Institute Notes: A Dialogue on Overcoming Hunger and Poverty

Surprising Success at the G20

The conclusion of the G20 seems, at first blush, to provide a great deal of positive news for developing countries. The official Communique begins with the recognition that

prosperity is indivisible; that growth, to be sustained, has to be shared; and that our global plan for recovery must have at its heart the needs and jobs of hard-working families, not just in developed countries but in emerging markets and the poorest countries of the world too; and must reflect the interests, not just of today’s population, but of future generations too.

To achieve financial stability and promote a return to trade and economic growth, G20 leaders had to act boldly, and it appears they have.

Building Momentum for an Anti-Hunger Agenda

It's been a busy week here in DC. On the domestic side, the release of the President's budget is being scrutinized in detail for spending on domestic nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

The President's Budget proposes funding for WIC to serve 9.8 million participants in 2010, an increase above the 9 million people currently enrolled in the program. WIC is instrumental in supporting pregnant and new mothers and young children who fall below a minimum income threshold. The large increase is intended to meet the needs of a growing pool of applicants particularly in this period of economic recession.

The President also requests an additional $5 billion over the next five years to strengthen Child Nutrition programs in the upcoming reauthorization. Congress is due to reauthorize the School Breakfast and Lunch Programs and programs that provide meals and snacks to children afterschool and during the summer. Bread for the World supports the administration's goal of expanding program access and participation so that more vulnerable children have the food assistance they need. My colleague here at Bread, Sophie Milam, noted that while the proposed increase is positive, more is needed:

"The President's budget blueprint is titled "A New Era of Responsibility." In it, President Obama calls on Congress to lay a new foundation upon which we can "renew the promise of America," with the Budget as the first step in that journey.

 

"The "promise of America" must be a place where no child goes to bed hungry. The President's budget includes $1 billion per year in new investments for Child Nutrition Programs. While it is a good start, this level of funding is not adequate to meet the President's goal of ending child hunger by 2015"

Meeting this ambitious goal requires an investment of $4 billion a year.

What the global recession means for poverty

World Bank President Robert Zoellick used the G7 meeting of finance ministers this past weekend to call attention to the impact of the global financial crisis on the world's poor people. Armed with new analysis from the Bank, Zoellick warned that the economic meltdown of the world's industrial economies is having a dramatic and painful impact on developing countries. An estimated 46 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty and child mortality rates will increase by up to four percent as a result of the global slowdown in economic growth.

People are most vulnerable in countries with high rates of poverty, substantial exposure to international markets and little fiscal space for the government to increase and expand spending on social safety nets. Poor people in more than 40 countries are identified as particularly vulnerable to economic shock. Unfortunately, these countries already have some of the highest child malnutrition rates in the world. It is little surprise then that the economic slowdown will have such a dramatic impact on child mortality.

IFAD Replenishment – A Timely and Welcome Holiday Gift

Good news has been in short supply of late, but here’s some just in time for the holidays.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development -- IFAD – is one of the international community’s foremost instruments for combating rural poverty. IFAD is a specialized United Nations agency, created 30 years ago -- partly as a consequence of the previous global food crisis of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10.6  billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over approximately 350 million poor rural inhabitants increase their incomes and provide for their families. IFAD currently supports close to 250 programs and projects in 87 developing countries.

Because it provides concessional financing – grants and low-interest loans – IFAD relies, like the World Bank’s International Development Association, on periodic replenishments by member countries. And according to a December 19 press release, IFAD Member States have concluded their consultation on the Eighth Replenishment of IFAD’s resources with a commitment, despite the on-going global financial crisis, of a total of $1.2 billion for IFAD’s program of work for the years 2010-2012. When combined with internally-generated resources and co-financing from IFAD’s partners, this will translate into as much as $7.5 billion for agriculture, poverty reduction and food security for the most vulnerable rural populations worldwide. This new funding represents an unprecedented 67 percent increase over IFAD’s last replenishment and is the largest ever replenishment in the Fund’s history.

Merry Christmas!

International Hunger: A Primer for Blog Action Day

World Hunger and Poverty: How They Fit Together

• 923 million people across the world are hungry.

• Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds. 

• In essence, hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food.
  
  
• Hunger manifests itself in many ways other than starvation and famine. Most poor people who battle hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness.
  
  
• Countries in which a large portion of the population battles hunger daily are usually poor and often lack the social safety nets we enjoy, such as soup kitchens, food stamps, and job training programs. When a family that lives in a poor country cannot grow enough food or earn enough money to buy food, there is nowhere to turn for help.

The U.S. Financial Meltdown and Poor Countries

The full ramifications of the financial crisis on the US economy are yet to manifest themselves, but it’s pretty clear that one effect in the near term will be to exacerbate an economic downturn that was already underway. But what does the meltdown of the American financial sector portend for developing countries? The impact will certainly vary from one country to another, but the overall outlook isn’t good.

Liliana Rojas-Suarez, of the Center for Global Development, in a Sept. 22 blog post, predicts that the U.S. financial crisis will mean a combination of slower growth and rising inequality in the developing world – not exactly what we need on top of an already severe food price crisis and increasing global poverty.

