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30 I L’ATLAS DU MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE
Planet in peril
The fight against hunger
More than 20 million children with
low birth weight are born every year
in developing countries. The subse-
quent growth of one child in three
is hindered by chronic malnutrition.
The damage inflicted is considered
irreversible. According to the United
Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organi-
sation “the number of food emergen-
cies has been rising over the past two
decades, from an average of 15 per year
during the 1980s to more than 30 per
year since the turn of the millennium.
Most of this increase has taken place in
Africa, where the average number of
food emergencies each year has almost
tripled.”
Drought is the main natural cause.
Ready access to water increases yields
andmakes it easier for people to secure
a proper food supply. Irrigated farm
land, which represents 17% of the
total area under cultivation, produces
40% of all food. Other factors, such
as flooding, frost or locusts also come
into play. But human factors (conflicts,
movement of population, economic
decisions) are increasingly involved,
causing more than 35% of food emer-
gencies in 2004, compared with only
15% in 1992. As the FAO explains:
“In many cases, natural and human-
induced factors reinforce each other.
Such complex crises tend to be the
most severe and prolonged. Between
1986 and 2004, 18 countries were ‘in
crisis’ more than half of the time. War
or economic and social disruptions
caused or compounded the crises in
all 18.”
In economic terms the free mar-
ket policies imposed by the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, with the consent of local lea-
ders, are responsible for a large part
of the increase in food insecurity. In
particular they demanded an end to
subsidies on essential foodstuffs. As
In 2000 there were 852 million
undernourished people on Earth.
Over the last five years their
number has increased every year
by about 4 million. Without a
radical change of course we will
not achieve the United Nations
Millennium Development
Goal (of reducing by half the
proportion of people suffering
from hunger by 2015). The
reasons for this failure are all too
familiar.
Most of the data is more recent than 1995. Based on a map by the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University.
Sources: United Nations Children´s Fund (UNICEF); Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS); National reports on human development; African Nutrition Database Initiative (ANDI).
10 20 30 40 50 %
Countries or areas not covered by study
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
PACIFIC
OCEAN
INDIAN
OCEAN
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Overweight North, rickety South