By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Sep 19 2014 (IPS)

At the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), heads of government and the international community committed themselves to reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half. Five years later, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lowered this level of ambition by only seeking to halve the proportion of the hungry.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The latest State of World Food Insecurity (SOFI) report for 2014 by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates that 805 million people – one in nine people worldwide – remain chronically hungry: 789 million are in developing countries where this share has declined from 23.4 to 13.5 percent.

By 2012-14, 63 developing countries had reached the MDG target – to either reduce the share of hungry people by half, or keep the share of the hungry under five percent – with several more on track to do so by 2015.

Some 25 countries have made more impressive progress, achieving the more ambitious WFS target of halving the number of hungry. However, the number of hungry people in the world has only declined by one-fifth from the billion estimated for 1990-92.

Major effort needed

The proportion of undernourished people – those regularly not able to consume enough food for an active and healthy life – has decreased from 23.4 percent in 1990–1992 to 13.5 percent in 2012–2014. This is significant because a large and growing number of countries show that achieving and sustaining rapid progress in reducing hunger is feasible.

However, the MDG target of halving the chronically undernourished people’s share of the world’s population by the end of 2015 cannot be met at the current rate of progress. Meeting the target is still possible, however, with a sufficient, immediate additional effort to accelerate progress, especially in countries which have showed little progress so far.

Progress uneven

“By 2012-14, 63 developing countries had reached the MDG target – to either reduce the share of hungry people by half, or keep the share of the hungry under five percent – with several more on track to do so by 2015”
Overall progress has been highly uneven. All but 14 million of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. Some countries and regions have seen only slow progress in reducing hunger, while the absolute number of hungry has even increased in several cases. While sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of the chronically hungry, almost one in four, South Asia has the highest number, with over half a billion undernourished.

Marked differences in reducing undernourishment have persisted across regions. There have been significant reductions in both the estimated share and number of undernourished in most countries in Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean – where the MDG target of halving the hunger rate has been reached, or nearly reached.

West Asia has seen a rise in the share of the hungry compared with 1990–1992, while progress in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania has not been sufficient to meet the MDG hunger target by 2015.

In several countries, underweight and stunting persist in children, even when undernourishment is low and most people have access to sufficient food. