GOAL 2 : ZERO HUNGER
GOAL 2 : ZERO HUNGER
There is strong evidence that a mother’s education improves her children’s nutrition, especially as she seeks higher levels of schooling. It is estimated that 1.7 million more children can reach full growth potential if all women complete primary education, rising to 12.2 million more if secondary schooling is complete. There are approximately 47 million children in low-income countries that are stunted as a result of malnutrition in early childhood. Without proper nutrition in the first 1000 days of life, children may suffer from physical and psychological ailments disrupting their ability to learn over their lifetimes. Furthermore, investments in agriculture education yield 80% annual rates of return and can help farmers double their crop yields. Food production education programs should be farmer-centered and knowledge-based so that the full potential of farmers can be harnessed in making food security and sustainable development a reality.
Food and Security
Much of the global population is enduring a cost-of-living crisis with serious implications for food security. Even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a country that is a key supplier of grains and other essentials – the COVID-19 pandemic had been exacting a heavy toll on the ability of the world’s poorest people to buy food and avoid malnutrition. Meanwhile the impacts of the climate crisis continue to uproot vulnerable populations and expose them to food insecurity, while undermining efforts to grow crops and properly tend to livestock.
This briefing is based on the views of a wide range of experts from the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network and is curated in partnership with the UN World Food Programme.
Resilience and Food security
A lack of resilience amplifies the impact of shocks like food-price spikes
True resilience means that people, their communities, and their institutions are able to withstand or bounce back from severe shocks. The world is increasingly complex and volatile, and home to more frequent, intense, and interlinked disturbances and stressors – not least the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting economic impacts, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related food- and energy-price spikes, ongoing conflict and displacement in other regions of the world, worsening land degradation, more violent weather extremes related to climate change, and increasing demographic pressures (ageing populations in some locales, and young populations with too-few opportunities in others). A lack of resilience means that these shocks and stressors amplify each other and unfold in more brutal and damaging ways in many regions. In 2021, mounting shocks and inadequate resilience meant that an unprecedented 276 million people, in 81 different countries with World Food Programme operations, experienced acute food insecurity. For 2022, the WFP has predicted that higher food and fuel costs mean acute hunger in these countries will rise by 47 million people, or 17%, if the war in Ukraine continues unabated.
Around the world, it will be a serious challenge to adequately build up the necessary capacities of people, communities, institutions, and national governments to anticipate, prevent, absorb, and adapt to the damaging effects of traumatic events. Efforts to build much-needed resilience have included promoting more diversified livelihoods that feature income alternatives to activities such as farming, boosting access to markets in rural areas, fostering the strategic management of natural resources, increasing access to education and the attainment of skills necessary to adapt to crises, and increasing access to adequate financial and productive assets alongside the broader provision of basic services and social safety nets. 53% of the global population, and 83% of Africans, now go without social-protection benefits – and the related systems that can help achieve a zero-hunger world by addressing poverty and vulnerability, and thereby improving access to food. People who enjoy these protections can better cope with threats to food security, while addressing inequality by empowering women and girls can create more jobs for young people and help prevent vulnerability to malnutrition.
The Cost of rising Food crisis
The blocking of Ukraine’s ports has exacerbated issues related to already-rising food prices
By early 2022, the world appeared to be entering a cost-of-living crisis – with serious implications for food security. The FAO Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, had been rising relentlessly since mid-2020. It reached a new all-time high in February 2022, the month when Russia invaded Ukraine, then rose sharply in March, before retreating only slightly in April. Prices for vegetable oils and other food stocks soared, as wheat inventories thinned. Prices for fuel and fertilizer have also spiked, risking substantial reductions in crop yield and quality. Drought conditions are exceptional in several parts of the world, and logistical issues have only mounted as Ukrainian ports remain blocked and war-related hazards limit Black Sea shipments, obstructing vital food and fertilizer exports. Trade restrictions, which already affect 17% of the food traded globally, could add to upward-spiralling prices. Even before price spikes in global markets fully trickled down to domestic markets, domestic food inflation hit alarming levels in many places – 15% or more in 40 countries.
