RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In 2019, 47.7 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean experienced hunger, which means that they were unable to consume enough calories to lead an active and healthy life.
This was the fifth consecutive year in which this indicator grew in the region, according to the report entitled State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 (SOFI), released on Monday in Santiago (Chile) by several UN agencies.
Despite not considering the impact of Covid-19, which has had dramatic consequences in this region, it is estimated that 20 million more people will face hunger within a decade, that is: in 2030 it will affect 67 million Latin Americans.
“The hunger figures for 2019 are chilling, as is the projection for 2030,” said Julio Berdegué, regional representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one of the organizations that prepared the report together with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“With the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the reality will be worse than we projected in this study. We need an extraordinary response from governments, the private sector, civil society, and multilateral organizations,” added the Mexican diplomat.
With these figures, the region will not be able to meet Sustainable Development Goal 2: zero hunger by 2030. “We are worse off now than when the region committed to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Since then, nine million more people have been experiencing hunger,” said the head of FAO’s regional office in Santiago.
If hunger currently affects 7.4 percent of the Latin American and Caribbean population, it is projected to increase tp 9.5 percent by 2030. The SOFI report also specifies that this increase will be more intense in South America, reaching 7.7 percent, which is equivalent to almost 36 million people.
In Central America, it would climb three percent over the next decade and affect 7.9 million people. While it is recognized that the Caribbean has made essential progress, it would not meet Sustainable Development Goal 2 of zero hunger by 2030 either. By that date, the study shows that there would be 6.6 million people in this sub-region who would not be able to consume enough calories to lead an active and healthy life.
Between 2000 and 2014, the number of people experiencing hunger decreased in the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries members of the United Nations: from 73 million people to 38 million. It was a time of economic growth for the region and very strong political decisions by national governments that placed the issue of food among their priorities.
However, in 2015 -the same year in which the Heads of State, meeting at the UN General Assembly, adopted Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals- the setback began. Economic development slowed down and social programs weakened, with the result that in 2018, 43 million people suffered from this scourge. In an interview in early June, Berdegué said that because of the pandemic “we may have a historic setback in the fight against hunger in Latin America”.
The study also alerts to the increase in obesity, which affects 7.5 percent of minors under five years of age in the region, a figure “significantly higher” than the 5.6 percent world average. It is not strange, considering a reality that the SOFI classifies as “worrying”: Latin America and the Caribbean comprise the area of the planet where it is more expensive to afford a diet that covers the minimum energy requirements: 1.6 dollars per person daily. According to the report, this figure is 34 percent higher than the global average.
Something similar is true regarding the cost of a healthy diet. It costs more in the subcontinent to maintain a diet that provides all the essential nutrients and energy each person needs to remain healthy: US$3.98 (R$20) per day per person. This figure is over three times what a person below the poverty line could spend on food every day. According to the average income estimated by the SOFI, over 104 million people in the region cannot afford a balanced diet.
Source: El País