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850 Million Still Hungry on World Food Day 2002 ROME, Italy, October 16, 2002 (ENS) - Progress in reducing world hunger has virtually stopped, and mountain sources of fresh water essential to food production are melting away due to global warming, the United Nations warned today in reports released to mark World Food Day 2002. Each year on the anniversary of its founding, October 16, 1945, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization draws attention to the problem of hunger and malnutrition in the world. A ceremony at Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Headquarters in Rome today featured remarks by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a message from Pope John Paul II, and speeches by Italy's Minister of Agricultural and Forestry Policies Gianni Alemanno and FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf (Photo courtesy FAO)Agriculture is responsible for about 70 percent of all the fresh water withdrawn from aquifers, river, streams and lakes, said Diouf. "A new water policy is needed, with priority to solutions that avoid waste," he said. "The production chain must produce more with less water, and small farmers need to play a part. They must therefore be trained and actively involved."Food fairs, field visits, exhibitions, concerts, ceremonies, seminars and radio and television broadcasts are underway in more than 100 countries to underline the essential role of water in food production for a world population expected to reach eight billion by 2030. Celebrities in the FAO Ambassadors Programme and FAO's Telefood campaign will spread the World Food Day 2002 message, "The world can find enough water to produce the food needed for future generations, if we manage water wisely, now." "We must stop hunger in the world. We can if we want to and we must," said singer Miriam Makeba. Together with Nobel Prize winner in medicine Rita Levi Montalcini, actresses Gong Li and Gina Lollobrigida, and singers Dee Dee Bridgewater and Youssou N'Dour, she has been appointed as an FAO Ambassador. Chronic hunger affects nearly 850 million people worldwide, but progress in reducing malnourishment has all but stopped, the FAO says in its annual report on global hunger published Tuesday.
School feeding projects supplied by the UN World Food Programme have increased attendance rates to 90 percent in North Korean primary schools. (Photo by Mike Huggins courtesy WFP)According to “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2002,” between 1998 and 2000, an estimated 840 million people were found to be undernourished.Faced with the slowdown in hunger reduction, the FAO is calling for a $24 billion increase in public investment in poor countries to realize the 1996 Summit goals, proposing that the financing be provided equally by industrialized and developing countries. Between the period 1990-1992 and 1998-2000, the number of hungry people decreased by barely 2.5 million a year, signalling a drastic slowdown compared to previous developments, the FAO reports. Six Southern African countries are at great risk of hunger this year. The number of hungry people is currently estimated at 10 million. This figure will increase during the period December to March 2003 to 14.4 million, according to the latest vulnerability assessment from the Southern African Development Community. At least six million more people in the Horn of Africa are facing immediate famine due to drought. “If trends are not sharply reversed, the world will be very far from reaching the 1996 World Food Summit goal” of halving the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, said Charles Riemenschneider, FAO director for North America.
Ethiopian father Sani Yuya and his two year old son, Ahmed, are malnourished in a traditionally food producing area. (Photo by Wagdi Othman courtesy WFP)FAO reports a high mortality rate among children under five, and short life expectancy for young people. “In the worst affected countries, a newborn child can look forward to an average of barely 38 years of healthy life, compared to over 70 years of life in the 24 wealthy nations,” the assessment says.With 70 percent of the world’s hungry living in rural areas, combining investment in agriculture and rural development with measures to enhance direct and immediate access to food for the most seriously undernourished, "is not only a moral obligation, it is a good investment that will have solid economic returns for both the poor and rich,” Riemenschneider said. One of every two people drinks water that originates in mountains, but the essential supply of freshwater is threatened by the increasing degradation of mountain ecosystems, the FAO warned in a study published Monday. The magnitude of the threat is behind the UN declaration of 2002 as the International Year of Mountains. The agency said that "because of the effects of global warming, many mountain glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates." Other human activities, such as exploitative mining and unsustainable forestry and agricultural practices, are also taking a toll on mountain freshwater supplies. Runoff from the Quelcaya Ice Cap, for example, has been the traditional water source for residents of Lima, Peru. Over the past decade, melting of the ice cap has increased from three to 30 metres a year, putting freshwater at risk for 10 million people, the FAO said.
Berner Oberland, Switzerland (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy Freefoto)In the European Alps and the Caucasus Mountains, glaciers have shrunk to half their size, while in Africa an ice cap on Mount Kenya has shrunk by 40 percent since 1963.If current trends continue, said the FAO "by the end of this century many of the world's mountain glaciers, including all those in Glacier National Park in the United States, will have vanished entirely." "Mountains are a barometer of global climate change," says Douglas McGuire, head of the International Year of Mountains coordination unit at FAO. "These fragile ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and because they are found on every continent, many climatologists believe they are an early indication of what may come to pass around the world." Nongovernmental organizations met today at FAO Headquarters to discuss the problem of water scarcity in food production. This meeting is sponsored by FAO and the Italian Association of NGOs. Greenpeace’s campaign against the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Southeast Asia succeeded with five food manufacturers and retailers in Thailand who adopted policies that prohibit the use of genetically modified materials in their food products. The new True Food Shopping Guide released today by Greenpeace reflects the new policy of CP Interfood, Interproduce Food, Nissin Foods of Thailand, Friendship and Winner Group Enterprise. Varoonvarn Svangsopakul, genetic engineering campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia" said, "It's a very good sign that more and more companies are avoiding the use of genetically modified raw materials and ingredients in their products. Consumers hold a significant power to make the changes they desire especially when it comes to the food they eat." |
