by Lennart Bí¥ge
UN ChronicleNumber 3, 2001
There is general agreement within the international community that we are not currently on track to reach the goal of the World Food Summit: to reduce by half the number of undernourished people in the world by the year 2015. In other words, the state of world food security and nutrition in 2001 is not what we had hoped it would be. From this, compelling questions follow, namely, what are we doing about the situation, and will we be able to do enough in time to meet the Summit goal?
Poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition are closely linked. On a conceptual level, the interrelations can be complex; on a human level, the reality is startlingly simple. To paraphrase a traditional Chinese proverb: "Well-fed people have many problems, hungry people have only one."
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) recognizes that food is a central concern and often a daily preoccupation of those the Fund works for: the rural poor. IFAD was created in 1977, with a clear mandate to prioritize "the need to increase food production and to improve the nutritional level of the poorest populations in food deficit countries". Operationalizing that mandate has been a work in progress, informed by what is now almost 25 years of practical experience.
By lending to Governments to invest in the poorest and most food insecure areas, IFAD influences the flow of public resources. It draws the attention of policy makers to the links between food insecurity, productivity and equitable economic growth. It fosters recognition of the fact that food insecurity and malnutrition prevent the poor from participating in the mainstream of development. All too often, hunger is looked at in the abstract, without keeping in mind the imperative of thinking about individuals and households, who have not only specific needs but also many strengths. The key to successful and sustainable reduction in poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition lies in identifying constraints and building on strengths. It is important to acknowledge these individuals and households as the agents of change and not merely as passive objects whose problems will be solved by Governments and outside donors.
Three Rome-based United Nations agencies that focus on food-related issues - FAO, WFP and IFAD - recently collaborated to produce System-wide Guidance on Household Food Security and Nutrition, a document that underlined fundamental points of common understanding on household food security: "Although there have been a variety of definitions used in the last decade as the concept developed, there are no serious underlying contradictions. Households are considered food secure when they have year-round access to the amount and variety of safe foods their members need to lead active and healthy lives. Thus, household food security has three key dimensions: the availability of food, access to food, and utilization of food."
IFAD projects typically address more than one of these key dimensions. For example, one project may promote agricultural extension services to increase food production and availability, while also upgrading rural financial services to improve access to food and improving potable water supplies to enhance food utilization. Even when projects do not intentionally address household food security, they often create consequences for food security at the household level, whether positive or negative. Nutrition status is broadly determined by three factors: food security, health and caring practices.
Here again, the natural focus of IFAD projects tends to be on the security factor. However, in project areas where primary health systems are severely constrained and communities prioritize improvements in these services, IFAD projects retain the flexibility to address such needs and priorities.
It is still apparent that IFAD and many other organizations have not been sufficiently farsighted in preparing to meet the challenges associated with the burden of disease experienced by impoverished communities. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is but one example, with profound implications across the spectrum of development activities. Issues of caring practices are of growing importance, as these are typically in the domain of women. This is not the only link between gender, household food security and nutrition, but it is a particularly strong one. Investing in the education of women - through primary schooling for girls, functional literacy for adult women, or nutrition/health education for women's groups - generates multiple positive effects.
Caring practices tend to improve, as do most indicators of family well-being. More generally, improving women's access to land, income, technologies and knowledge, as well as their ability to influence decisions that have a bearing on their lives, are essential conditions for reductions in hunger and food insecurity.
This is emphasized in the Lending Policies and Criteria by IFAD, where it states that "… the group deserving more particular attention is poor rural women, who are the most significant suppliers of family labour and efficient managers of household food security". Given the general consensus on the basic issues involved in household food security and nutrition, and the types of activities being promoted by the international community, why then are our efforts still falling short of the mark?
