UN Millennium Development Goal 1 – Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

Annual Conference – UN Global Compact Network Netherlands

17 January 2011 at KPMG HQ in Amstelveen

Opening of the Conference

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are arguably the most ambitious developmental undertaking ever embraced by the international community. They involve the achievement of targets, in most cases by 2015, for the reduction of extreme income poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other major diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.

Only 4 years now remain before the 2015 deadline by which world leaders have pledged to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half.

But there are still 925 million undernourished people in the world today according to estimates by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
That means roughly one in seven people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to the health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Estimates for 2010 indicate that the number of undernourished people will decline in all developing regions, although with a different pace. The region with most undernourished people continues to be Asia and the Pacific, but with a 12 percent decline from 658 million in 2009 to 578 million, this region also accounts for most of the global improvement expected in 2010. The proportion of undernourished people remains highest in sub-Saharan Africa, at 30 percent in 2010.

The number and the proportion of undernourished people have declined, but they remain unacceptably high.After increasing from 2006 to 2009 due to high food prices and the global economic crisis, both the number and proportion of hungry people have declined in 2010 as the global economy recovers.

The fact that nearly a billion people remain hungry even after the recent food and financial crises have largely passed indicates a deeper structural problem that gravely threatens the ability to achieve internationally agreed goals on hunger reduction.

Hunger and malnutrition are the underlying cause of more than half of all child deaths, killing nearly 6 million children each year! Relatively few of these children die of starvation. The vast majority are killed by neonatal disorders and a handful of treatable infectious diseases, including diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles.

Among the key causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. And of course the dramatic effects of economic crises.

As well as the obvious sort of hunger resulting from an empty stomach, there is also the hidden hungerof micronutrient deficiencies which make people susceptible to infectious diseases, impair physical and mental development, reduce their labor productivity and increase the risk of premature death.

Hunger does not only weigh on the individual. It also imposes a crushing economic burden on the developing world. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5-10 percent in lifetime earnings.

The rapid increase in the number of hungry people over the past two years, because of first the food and fuel crisis and now the economic crisis, reveals the fragility of present food systems. The current situation points to the urgent need to tackle the structural, root causes of hunger.

Latest available statistics indicate that some progress has been made towards achieving MDG 1, with the prevalence of hunger declining from 20 percent undernourished in 1990–92 to 16 percent in 2010. However, with the world’s population still increasing (albeit more slowly than in recent decades), a declining proportion of people who are hungry can mask an increase in the number. In fact, developing countries as a group have seen an overall setback in terms of the number of hungry people (from 827 million in 1990–92 to 906 million in 2010).

Of the seventy-nine countries whose food security status is monitored regularly by the FAO, thirty-one exhibited a trend decline in the number of undernourished between 1990-92 and 2004-06. Of these, eight have already halved both the proportion and the number of undernourished, thus achieving both the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) targets for 2015. Five have achieved just the MDG target, and three others are on track to achieve both targets by 2015.

Due to spectacular economic growth in countries like Brazil, India and China and the growth of the world economy, people are able to escape from poverty. Many people in Brazil for example have escaped from the slums in Brazil and have entered the middle-class. Former President Lula da Silva stated in the Financial Times in June 2010 the following:

So, there is hope. Hope…. that, how difficult it may seem, we can achieve the MDGs. Hope… that we eventually can tackle the issue of extreme poverty and hunger!