Abstract

The FAO World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996 set the goal of halving the numbers of the global population suffering hunger by the year 2015, which was later incorporated into the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that commit the international community to an expanded vision of development, and one that vigorously promotes human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries. The two targets under the first MDG goal to eradicate poverty and hunger call for halving the proportion of individuals who suffer from poverty and from hunger by 2015. This commitment is another instance of the international community through the UN system yet again renewing its efforts and setting a target and a time frame to deal with the global problem of hunger, poverty and malnutrition. To date, the efforts to reduce global hunger in the developing world have fallen far short of the pace required to meet these targets. There has no doubt been some progress and several countries in the developing world have proved that success is possible. The economic and societal costs to developing countries of not taking decisive action, and thus failing to achieve a reduction in hunger and undernutrition, including micronutrient malnutrition costs, are that every year five million children lose their lives, 220 million disability-adjusted life years are lost as a result of childhood and maternal undernutrition and billions of dollars are lost in productivity and incomes in these countries. Alongside this perennial problem in developing societies are emerging new epidemics of diet-related diseases resulting from the profound demographic changes, urbanization and the economic transition that is transforming and globalizing the food systems in these countries. Thus, many developing countries are facing new and additional challenges of co-existing hunger alongside the emergence of other forms of malnutrition. Meeting the WFS and MDG targets of achieving the goal of halving global hunger is urgent, and the question that needs to be addressed is not whether the international community can achieve this goal in time but whether it can afford not to.