Challenge of hunger

Food security a major concern for 2009

(December 30, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) As 2008 winds down, the problems of world population growth and hunger show no signs of diminishing. These are perhaps the two biggest challenges before the world community today. The most recent population studies indicate that the number of humans on the planet will substantially grow before stabilising close to the year 2050. The United Nations Population Funds’ ‘State of World Population 2008’ report suggests that world population is likely to grow from 670 crore in 2008 to about 970 crore in 2050. However, these figures are based on projections for fertility rates, infant mortality rates and life expectancy, and are not exactly precise. It also anticipates that India’s population will grow by 1.5 per cent each year and that it will have 165.8 crore people by the year 2050, while China’s population will grow by 0.6 per cent and it will have the same population figure by 2050. Other parts of the world will also experience growth but at different rates. Though population growth rates might have declined, there have been large increases in population in absolute numbers. There is little doubt that the rising world population puts existing natural resources under tremendous pressure and dilutes the impact of various governmental welfare schemes. Most countries have committed themselves to reducing poverty but rising population means that this won’t be easy. This increase in population also means that the millennium development goals that UN members have agreed upon will need a lot of work before they can be fulfilled.

There is an obvious correlation between population growth and food security. Given the present global economic slowdown, food scarcity is turning out to be a major problem. The report ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008’ released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation in early December warns that rising international food prices are in the main responsible for driving people into food insecurity and also threaten long-term global food security. Rising prices along with the global economic crunch have reduced the purchasing power of the people and have severely affected the poor. In 2008 there were 963 million hungry people worldwide, which is 40 million more than in 2007. The majority of them live in the developing world, with 65 per cent of them in just seven countries comprising India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Thus, about 17 per cent of the world population today goes hungry. It seems that several years of fighting poverty has had a setback and an effort must be made in 2009 to rectify this. Governments, therefore, have to work harder in the coming year to address the problems of population growth and food scarcity in the world. - Sri Lanka Guardian