BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 20
By Fidan Babayeva - Trend:
Last year the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, a monitoring report that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) produces in collaboration with other UN partners, warned that economic slowdowns and downturns helped explain rising undernourishment levels in 65 of 77 countries that recorded such rises between 2011 and 2017, Deputy-Director, Agricultural Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Marco V. Sánchez Cantillo told Trend.
“In the absence of timely and effective policy responses, COVID-19 will exacerbate an already unwelcome increase in the number of people who don’t have enough to eat,” Cantillo added.
“The International Monetary Fund has just slashed its global gross domestic product forecast by a huge 6.3 percentage points, making FAO’s analysis all the more relevant as part of a worldwide toolkit to prevent the health crisis from triggering starvation,” the deputy director said.
“In January, the IMF anticipated global GDP would expand by 3.3 percent, but in April, when much of the world was shutting down to contain contagion, it issued a new forecast of minus 3.0 percent,” Cantillo said.
“Analyzing data of food supply since 1995, linked to FAO’s statistical development of the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator, and correlating them to past local economic trends in countries that are net food importers, we find that millions of people are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID-19-triggered recession,” the deputy director said.
“That number will vary according to the severity of GDP growth contractions, ranging from 14.4 million to 80.3 million depending on the scenario, with the latter figure a truly devastating contraction of 10 percentage points in all 101 net food-importing countries’ GDP growth,” Cantillo said. “The actual outcome could be worse if current inequalities in access to food are worsened – something that absolutely should not be allowed to happen.”
“FAO is emphasizing that all countries must also foster measures to protect people’s ability to access food that is locally, regionally and globally available,” the deputy director said. “The nexus between undernourishment and economic performance was already driving the world away from the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030.”
“Governments are rolling out unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus to conserve economic capital and support safety nets for the newly unemployed,” Cantillo said. “Many countries lack the tools to deploy such liquidity injections and public spending commitments. The international community must facilitate their capacity to act, while these countries must exert fiscal responsibility and objectivity to reallocate their own resources along with assistance to the most urgent needs that the COVID-19 pandemic has created.”
“Health is the first priority, but sufficient and healthy food is a central part of the health response to the pandemic,” the deputy director said.
“So not only must efforts focus on keeping food supply chains alive, but it’s imperative to focus on food accessibility for all,” Cantillo added. “Governments have an opportunity to tackle this issue head on by targeting the required official stimulus packages to the poorest and undernourished. Tools such as cash and in-kind transfers, new credit lines, safety nets, food banks, keeping school-lunch programmes alive can be useful.”
“Keep in mind that emphatically focusing on “have nots” will have a doubly positive effect, both helping those most in need and maximizing the impact of public resource outlays on maintaining the dynamism of demand,” the deputy director said.
“There could be a third positive effect as well: minimizing outright hunger in ways that avoid food insecurity and malnutrition will reduce the long-term scars inflicted by the recession, fostering more vitality and less dependence in the future,” Cantillo said.
In November 2016, FAO and the Azerbaijani government signed the Partnership Program for 2016-2020.
Azerbaijan has been a member of FAO since 1995. The organization’s office in the country has been operating since 2007.
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