Global Poverty Numbers Revised Upwards by the World Bank

On Tuesday, as the US Census Bureau was reporting on the latest poverty figures for the United States, the World Bank released it's own new data on global poverty. The Bank's report estimates that the number of poor people around the world is far higher than originally estimated. The number of poor people in 2005 is now estimated at 1.4 billion up from earlier estimates of 948 million, an increase of 500 million. This new data reflects improved ways of measuring the cost of living in developing countries and a larger set of household surveys in more countries. It suggests that the earlier measure of extreme poverty, the number of people who live on less than $1 a day underestimated the cost of living in developing countries. The new poverty line is $1.25 a day.

The report, “The Developing World is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty,” recalculates poverty rates for the last 25 years and finds that the number of people living in poverty under this new poverty line has fallen from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 billion. The world has been making steady progress in reducing poverty since 1981 at about 1% a year. At this rate, the world is on target to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal. However, there are significant disparities between regions and across countries. While the number of people in extreme poverty in China is higher than originally estimated (207 million as opposed to 130 million), it has made dramatic progress since 1981, when the number of people below the poverty line was 835 million. The rest of the developing world (not including China) has seen the number of people below $1.25 stay at around 1.2 billion since 1981, largely because population growth has outstripped progress against poverty.

Updated numbers on global hunger

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has updated its estimate of food insecurity around the world. The most recent data is from 2004. It is estimated that in 2004, 862 million people were suffering from hunger, up from 854 million in 2003. Although this does not represent a increase in the proportion of people (relative to population) who experience hunger, it is the largest increase in recent years and suggests that the progress we had witnessed in the previous decade is slowing and that a much greater effort and a substantial increase in resources are needed. The rise in global food prices in the last two years is pushing people on the edge of poverty into poverty and is devastating those who are already poor (to learn more see here). We are likely to see further increases in hunger if the international community does not take action.

There are promising signs. This week world leaders and heads of all the UN agencies, including the World Bank and IMF, meet in Rome to discuss the food crisis and develop a plan of action. Jacques Diouf, the head of FAO is calling for an additional $30 billion in development assistance for improving agricultural productivity in poor countries. The food crisis will also be on the agenda at the G8 Summit in Japan and the UN General Assembly session in September.

The FT has just begun an excellent series on the food crisis, see here and here and has in depth analysis of the crisis on its website.

Thoughts on the global food crisis on Earth Day

It's Earth Day, an annual reminder--it's amazing to me that we need one--that we must protect the environment. This year it falls in the middle of a global food crisis, raising so many questions about our management of the Earth's resources and how we will meet future needs.  The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that before the food crisis 854 million people faced hunger--a staggering number but a vast improvement from just a decade earlier. The current crisis threatens that progress and could set back development efforts substantially. According to the World Bank and the World Food Program, we face the devastating prospect of an additional 100 million people going hungry because they are unable to afford food at the current high and rising prices. The numbers are unfathomable but there is much that can be done in the short and long term.

With all likelihood that food prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future (for more on this see here), the international community must begin to think very differently. Rising demand for diversified foods as a result of growing prosperity in parts of the world that have seen a dramatic fall in extreme poverty rates in recent years (most notably, China and India) is to be celebrated. But it also requires us to plan for how we meet this demand and because population growth will continue to put pressure on resources.

Climate change is and will affect food production. Australia, a large wheat producer and exporter, is in the tenth year of a drought. Floods, droughts and changing weather patterns all over the world will make

Offical Development Assistance on the Decline

On Friday, April 4th, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the independent research arm of the Organization for Economic Development & Cooperation (OECD) released the 2007 Official Development Assistance numbers.  The OECD is a membership organization of the governments of countries committed to supporting democracy and the market economy.  According to the report, aid from the 22 member countries of the OECD to developing countries fell by 8.4% in 2007 to $103.7 billion.  However, this decline was anticipated as ODA in the previous two years was exceptionally high due to large debt relief operations, especially in Iraq & Nigeria.  If debt relief efforts from 2006 are excluded, assistance rose by 2.4%.

The United States continues to be the largest donor, contributing $21.753 billion in 2007.  This is a 9.9% decline over the previous year, mostly due to a slowing of reconstruction efforts in Iraq.  ODA from other donor countries fell sharply as well.  France’s contributions declined by more than 15% and the United Kingdom gave 29% less than it had in 2006.

In proportion to our national wealth, the U.S. now shares the bottom position with Greece, giving just 0.16% of our GNP to ODA.  This falls below the OECD average of 0.28% and the 0.7% goal expressed in the Monterrey Consensus.  Only 5 of the 22 OECD member countries contribute 0.7% or more of their GNP to ODA.

This year, U.S. appropriators will have some difficult choices to make as they determine the funding priorities of the United States for 2009 and the next administration.  In the midst of an uncertain national and global economy, how will Congress respond to the unmet needs around the world and unfulfilled commitments?  Will the U.S. continue make promises to our neighbors around the world that it won’t fully finance?  How can we lead the world in development and poverty reduction or expect our partners to meet their commitments if we don’t lead by example?