Progress in alleviating poverty and ending chronic hunger depends primarily on the people and Governments of the developing countries themselves. However, the international community must offer stronger support, and development cooperation needs to be strengthened. During the 1990s, aid to agriculture and rural development declined significantly. To regain the momentum necessary for meeting the goal of the World Food Summit, this trend needs to be reversed, and aid for rural development and agriculture should be raised substantially.
In this context, it can be hoped that more countries will follow the examples of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden in reaching the international aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product and in directing an increasing proportion of their assistance to the rural areas, where the poor live, and to agriculture, which provides them with their livelihoods. Improved trade access for developing countries in the markets of the developed world should be a high priority. The recent decision by the European Union to allow duty-free imports from least developed countries of "everything but arms" is welcome, but it is only a first step.
Arguably, we in the UN system and the many other organizations working in international development can do more. Collectively, we can take action to help reverse the trend of declining assistance targeted toward rural agricultural communities and begin scaling up appropriate activities in the field. Two such actions deserve particular attention: collaborating effectively, and generating and demonstrating impact.
Each UN agency has its mandate, and it is the continuing work of each to ensure that those mandates dovetail rather than overlap - to find synergy rather than organizational inertia. A case in point is the movement toward convergence of the international development goals, the goals of the Millennium Summit and those of the World Food Summit. This is a significant step in facilitating a framework for inter-agency collaboration and disciplining ourselves to communicate with the public more clearly and consistently. The ongoing inter-agency work on food insecurity and vulnerability information and mapping systems is a sound example of practical collaboration in building international and national networks to assemble, analyze and disseminate information about the problems of food insecurity and malnutrition. Addressing those problems at the country level requires combined efforts on the part of Governments, donors, civil society organizations and communities.
Lack of coordination in the field - and even competition - among donors and aid organizations, and an absence of dialogue with national governments, can result in wastage of valuable resources. A mutually agreed framework for global goals can also assist in generating and demonstrating impact at the community level. For IFAD, being better able to capture and measure impact in project areas is a high priority. "Impact", as it is intended here, refers specifically to meaningful changes in the lives of the rural poor, as opposed to "outputs", such as the number of committees formed, people trained or facilities constructed.
Some of the most promising advancements in this regard involve the use of measures of malnutrition among young children (anthropometric indicators). The Dialogue among Civilizations framework now recognizes childhood malnutrition as an indicator of economic well-being, as well as a reflection of basic household food security and nutrition status. These indicators have the advantage of being applicable at community, country and global levels, and are inherently gender-sensitive.
Reduction in chronic malnutrition, also known as "stunting", or low height-for-age, is particularly relevant for IFAD projects. Elevated levels of chronic malnutrition indicate persistent deprivation over a period of months or years. Children who suffer from chronic malnutrition can be irreversibly disabled in terms of mental and physical development. This, in turn, causes poor performance in school and impaired physical capacity, depleting the primary source of development potential in communities and contributing to the inter-generational transmission of poverty. Conversely, as noted in the Rural Poverty Report 2001, "… a virtuous circle emerges from outlays for better child nutrition: it brings better adult health, education and productivity, which further improve child nutrition".
Establishing benchmark measures of childhood malnutrition enables the estimation of project impact on household food security and nutrition through repeat surveys at the project's mid-term and completion evaluation. Of course, these measures are used only as anchor indicators of impact. Any comprehensive evaluation requires an appropriate balance of quantitative and qualitative information, and the full participation of all project participants.
Progress in reducing poverty, household food insecurity and malnutrition, necessary to achieve the goal of the World Food Summit, will require scaling up the present level of activity. Acknowledging that we are not currently on track to meet the Summit goal is in no way an admission of defeat. Rather, it should be taken as an early warning call, an unambiguous message that we in the international community need to redouble our efforts.
In the preparation for the World Food Summit Five Years Later, it is time to hear that early warning call and take substantive action. If we are better able to collaborate effectively, increase the impact of our work and demonstrate that impact at all levels, these actions should also encourage a reversal in the trend of declining resources dedicated to rural development.
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