The pandemic has triggered the biggest increase in hunger in decades

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the biggest increase in hunger in decades, 160 million new people went hungry, skyrocketing the percentage of undernourished people to nearly 10% of the world’s population, according to a report presented on Monday by various United Nations agencies.

In total, it is estimated that between 720 and 811 million people worldwide suffered from hunger in 2020, some 161 million more than the previous year, in what the document sees as a “dramatic worsening” of the global food situation.

Yes in 2019 8.4% of the world’s population was undernourished, this percentage reached 9.9% in 2020, with continents like Africa where hunger affects one in five inhabitants (21%).

The increase in hunger has been five times higher than the largest increase in the last 20 years, according to the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Qu Dongyu.

The report warns that without major changes, it will be impossible to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030, one of the main goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the international community.

COVID has deepened an already worrying panorama

The outbreak of the pandemic and the economic crisis it engendered were the main catalysts for the increase in hunger in 2020, but developments in this area had already been poor for years.

The document points out that coronavirus is “only a small part of a much bigger problem” and it highlights other factors such as climate crisis, conflict or very inefficient food systems.

“COVID-19 made matters worse and highlighted the link between inequality, poverty, food and disease», Declared the secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in a statement in response to the report.

The official recalled that despite the fact that food production has increased by 300% since the mid-1960s, malnutrition continues to be a very serious problem.

leftover food

The Portuguese diplomat, who called an international summit on food next September, defended that in a world with such abundance of food as the present, we cannot afford that there are “billions of people without access to healthy food”.

In a similar vein, the head of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, insisted that the world has plenty of resources to prevent anyone from going hungry and gave as an example that over the course of the year he past year, in full swing The 19-year-old crisis creates a new “billionaire” in the world every 17 hours.

“There is 400 trillion dollars in wealth in the world today. There should not be a single child (…) with nutrition problems with all the wealth and all the increase in financial assets over the past 12 months, ”he stressed at an event. virtual to present the document.

Far from the goals

Beasley and other heads of UN agencies who participated in the report, such as UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, warned that without far-reaching changes, it will be impossible to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030.

In fact, the forecast is that 660 million people will continue to suffer from hunger in 2030 and only “partly because of the effects of COVID-19”, adding about 30 million to this estimate.

To counter the increase in hunger, the report stresses the need for measures such as consolidating peace in conflict zones, increasing the resilience to climate change and economic hardship of the most vulnerable, intervene in supply chains to reduce the price of nutritious foods, fight poverty and structural inequalities, and change consumption patterns to make them more nutritious.

“If these issues are not dealt with very seriously, we are going to see massive famines and destabilization of countries and massive migration,” Beasley warned.

With information from the EFE

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