Until now, the economic consequences of the "Covid-19" pandemic are still the most widely discussed, but David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, highlights other aspects of this article from the American magazine "Foreign Affairs" in what he calls "a food pandemic". Less deadly and devastating than the emerging Corona virus, the pandemic is expected to kill 300,000 people daily for up to three months to come in countries that rely heavily on importing food products from abroad and war-torn countries such as Syria and Yemen.
Coronavirus has overburdened health systems and shaken economies around the world. Currently, he is expected to spark a global food crisis as well, after decades of progress in the battle for humanity against poverty and hunger, job losses, supply chain disruptions and other economic turmoil caused by a pandemic threatening to push millions of people towards food insecurity, that is, towards total starvation. . International institutions and their member states must act decisively to prevent this consequence, otherwise a costly and chaotic era of rising hunger and poverty will be resolved.
In April, I had warned the UN Security Council of a "food pandemic", as the effects of the economic crisis accompanying the virus would be visible almost everywhere. Although states will place - and they have the right to - the interests of their people first, a world that does not have a common goal is a world that calls for many problems. Our common goal should be to defeat this virus, to prevent it from causing a food pandemic, and to see you on the gains made against poverty and hunger during most of the past 30 years.
The epidemic has come at a critical moment. Years of success against poverty and hunger had started to slow, and in some cases, to relapse at the time the virus spread. In the last thirty years, the rates of extreme poverty have fallen to more than half, that is, from about two billion people in 1990 to 700 million in 2015, thanks to the growth led by private sector companies and strengthened social safety nets among other factors, and hunger declined by 25% in the period Almost the same. But in the last four years, the number of people facing chronic hunger, that is, people who go to their beds hungry every night, has risen from 796 million to 821 million, and so has the number of those who suffer from acute hunger, i.e. those who find themselves suddenly hungry after Eating what clogs, has increased by 70% over the past four years, from 80 million to 135 million. About a billion people suffer from either chronic hunger or acute hunger now.
The biggest factor driving this recent escalation is conflict, with 60% of the hungry people around the world living in war-torn countries. Among these places are Syria and Yemen, and the war years did not stop exacerbating hunger, but they did impede the progress of future generations as well. Climate change has also played a major role in pushing certain population groups to the abyss of hunger, especially in countries such as Afghanistan and the People’s Republic of the Congo, where climate degradation has mated to ongoing conflicts, exacerbating food insecurity.
With the Covid-19 pandemic mating with these pre-existing crises, our estimates indicate that the number of people who will experience severe hunger may nearly double by the end of this year, that is, it will last 265 million people, while 300 million others will suffer from a lack of nutrients. Their food will lack the vitamins and minerals that keep them healthy, according to an estimate by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. The virus also fuels hunger by disrupting global and local economies alike, and the greatest harm will be to low-income countries that have fewer tools to deal with the pandemic's collapse.
But countries that had dynamic economies growing before the outbreak began to suffer from the negative effects as well. Among the countries that have suffered the most severe blow are those that depend on exports of raw materials, including Nigeria, South Sudan, and Zambia, and countries dependent on tourism such as The Gambia and Jordan, and others such as Haiti and Nepal, where the remittances that are sent back to the country from migrant workers constitute a large proportion of the output Gross domestic. While the local closures in these countries have reduced the incomes of many workers in these sectors, and the increase in the duration of these closures will do more harm, especially if it is not associated with the expansion of social safety nets.
The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to decrease by 2.8%, compared to 0.01% during the financial crisis in 2009. A huge contraction of this kind in the global economy will harm the poor around the world. The UNU Development Institute's global institute notes that a 5% drop in global GDP will put 85 million people in extreme poverty (defined as living on less than $ 1.90 a day), which will inevitably lead to more food insecurity. Hunger, while a decrease of 10%, will result in 180 million people facing extreme poverty.
Collectively, famines do not come from food shortages, but from high inflation or the collapse of supply chains, making it impossible to deliver food to specific populations. The pandemic has disrupted food supply chains and other important commodities both between and within countries. Even during World War II, supply chains did not stop, and now, it is difficult to transfer products from one country to another. This could have a devastating effect on sub-Saharan Africa, which imports 40 million tons of grain annually from around the world in order to fill a gap in poor food production locally.
In the short term, humanitarian actors will be more concerned with getting food to those who are at risk of hunger. In ten countries, including Syria, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than a million citizens in each of these countries live on the brink of starvation beforehand. In the long run, however, the pandemic may lead to famine in 35 countries, including Afghanistan, the Central African Republic and Haiti.
About 100 million people are already receiving assistance from the World Food Program, and about 30 million of these depend on the United States to survive. Without this support, WFP analysts fear that 300,000 people around the world will die of hunger every day for the next three months, and this will often happen in war-torn countries.
As in conflict, food crises generate instability, as refugees infiltrate across borders, and in some cases, this turns pre-fragile areas into potential hotbeds of conflict. Our research indicates that every 1% increase in hunger rates within a particular country is associated with a 2% increase in immigration opportunities outside that country.
The world has not witnessed a global crisis of this magnitude since the Second World War. The lives of tens of millions of people are in grave danger, as the pandemic threatens to cancel decades of progress that lifted millions of people out of extreme poverty. More developed countries, many of them with trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus packages to save their economies, can do more. But the support should come from places that go beyond the usual donors to international organizations, and international financial lending institutions, for example, should work with developing countries to strengthen health, education and other social safety nets during and after the end of this crisis. In these developing countries, millions of hard-working business operators, such as small hotel owners, shop owners, tour guides and taxi drivers, have lost all their livelihoods and the ability to provide for their families.
With some assistance, governments in these countries can pump financial packages to help families during this crisis. For example, the World Food Program is working with the transitional government in Sudan to help enable the Family Support Program to protect individuals from slipping into poverty.
Addressing the food pandemic and helping eradicate poverty and hunger will not only require public investment in social protection, but will also require greater movement of private business through direct investment and public-private partnerships in sectors such as agriculture. A joint study between the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Fund for the United Nations for Agricultural Development reports that additional investments of $ 265 billion annually, which represents 0.3% of expected global income, will be able to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030. That amount sounds huge, but it is available to the rich countries, institutions and individuals.
The sheer hunger potential that the "Covid 19" pandemic can cause is haunting, even alarming, but I remain optimistic though. I usually appeal to world leaders to support the mission of the World Food Program, and I usually find listening ears. For example, US contributions have increased from less than $ 2 billion to more than $ 3 billion annually over the past three years. This generosity, the generosity of taxpayers and donors who support humanitarian causes, is desperately needed. The gains we have made against poverty and hunger in the past decades are too great to give up now.
—————————————————————————————————–
This report is translated from Foreign Affairs and does not necessarily reflect the location of Maidan.