Hunger

In many places around the world, hunger is worse than ever before.

That’s the message of the 2022 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), released this week. The report paints a grim picture of global food security. Almost 193 million people across 53 countries/territories were acutely food insecure in 2021, up nearly 40 million people from 2020. This number represents a new record and is only expected to worsen throughout 2022.

Our window of opportunity for achieving SDG 2 — eradicating hunger and malnutrition and ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all by 2030 — is closing rapidly. However, far from moving closer to that goal, the world has seen a resurgence of hunger and food insecurity.

The number of undernourished people around the world rose from 653 million in 2015 to 690 million in 2019. According to a recent policy brief produced for the Food Systems Summit, more than 840 million people could suffer from by 2030, putting Sustainable Development Goal 2 – the eradication of hunger and malnutrition by 2030 – in serious jeopardy.  

When Ellen Piwoz joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2007, the global nutrition field seemed to be struggling. The community “lacked a common narrative and agenda for action,” she said. It was also difficult to engage outsiders who did not understand the nutrition community’s techno-speak, and the field was also critically underfunded with a narrow donor base. 

The challenges facing global food security continue to increase, driven by ongoing conflict and climate shocks. According to the 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report (released last week by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO), 821 million people were undernourished around the world in 2017; this represents a further rise from the 815 million estimated by the 2017 report. This troubling rise in undernourishment reverses progress seen over the past decade.