Halving Hunger

by Un Millennium Project; Swaminathan, M. S.; Dobie, Philip; Yuksel, Nalan

• ISBN13: 9781844072200
• ISBN10: 1844072207
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

* One of 14 publications comprising the official UN strategy on how to reduce extreme poverty and achieve the fundamental worldwide human development goals for the coming decade * Project directed by Jeffrey D. Sachs, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, current Director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University, and Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan * The essential reference work for all governments, policymakers, aid and donor agencies, development practitioners, researchers, and students worldwide "Halving Hunger" examines current world progress towards eliminating hunger and calls for the implementation of seven recommendations in the areas of political action, national policy reforms, increased agricultural productivity for food insecure farmers, improved nutrition for the chronically hungry, productive safety nets for the acutely hungry, improved rural incomes and markets, and restoration and conservation of natural resources essential for food security. The strategy includes over forty interventions that poor countries can select and incorporate into individual action plans. Halving hunger is possible if these interventions are implemented effectively in the 133 hunger hotspots, where hunger is most persistent and severe, and where over 70 percent of the world's 840 million hungry people currently reside. The UN Millennium Development Library Halving Hunger, in conjunction with the flagship publication Investing in Development, is one of 13 thematic publications that comprise the UN Millennium Library. This set of reference handbooks charts world progress and presents strategies for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions--income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure, and shelter--by 2015, while promoting gender equality, education, health, and environmental sustainability. This Library is the official, comprehensive point of reference and action plan for achieving the fundamental development objectives embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the UN and world leaders in 2000.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. iii
Task force members	p. xii
Preface	p. xv
The Task Force on Hunger's methodology	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xx
Abbreviations	p. xxii
Millennium Development Goals	p. xxiv
Executive summary	p. 1
The imperatives for reducing hunger	p. 19
Defining hunger	p. 19
Determinants of hunger	p. 20
The social and economic costs of hunger	p. 28
Moral and legal foundations for eradicating hunger	p. 32
Who is on track or off track to meet the hunger Goal?	p. 35
Hunger hotspots-measuring underweight at the subnational level	p. 36
Hunger indicator 1-percentage of the population below the minimum level of dietary energy consumption	p. 37
Hunger indicator 2-the prevalence of underweight children under five years of age	p. 39
Underweight children in Africa	p. 41
Underweight children in Asia	p. 46
Underweight children in Central Asia and Europe	p. 53
Underweight children in Latin America and the Caribbean	p. 53
A global view of the prevalence and density of underweight children	p. 59
A strategic approach for halving hunger	p. 60
Forging a global partnership	p. 61
Promoting good governance	p. 62
Mainstreaming gender equality	p. 63
Adopting a people-centered approach	p. 64
Investing in science and technology	p. 64
Vulnerability analysis-a tool for setting priorities	p. 66
The seven recommendations	p. 68
Move from political commitment to action [Recommendation one]	p. 71
Background	p. 72
Advocate political action to meet intergovernmental agreements	p. 75
Strengthen the contributions of donor countries and national governments to activities that combat hunger	p. 78
Improve public awareness of hunger issues and strengthen advocacy organizations	p. 80
Strengthen developing country advocacy organizations that deal with poverty and hunger	p. 81
Strengthen accurate data collection, monitoring, and evaluation	p. 82
Actions needed to implement recommendation one	p. 83
Reform policies and create an enabling environment [Recommendation two]	p. 85
Background	p. 86
Promote an integrated policy approach to hunger reduction	p. 87
Restore the budgetary priority of the agricultural and rural sectors	p. 88
Build developing country capacity to achieve the hunger Goal	p. 89
Link nutritional and agricultural interventions	p. 91
Increase poor people's access to land and other productive resources	p. 91
Empower women and girls	p. 93
Strengthen agricultural and nutrition research	p. 94
Remove internal and regional barriers to agricultural trade	p. 96
Increase the effectiveness of donor agencies' hunger-related programming	p. 97
Create vibrant partnerships to ensure effective policy implementation	p. 98
Actions needed to implement recommendation two	p. 99
Increase the agricultural productivity of food-insecure farmers [Recommendation three]	p. 103
Background	p. 104
Improve soil health	p. 107
Improve and expand small-scale water management	p. 113
Improve access to better seeds and other planting materials	p. 116
Diversify on-farm enterprises with high-value products	p. 117
Establish effective agricultural extension services	p. 122
Actions needed to implement recommendation three	p. 124
Improve nutrition for the chronically hungry and vulnerable [Recommendation four]	p. 126
Background	p. 127
Promote mother and infant nutrition	p. 129
Reduce malnutrition among children under age five	p. 134
Reduce malnutrition among school-age children and adolescents	p. 135
Reduce vitamin and mineral deficiencies	p. 137
Reduce infectious diseases that contribute to malnutrition	p. 139
Actions needed to implement recommendation four	p. 140
Reduce the vulnerability of the acutely hungry through productive safety nets [Recommendation five]	p. 143
Background	p. 143
Build and strengthen national and local early warning systems	p. 145
Build and strengthen the capacity to respond to emergencies	p. 147
Invest in productive social safety nets	p. 149
Actions needed to implement recommendation five	p. 151
Increase incomes and make markets work for the poor [Recommendation six]	p. 153
Background	p. 154
Invest in and maintain market-related infrastructure	p. 155
Develop networks of small rural input traders	p. 158
Improve access to financial services for the poor and food-insecure	p. 159
Provide and enforce a sound legal and regulatory framework	p. 161
