Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
continued then it would take 60 years to reach the 1996 Summit's target number,
which was supposed to be achievable 14 years hence, by 2015. In short, to achieve
the original target the annual reduction in undernourished people would have to
increase from 6 million to 21 million a year. This target, the 2001 report concluded,
was unlikely to be reached without 'rallying political will and resources'. This was
prophetic.
The publication of the FAO's 2004 report announced a turning point. The numbers
of undernourished people had stopped declining and in fact had increased, while
the world population also continued to grow. The 815 million undernourished for
the period 1997-9 increased to 842 million for 1999-2001. Consequently the FAO
reported that the world was further away from meeting the 1996 World Food Summit
target. This could now be reached only if annual reductions were to be accelerated to
26 million per year, more than 12 times the pace of 2.1 million per year achieved on
average from the 1996 summit to 2004. The 2004 report also pointed to Africa as the
continent with the greatest nourishment problems.
With regards to climate change as a factor affecting food security, the FAO food
security reports do not specifically raise this as a concern but do touch upon it
tangentially. The closest the 2001 report came to mentioning climate change was when
it briefly cited weather extremes - specifically droughts, floods, cyclones and extreme
temperatures - as threatening progress towards food security. By the time of the 2004
report the FAO gave weather extremes a higher profile, although developmental
concerns (including human conflict) were (rightly) of greater current concern. With
reference to both these issues the reports said: 'Many countries that are plagued by
unfavourable weather but enjoy relatively stable economies and governments have
implemented crisis prevention and mitigation programmes and established effective
channels for relief and rehabilitation efforts. But when a country has also been battered
by conflict or economic collapse, programmes and infrastructure for prevention,
relief and rehabilitation are usually disrupted or destroyed.' The 2004 FAO data
demonstrated that the trends in either increasing or decreasing hunger were both
related to a nation's growth in GDP, with those countries with the lowest economic
growth faring the worst.
The FAO's 2004 food-security report did acknowledge the importance of weather-
related events in causing food crises, but it noted that the number of crises caused by
weather, and jointly weather and human conflict, had decreased from 86% of crises
in the period 1986-91 to 63% for 1992-2004. Conversely problems due to human
activities (mainly conflict) had increased. This explains the FAO's current focus away
from climate change.
Despite the aforementioned immediate-crisis caveat, from a climate change per-
spective the 2004 report did highlight the importance of water to long-term food
security. It observed that agriculture is by far the biggest user of water, accounting
for about 69% of all withdrawals worldwide and more than 80% in developing coun-
tries. Reliable access to adequate water increases agricultural yields, providing more
food and higher incomes in the rural areas that are home to three-quarters of the
globe's hungry people. So, not surprisingly, countries with better access to water also
tend to have lower levels of hunger. Drought ranks as the single most common cause
of severe food shortage in developing countries. For the three most recent years for
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