis. We must ask how we can buffer countries against these; how we can help them build resilience.
A year since the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), things are worse for the global food system battered by Covid-19, climate change, conflict, war in Ukraine and persistent global inflation. Basic staples are now out of reach for many families.
The work the UNFSS started, under the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub (hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of convening people from across the food system to unite behind a transformation agenda continues, even if the path remains steeper.
The hub is guiding countries on how to raise funding. Agra President and UN Special Envoy to the UN Food Systems Summit, Agnes Kalibata, and the African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Development, Josefa Sacko, said Africa must grow its own food systems.
As the multitude of overlapping food shocks confronts the continent, the World Bank has warned that for each one percentage point increase in food prices, 10 million people are thrown into extreme poverty. “If food prices stay this high for a year, global poverty could go up by more than 100 million people.”
Africans can take responsibility for building climate resilient, nutritious, and inclusive systems that leave no one behind — as envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goals and implementation of the national food systems pathways agreed upon at UNFSS 2021.
“Progress made will be undone if we fail to lead,” Kalibata and Sacko told the 2022 AGRF, Africa’s top forum for driving the food and agriculture agenda. The African Union has declared 2022 as the year of nutrition.
Former WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin says food systems need a financing plan, noting that those in the private sector have long seen agriculture and food systems as too risky to invest in. But that is beginning to change. The reasons for this shift, she notes, include climate change, which is driving urgency for action, blended capital, which mixes public and private finance, and new tools, including digital technologies.
With Ukraine bringing food systems issues into focus, she said, the conflict could be an opportunity to increase private sector engagement and ensure that innovations reach farmers, no matter where they are.
It’s a view philanthropist Bill Gates agrees with, noting that the US and some other rich countries have stepped up food aid donations to countries in Africa and elsewhere hit hardest by skyrocketing prices.
The current approach, Gates implies, is “a band-aid that fails to heal the underlying wound.”
The problem, he says, is that food aid is accelerating in response to war, economic turmoil, and climate change — but investment in agricultural research in low-income countries is far lower, and stagnating. The current approach, Gates implies, is “a band-aid that fails to heal the underlying wound.”
Innovations for smallholders
While investments are growing for food and agriculture, most of these are not reaching low-income contexts, Cousin said. “They’ve all come online for affluent consumers and affluent farmers. They’ve not come online for poor consumers and poor farmers.”
To transform the food system, she added, it’s key to build the “capital stack” — the range of financing sources required — as well as the narrative on the need and the opportunity. “We’re in a nascent stage,” she said. “We have not yet achieved the level where the interest has developed into significant dollars.”
It’s a view philanthropist Bill Gates agrees with, noting that the US and some other rich countries have stepped up food aid donations to countries in Africa and elsewhere hit hardest by skyrocketing prices. Gates says this is “the latest example of how backward the approach to tackling global hunger has become.”
The problem, he says, is that food aid is accelerating in response to war, economic turmoil, and climate change — but investment in agricultural research in low-income countries is far lower, and stagnating.
“Innovations in drought-tolerant seeds, custom-made for the climate and crops of African countries, and other bespoke technologies that are well within the reach of scientists, offer a more effective, sustainable path away from hunger. The current approach, Gates implies, is “a band-aid that fails to heal the underlying wound.”