The rising cost of food and other essential goods comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic continues to depress incomes (the global economic recovery was being disrupted by new variants prior to the invasion of Ukraine). The combination of reduced incomes and cost-of-food increases can be life threatening for poor households in low-income countries – which spend the lion’s share of their income on food (63% on average). This has prompted protests around the world; every percentage-point increase in global food prices is estimated to leave 10 million more people in extreme poverty. As high food prices made matters impossible for people already struggling to afford food in normal times, further price spikes triggered by the war in Ukraine threaten to push 47 million people into acute hunger in 2022 – up from a baseline of 276 million people earlier in the year. High prices also constrain humanitarian responses; procurement costs for the UN World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, are projected to increase by 44% relative to the 2019 average.
Conflict and Food Crisis
It is the world’s biggest cause of hunger, and it is on the rise globally
More than half of all people faced with protracted food insecurity live in countries affected by conflict, which is the world’s biggest driver of hunger, and by economic fragility. Conflict is on the rise, according to the Institute for Economics & Peace’s Global Peace Index; the 2021 edition recorded the ninth deterioration in peacefulness in 13 years, as levels of civil and political unrest worsen. Since 2010, the Index found, the number of conflicts globally increased by 88%. Conflict is destructive for every aspect of a food system, from production, to harvesting, processing, transport and on to sale and consumption. Conflict also impedes access, by making it difficult for humanitarians to reach affected populations or for people to move to areas where life-saving assistance can be provided. The links between hunger and violence have been well established in places like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be facing famine-like conditions, and the impacts of the war in Ukraine on food costs threaten to worsen the situation.
In 2021, the United Nations reported that at least 400,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region were living in famine-like conditions as a result of military confrontation and an associated humanitarian catastrophe (this was still the case as of mid-2022). That is the highest number of people recorded living in such conditions since a 2011 famine in Somalia (which had also been triggered in part by armed conflict between rival groups vying for power), yet according to the UN only a small percentage of needed supplies were able to reach affected populations. The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a major global food supplier – on the prices of grains, cooking oil, fuel, and fertilizer has pushed ever more people into acute hunger, even those living many times zones away from active battlefields. Urgent, sustained action is now needed to break this destructive cycle of conflict and hunger. A conflict-sensitive approach to programming in complex emergencies can significantly minimize the unintended consequences of operations, while also making niche but meaningful contributions to strengthening social cohesion – by enabling more equitable access to resources, and by ultimately achieving sustainable peace outcomes.
The Economic shocks of crisis
As incomes vanish amid the pandemic and remittances dry up, hunger and malnutrition increase
The COVID-19 pandemic threw the global economy into turmoil, causing it to contract by 3.1% in 2020 amid the most severe labour market disruptions since the Great Depression. That year, the equivalent of 258 million full-time jobs were lost. Projections for 2022 have suggested an extremely high working-hour deficit, equivalent to 52 million full-time jobs, and the effects of the pandemic on labour markets are expected to linger until at least 2023. Poor countries have suffered tremendously as remittance payments from their citizens working abroad plunged, tourism came to a standstill, and currency values tumbled. At the same time, extraordinary measures were implemented to stave off economic collapse – fiscal support and monetary measures reached $26 trillion in a little more than a year. The global debt burden has now risen to levels deemed dangerous, having accumulated at a scale comparable to the eras of World War I and World War II. About 60% of low-income countries are in, or at risk of, debt distress. Together with a lack of access to vaccines, this constrains economic recovery across the developing world.
As incomes have vanished amid the pandemic’s spread, food becomes more unaffordable – prompting increases in hunger and malnutrition. The number of people in the grip of acute hunger in 81 countries with UN World Food Programme operations jumped from 150 million in 2019 to 272 million in 2020. An estimated three to four years of progress towards ending extreme poverty have been lost globally, and there has been a widening of inequality; the world’s poorest people face an aggregate loss of up to 0.9 years of schooling. While economic shocks have driven acute food insecurity, slowdowns and downturns also cause hunger and worsening crises. Faced with declining incomes, poor people adopt strategies to cope – which can have detrimental long-term effects. For example, when these involve the sale of productive assets, they can reduce households’ capacity to handle other shocks such as extreme weather events. In addition, economic downturns constrain countries’ capacities to safeguard lives and livelihoods just when it is most needed; 65 out of 77 countries that reported rises in undernourishment between 2011 and 2017 simultaneously suffered economic slowdowns or downturns.
