What could be done to end world hunger and poverty?
Answer:
Almost 200 countries agreed in 1990 to cut worldwide hunger in half by 2015. That commitment is now looking like an empty promise -- all talk and no action -- according to a Cornell University expert on world hunger.
If business proceeds as usual, just as many people will be hungry in the world -- 800 million -- in 2015 as there were 16 years ago, said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Cornell's Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy and the 2001 Food Prize laureate. He will speak (Feb. 17) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is participating in a symposium, "Mobilizing Science to End Poverty in the Developing World."
"Even though 186 countries agreed with the Millennium Development Goals to reduce the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by half, no one's doing anything about it," Pinstrup-Andersen says. "It's disgraceful -- it's immoral and appalling. We could achieve the goals, but won't."
About 1.2 billion people -- almost four times the U.S. population -- in developing countries live on $1 a day or less, he says. Although China has reduced its poverty levels, hunger worldwide has grown in more than half of the developing countries since 1990. In fact, the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa has jumped 20 percent since then, says Pinstrup-Andersen, who also chairs the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and is a former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
With 10 million children d ying every year from disease and hunger, the world is increasingly unstable. "It's very sad and makes the world much more dangerous, because more people will be motivated to commit acts of terror to express their rage at the growing disparity and unfairness between the rich and poor," he says.
Pinstrup-Andersen recently examined the programs and outcomes of 25 international conferences addressing world poverty to assess progress toward the Millennium goals. "They all discussed the goals and targets, but very little progress has been made," he says. "The governments of developed nations just don't care; they have the resources but not the political will. And the governments of developing nations don't invest in alleviating hunger and poverty because they're only interested in short-term results for their own political careers."
He notes that alleviating hunger and poverty is not only a humanitarian imperative but also it is in the self-interest of the United States and other developed countries because doing so would not only reduce terrorism but also improve trade and relieve immigration pressures.
Pinstrup-Andersen points out that developing nations spend, on average, 0.5 percent of the value of their agricultural output on research when they should be spending 2 percent. By comparison, the United States spends 5 percent.
Since 70 to 75 percent of the world's poor and hungry live in rural areas in developing countries, Pinstrup-Andersen urges the adoption of policies that promote economic growth and poverty alleviation in these areas. "They will be the most important approach for a long time to come and need to include investments in rural roads, markets, agricultural research and technology, primary education and health care," he says.
Policies should also focus on increasing farm incomes in rural areas in low-income countries, as well as on generating non-agricultural employment, particularly in urban areas, to absorb rural migration.
Hunger and Poverty are Related IssuesA common, often altruistic, theme amongst many is to be able to solve world hunger via some method that may produce more food. However, often missed is the relationship between poverty and hunger. Hunger is an effect of poverty and poverty is largely a political issue. (While manifesting itself as an economic issue, conditions causing poverty are political and end up being economic.)
As shown in the Genetically Engineered Food and Human Population sections on this web site, people are hungry not due to lack of availability of food, but because people do not have the ability to purchase food and because distribution of food is not equitable. In addition, there is also a lot of politics influencing how food is produced, who it is produced by (and who benefits), and for what purposes the food is produced (such as exporting rather than for the hungry, feedstuff, etc.)
[A]ccess to food and other resources is not a matter of availability, but rather of ability to pay. Put bluntly, those with the most money command the most resources, whilst those with little or no money go hungry. This inevitably leads to a situation whereby some sections of humanity arguably have too much and other sections little or nothing. Indeed, globally the richest 20 per cent of humanity controls around 85 per cent of all wealth, whilst the poorest 20 per cent control only 1.5 per cent.
— Ross Copeland, The Politics of Hunger, September 2000
By more products and services. That will build up businesses and supply more jobs to more people.
Thats a tough question...read writings by Jeffrey Sachs. He is a noted scholar on this exact subject...
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/about/dire...
a very large buffet
genetically modify foods to be drought and disease while being super nutritious.
...oh wait, people are doing that, and morons keep saying how that is such a bad thing
quick question would you rather starve or eat GM foods.
Limit population (along the lines of birth control).
I've been reading more and more things in Time Magazing stating that many of the world's issues, diminishing resources, hunger, disease, poverty, increasing CO2 emmissions, GLOBAL WARMING, could ALL be solved or lessened by first starting to limit population. It's ALSO projected that there will be 9 billion people on Earth by 2050. Also, 70 percent of TODAY's population will be a part of that 9 billion in 2050.
The reason why I mention Global Warming is not that I believe that it is more important than world hunger and poverty, however it is that I believe the environmental status of the entire Earth and our surviving as the human race depends on saving the Earth and it's resources and also limiting population to make a healthier, wealthier population with more availible resources.
Many people believe that aid is the way to go. However, us in the West have tried over and over to use this format to provide relief to under-developed areas, and have failed.
The best method to end world hunger is to bring up these nations through a semi-capitalistic system and micro-lending. A book written by Muhammad Yunus called "A Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty." This book outlines a viable solution to the world poverty problem. The best way is not through giving these nations money, but showing them how to use it and how to compete in a global market.
As an old proverb says, "give a man a fish he eats for a day; teach a man how to fish, he'll eat for a life-time."
There is no one solution to worldwide hunger and poverty but in the case of africa. They have 2 main problems 1) poor governments. Many of the governments do not have an adequate rule of law to basically keep order amongst people plus there is little government revenue so politicians and civil servants resort to corruption to make more money. 2) Many people subsist on agriculture but they are located in areas that either aren't very conducive to farming and the crops that they have are not very resistant to drought and disease and in some cases are less efficient uses of the land available.
Sending drought resistant crops and aid in the way of establishig better farming would help the hunger. However the problem of bad governments has no simple solution. The US, the UN or developed countries cannot just run other countries governments for a number of reasons.
Gene6tically modifed crops
Economic freedom, property rights, and contract law would end most of the poverty in the world.
"Ace of Spades 116" has a valid point about limiting population. THAT is EXTREMELY important, but no one is doing anything about it.
"Matt M" makes some good points about impoverished governments, too.
One thing I have NOT seen directly and adequately addressed in any of these answers, though, is mis-use and mis-direction of resources. If some of these countries and cultures would put the money, effort and other resources into building and maintaining a livable society that they put into their local conflicts, weapons and militaristic activities, most of them would be living happy and relatively comfortable lives.
As long as there are significant numbers of people who care more about taking other people's lives than they care about improving their own, world hunger and poverty WILL prevail against even the best efforts to end it.
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