Strengthen the bargaining power of the rural and urban poor in labor markets	p. 162
Ensure access to market information for the poor	p. 163
Promote and strengthen community and farmer associations	p. 165
Promote alternative sources of employment and income	p. 166
Actions needed to implement recommendation six	p. 168
Restore and conserve the natural resources essential for food security [Recommendation seven]	p. 171
Background	p. 172
Help communities and households restore or enhance natural resources	p. 174
Secure local ownership, access, and management rights to natural resources	p. 177
Develop natural resource-based "green enterprises"	p. 179
Pay poor rural communities for environmental services	p. 180
Actions needed to implement recommendation seven	p. 182
Implementing the recommendations of the Task Force on Hunger	p. 184
Setting priorities for interventions	p. 184
Strengthening capacity for scaling up	p. 185
Refining national hunger strategies	p. 187
Securing financing for implementation	p. 188
Implementation at the local level	p. 189
Synergistic entry points to overcoming hunger	p. 193
Glossary	p. 206
Papers Commissioned by the Task Force on Hunger	p. 209
Subregional data on underweight prevalence	p. 211
Notes	p. 229
References	p. 231
Boxes
Inequality and hunger in Guatemala	p. 24
Food in times of crisis in Sierra Leone	p. 27
The right to food in India	p. 33
Eleven steps in applying a human rights approach to hunger reduction	p. 34
From commitment to action in China	p. 72
India's strategy for eliminating endemic hunger	p. 73
The International Alliance Against Hunger	p. 74
Toward a Twenty-first Century African Green Revolution	p. 76
Brazil's Zero Hunger Program	p. 78
Building a global campaign-lessons from Jubilee 2000	p. 81
Campaigning can be cost-effective	p. 81
Poor farmers on marginal lands	p. 95
Global partnerships for rural development	p. 98
Mineral versus organic fertilizers	p. 108
Unhealthy soils in the cradle of the Green Revolution	p. 109
Plant biotechnology	p. 118
Cash cropping for women farmers	p. 119
The South Asian enigma-high rates of child malnutrition despite economic and agricultural gains	p. 130
Low birthweight among refugees in Nepal	p. 133
School-based feeding reduces short-term hunger and improves education in Mexico	p. 136
School-based systems for systematic deworming	p. 136
The private sector and food fortification	p. 138
Village-level fortification of wheat flour in Bangladesh	p. 139
Early warning systems-knowing when to intervene	p. 146
The challenge of rural infrastructure in Africa	p. 156
Creating agrodealers in Africa	p. 159
Farmers who must sell low and buy high	p. 164
Reaching the unreached-rural knowledge centers in India	p. 164
Restoring degraded grasslands in Kenya	p. 175
Reducing poverty and hunger by allocating forest rights to communities	p. 178
Tapping the Clean Development Mechanism to improve farming systems	p. 181
The Hunger Project's "epicenters" for grassroots empowerment	p. 191
A success story from Thailand	p. 195
Mother-friendly and baby-friendly communities	p. 196
Watershed restoration and management in Orissa, India	p. 201
How a smallholder farmer diversified and got out of absolute poverty	p. 204
Figures
Men in South Asian households often get more food	p. 25
Malnutrition is a leading cause of child deaths	p. 29
Poor nutrition is one of the leading risk factors contributing to the global burden of disease	p. 29
Malnutrition reduces labor productivity and national output	p. 30
Iron deficiency anemia alone can reduce national output by 2-8 percent	p. 30
Most of the undernourished are in Asia	p. 38
The number of undernourished people is rising in East, Central, and Southern Africa	p. 39
The number of undernourished people is declining most in China-and rising most in Central Africa	p. 39
The prevalence of underweight children is greatest in South Asia and rising only in Sub-Saharan Africa	p. 41
Still a long way to the target for Asia and Africa	p. 41
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change in Sub-Saharan African countries	p. 42
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in Sub-Saharan African countries	p. 42
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change, 1987-2003, in Middle Eastern and North African countries	p. 44
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in Middle Eastern and North African countries	p. 44
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change, 1987-2003, in East Asian and Pacific countries	p. 48
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in ast Asian and Pacific countries	p. 48
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change, 1987-2003, in South Asian countries	p. 49
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in South Asian countries	p. 49
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change, 1987-2003, in European and Central Asian countries	p. 54
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in European and Central Asian countries	p. 54
Underweight prevalence among preschool children and annual rate of change, 1987-2003, in Latin American countries	p. 55
Underweight prevalence among preschool children in Latin American countries	p. 55
Vulnerability and food insecurity framework	p. 67
Task force recommendations at the global, national, and community scale	p. 69
About two-fifths of the world is arid or semiarid-three-fifths of Africa	p. 105
The life-cycle of malnourishment	p. 128
Maps
Prevalence of underweight children in Africa	p. 45
Population density of underweight children in Africa	p. 47
Prevalence of underweight children in Asia	p. 51
Population density of underweight children in Asia	p. 52
Prevalence of underweight children in Latin America	p. 56
Population density of underweight children in Latin America	p. 57
Index combining normalized rates of underweight prevalence and population density of underweight children	p. 58
Tables
Factors contributing to reductions in child malnutrition	p. 21
Benefit-cost ratios for interventions to reduce hunger	p. 31
Changes in the proportion of undernourished people in selected countries, 1990-92 to 1999-2001	p. 40
Share of defense spending in government budgets	p. 79
Share of agriculture in total government spending	p. 79
Regional profiles and priorities for investment	p. 186
Estimated costs of hunger interventions for Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda 2006-15	p. 189
Proportional costs of select antihunger interventions	p. 189
MDG investment needs and MDG financing gaps in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda (2006-15)	p. 190
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