Climate change and Food crisis
Its impacts damage food systems, boost vulnerabilities and multiply risks
The accelerating climate crisis is a key driver of hunger. The number of extreme weather events – including droughts, floods, and storms – in developing countries has more than doubled since the early 1990s. At the same time, other climate extremes such as heatwaves and wildfires are worsening. In the past decade, an estimated more than 80% of all disasters were climate-related, affecting 1.7 billion people globally. As they damaged systems that produce, process, and bring food to people’s tables, weather extremes were the main drivers of acute food insecurity in eight African countries in 2021, leaving 23.5 million people in need of urgent food and financial assistance. Climate shocks triggered 22.3 million internal displacements in that same year – a number that is projected to reach 216 million by 2050. People uprooted from their homes are among the most vulnerable to acute food insecurity and malnutrition. By the end of this century, the rapid and unimpeded growth of greenhouse gas emissions could put production conditions at risk for about a third of the world’s food crops and livestock.
Beyond extreme weather events, lower-level climatic variations and stresses are playing increasing roles in driving chronic hunger. Non-linear changes in the global climate system are driving greater unpredictability of rainfall and cropping seasons, advancing soil erosion, increasing salinity in soils and groundwater, shifting patterns of pests and diseases, and adding heat stress on crops and livestock. These developments are in turn increasing the vulnerability of people living in climate hotspots. In such strained conditions, a small shock can very quickly turn chronic hunger into a life-threatening situation. In addition, the climate crisis acts as a risk multiplier for development by making existing problems worse. In contexts that are already prone to social tensions, climatic factors amplify existing inequalities related to access to natural resources, intensify conflicts, and trigger migration and forced displacement. Once these tensions erupt in violence, people only become more vulnerable and unable to manage risks to their livelihoods. There is conflict in 12 of the 20 countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and these places are the least able to adapt.
Cracks in the Foundation
A lack of knowledge, skills, and health increases vulnerability to shocks and inhibits the ability to attain food security
An estimated 1.3 billion people in 109 developing countries currently live in “multidimensional” poverty, or deprivation suffered in multiple different ways including living standards, education, and health. The people affected by this are generally unable to accumulate what is often referred to as “human capital,” or the knowledge, skills, and wellness required for a decent living. And, without the protection of adequate social safety nets, they often struggle to meet their basic needs for food and other essentials, and to adequately protect themselves against increasingly frequent, severe shocks and significant hardship. Women are 27% more likely than men to be severely food insecure; this reflection of persistent gender inequality amounts to the holding back of half the world’s population from reaching its full potential. In addition, some three billion people, a significant portion of the global population, are unable to afford healthy diets and many live in fragile contexts where as much as 90% of the local population is unable to access diets that meet their most basic nutritional needs.
Limited access to clean drinking water also negatively affects food security. The consumption of diverse, nutritious food that meets nutrient needs is a pre-requisite for preventing malnutrition – and ensuring good nutrition, particularly during the first 1,000 days of life when chronic malnutrition (or stunting) can develop, is essential for optimizing individual potential and enhancing human capital. A well-nourished, healthy, and educated population is the necessary foundation for development. Yet there are now an estimated 258 million children who are not attending primary or secondary school. Growing global evidence indicates that adequate investment in schoolchildren’s health and nutrition is essential, and integrated school feeding programmes are vital for keeping children nourished and healthy while also keeping them in school. As automation increases, it will impact employment opportunities and may replace the equivalent of up to 800 million full-time jobs globally within the next ten years. Equipping young people with the necessary technical skills and knowledge is critical for building human capital, and for ensuring that people can support themselves even amid dramatic technological change.
