Towards a Food Secure Asia and the Pacific

FAO launches Regional Overview of Food Insecurity for Asia and the Pacific

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today (28 May) released the Regional Overview of Food Insecurity for Asia and the Pacific – Towards a Food Secure Asia and the Pacifichighlighting key developments in a region with rapid economic growth, high achievement of social goals but still with the highest number of hungry persons globally. India has made great strides reducing the proportion of food insecure persons in the overall population, but, according to FAO, still has over 194 million hungry persons. India’s numerous social programmes are expected to continue to fight hunger and poverty.

The Asia-Pacific region has achieved the Millennium Development Goals’ hunger target (MDG-1c) of halving the proportion of undernourished people in 2015. The region has also achieved the largest reduction in the absolute number of undernourished people (236 million). However, this was not sufficient to meet the target set by the World Food Summit (WFS) of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015.

There are large disparities among sub-regions and countries in the region. While Eastern Asia and South-Eastern Asia have achieved both the MDG-1c and the WFS hunger targets, highly populous Southern Asia has not met either target.

There are 490 million people still suffering chronic hunger in the region, and Asia and the Pacific is home to almost 62 per cent of the world’s undernourished. Besides the calorie consumption deficit, the problem of under-nutrition is manifested in high rates of stunting in children below five years of age, while various micronutrient deficiencies prevail among people of all ages. At the same time, the number of people who are overweight or obese is rapidly increasing in the region, especially in Southwest Pacific Island countries and middle-income countries of Asia, including India.

The serious challenge facing the region is the remaining undernourished 12 per cent of the total population that is still hungry and has been left behind, denied their share of the benefits of economic growth. They are the poor and most vulnerable groups in society. Therefore, the challenge facing the region is not only to produce more food from the increasingly limited natural resource base, but also how to ensure more equitable access to food, while addressing various threats such as climate change

A number of policy commitments, and institutional and technological innovations, combined with effective social protection measures are required to meet this challenge, in an overall framework of sustainable economic growth that is more equitably shared and environmentally sustainable. It will be crucial to accelerate actions through the United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge (ZHC) and other relevant food security and nutrition initiatives, focusing on supporting resource-poor family farms and the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society.

Report online at UNIC web site: www.unic.org.in