Archive for January, 2005
FAO: World Must Do Better to Reduce Hunger
In December, the Food and Agriculture Organization released the 2004 edition of its annual report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, which found that although the world is not making enough progress to meet the Millennium goal of cutting hunger in half by 2015, countries in all regions of the world have demonstrated that it is possible to reach these goals if the political will is present.
Thirty countries have managed to cut hunger by 25 percent, but hunger still takes a massive toll, being responsible for the deaths of as many as 5 million children annually. Hunger in those countries where it is a major problem is a serious drag on the economy — the FAO estimates that each year hunger and malnutrition costs as much as $30 billion worldwide just in direct medical costs. The economic damage to countries due to the loss of so many people from a preventable costs the world’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Why is hunger still such a serious problem in a world that produces an enormous amount of food? Its largely the same issues that have exacerbated hunger throughout human history. According to the FAO,
Among the African countries are several that demonstrate another key lesson - that war and civil conflict must be regarded as major causes not only of short-term food emergencies but of widespread chronic hunger. Several countries that have recently emerged from the nightmare of conflict figure prominently among those that have registered steady progress since the WFS as well as those that have scored rapid gains over the past five years.
Not surprisingly, growth in the agricultural sector is also important for reducing hunger. According to the FAO,
Many of the countries that have achieved rapid progress in reducing hunger have something else in Âcommon - significantly better than average agricultural growth. Within the group of more than 30 countries that are on track to reach the WFS goal, agricultural GDP increased at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent, almost one full percentage point faster than for the developing countries as a whole.
Sources:
‘No drop’ in world hunger deaths. The BBC, December 8, 2004.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004. The Food and Agricultural Organization, 2004.
Tags: Food and Agriculture Organization
State of the World’s Children 2005
UNICEF released the 2005 edition of its annual The State of the World’s Children in which it noted that about one billion children worldwide are deprived of any semblance of a normal childhood, facing instead the effects, of poverty, war, and AIDS.
Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, UNICEF estimates that 1.9 billion lived in the developing world. One billion of those children lived in poverty and were deprived of at least one of seven amenities that UNICEF regard as basic rights — shelter, water, sanitation, schooling, information, health care and food.
UNICEF director Carol Bellamy said on releasing the report,
Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood. When half the world’s children are growing up hungry and unhealthy, when schools have become targets and whole villages are being emptied by AIDS, we’ve failed to deliver on the promise of childhood.
The report notes that in 2003, 10.6 million children died before the age of five — the equivalent of all of the children in France, Germany, Greece and Italy.
Sources:
One billion ‘denied a childhood’. The BBC, December 9, 2004.
The State of the World’s Children 2005. UNICEF, 2004.
Tags: UNICEF
Saudi Arabia: We Could Increase Oil Reserves by 77 Percent in Just a Few Years
Just how much oil is there, and when will the world begin to run out of it (if ever)? Part of the problem answering that question is the amount of known oil in the world keeps increasing, especially in the face of market demand such as the recently relatively high prices for oil.
On December 26, for example, Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi claimed that his nation could come close to doubling its proven oil reserves over the next few years. Naimi issued a press releasing saying,
There are big chances to increase the kingdom’s produceable oil reserves by 200 billion barrels. This will come either through new discoveries or through increasing production from known deposits.
Currently Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves sits at 261 billion barrels. Naimi’s comments came as the country opened new oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia which Naimi says will allow Saudi Arabia to increase its daily oil production from 11 million barrels/day currently to 12.5 million barrels/day over the next few years.
Sources:
Kingdom Will Meet Oil Needs of Asian Economies: Naimi. ArabNews.Com, January 7, 2005.
Saudi Oil Reserves Could Increase by 77%. Associated Press, December 27, 2004.
Tags: Oil, Saudi Arabia
World Hits Milestone for Drinking Water Availability
The Christian Science Monitor recently noted that for the first time in history, the world’s glass is literally half full. According to World Health Organization and UNICEF statistics, about 700 million people in the developing world have gained access to safe drinking water in their residence, pushing the percentage of people with access to drinking water in their homes to more than 50 percent of the entire world population for the first time ever.
This has led to a number of related improvements in quality of life. The obvious improvement is a decline in hygeine-related diseases. Although it hasn’t kept up with the advance in drinking water availability, improvements in sanitation in the developing world have also helped reduce the incidence of such diseases.
Another important advantage is the empowerment of women. For many women in developing countries, obtaining enough safe drinking water is a task which can take up to an entire working day. The Christian Science Monitor notes, for example, that in Tanzania, women might walk four to six hours to obtain safe drinking water for themselves and their families. With women no longer devoting so much time simply obtaining water, they are able to devote themselves to other projects.
Source:
Finally, the world’s drinking glass is more than half full. G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 2004.
Tags: Water, World Health Organization
WFP to Wean China Off Food Aid — Another Lester Brown Prophecy of Doom Bites the Dust
After a five day visit to China, World Food Program executive director James Morris announced that his organization would no longer provide food aid to China. Noting China’s phenomenal economic progress over the past 25 years, Morris said that China no longer faces the sort of food insecurity problems that the WFP must, of necessity, focus its resources on.
Morris told the BBC,
Our job is to feed the hungriest, poorest people, wherever they are in the world. We are very focused on those countries that would be the least developed, that would have the greatest food security problem, and the least per capita income. China is no longer one of those countries.
Morris went on to add that, “China now has this extraordinary experience of how to move a large number of people out of hunger and poverty.”
Just don’t tell Lester Brown.
Back in 1995, Lester Brown wrote one in a long line of prophetic books about overpopulation, “Who Will Feed China? A Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.” Published as a WorldWatch book, the plot was simple — China’s rapid growth in industrialization combined with its sky high population meant that China would soon need levels of grain imports that were simply impossible. After all, according to WorldWatch
Within a span of two years (1992-1994), China has gone from being a net grain exporter of 8 million tons to being a net importer of 16 million tons. China’s overnight emergence as a leading importer of grain, second only to Japan, is driving up world grain prices, promising to raise food prices everywhere, the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research institute, said in a study released today.
Brown projected massive, unbelievable grain import demands from China. He suggested that simply to feed all of the chickens necessary to meet China’s demands for eggs by 2000 would require the equivalent in grain imports of the entire Australian production.
The reality, of course, was a bit different. China’s brief period as a net importer of grain turned out to be an anomaly. For example, other than 1994-95 and 1995-96 when it as a net importer of corn, China has been the second leading exporter of corn, behind only the United States.
Brown and others, as they always do, vastly underestimated the ability of China’s grain production capabilities.
Rather than China’s rapid industrialization and economic growth outstripping its ability to produce food, China, as Morris noted, “has built its capacity to address its own problems, it doesn’t need us any more.”
Brown made two fundamental errors of the type commonly made by prophets of doom. First, he assumed that very short trends — in this case, just over two years (!!) — represented long-term trends. Second, he assumed that the development model that Japan followed — rapid industrialization and population expansion that quickly created land shortages — would also be applicable to China, despite the obvious dissimilarities between the two (Brown might want to locate Japan and China on a map someday and compare and contrast the respective land mass of the two countries).
Source:
China ‘ no longer needs food aid’. The BBC, December 13, 2004.
UN Agency to Halt Food Aid to China. Benjamin Sand, NewsVOA.Com, December 14, 2004.
Future Directions for China’s Food Demand. Robert Wisner, AgDM Newsletter, November 2000.
Who Will Feed China:
Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet. Press Release, WorldWatch Institute, November 3, 1995.
Tags: China, World Food Program