Nutrition and Health
As global obesity rates increase, many developing countries are simultaneously dealing with undernutrition
There has been a growing focus among businesses and governments on quality rather than quantity when it comes to agriculture and food systems. This is at least in part a response to rising rates of obesity (even as hunger persists in many parts of the world). More than 672 million adults in the world, or one in eight, are now obese, according to the 2018 edition of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s report the State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World. While the problem is most significant in North America, according to the report, it is worrying that Africa and Asia are also experiencing an upward trend. Meanwhile the number of undernourished people in the world is also increasing, to 821 million by 2017, according the report; undernourishment, coupled with severe food insecurity, appears to be increasing in nearly all subregions of Africa as well as in South America. Poverty remains the main underlying cause of malnutrition. In many countries, nutrient-rich foods are significantly more expensive than unhealthy foods, and there is a lack of understanding about the components of a healthy diet. In developing countries, this can trigger “nutrition transition,” where populations simultaneously face rising obesity levels and undernutrition.
A broad shift towards western-style diets high in calories, protein, fats, sugars and ultra-processed foods has resulted in unbalanced, unhealthy diets and an increased incidence of micronutrient deficiencies; a report published by the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition in 2015 noted that this affected more than 2 billion people worldwide. The report warned that if current trends continued, the number of overweight and obese people would reach 3.28 billion by 2030, or about one third of the projected total world population for that year. Extensive research on the potential health effects associated with being overweight or obese point to higher risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, and diabetes. A related study published in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice in 2011 found that the number of adults with diabetes in Nigeria would likely double between the years 2011 and 2030, to 6.1 million. There is also a financial cost to consider – a 2014 report published by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated the global economic costs of overweight and obesity to be roughly $2 trillion per year, or equivalent to about 2.8% of annual global GDP.
It is time to rethink how we grow, share and consume our food. If done right, agriculture, forestry and fisheries can provide nutritious food for all and generate decent incomes, while supporting people-centered rural development and protecting the environment. Right now, our soils, freshwater, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources we depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters, such as droughts and floods. Many rural women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land, forcing them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities. Poor food security is also causing millions of children to be stunted, or too short for the ages, due to severe malnutrition. A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish the 815 million people who are hungry today and the additional 2 billion people expected to be undernourished by 2050. Investments in agriculture are crucial to increasing the capacity for agricultural productivity and sustainable food production systems are necessary to help alleviate the perils of hunger.’
Food Systems
Cities have strong control over many aspects of urban food systems. Our work in this area helps cities to implement solutions that make it easier for people to eat more plant-based options and waste less food. Doing so will help reduce emissions, improve health and equity, and enhance climate resilience around the world.
Pathways for Food and land use systems to meet the Biodiversity Targets
Global Food Security Index 2022
India Country Report on Food Security 2022
Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture
Biochar: The gardener’s friend that could help slow global warming
Can we feed a future population of 10 billion people a healthy diet within planetary boundaries?
Food Security Update
Food Waste Monitoring Toolkit
The Future of Food
Nutrition and health, Chemical science and Food Technology
Eurecat works with companies to achieve healthy ingredients and foods with sustainable and intelligent processes
Nutrition and health
Nutrition and Health Unit provides scientific and technological services to agri-food, biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
Millets as a key to improve Food and Nutrition security and promote Sustainable consumption
Reducing Food Loss
An estimated $600 billion worth of food is lost during or just after harvest. Can manufacturers and grocers do anything about it? Definitely—and it will be good for business, people, and the planet.
Adapt or Perish – COP27 soptlights agriculture challenges and solutions in the face of Climate change
Food Systems Transformation: A Worldwide Response to Multiple Crises”
Zero Hunger and Educational Resources
Diets of people world over Is Changing: Behavioral Science Can Make it Healthier and More Sustainable
Global nutrition dynamics: the world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases
Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) SBTi Guidance and GHG Protocol Guidance
Regenerative Agriculture Techniques
What it takes to get clarity on soil carbon
Technical guide for the Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool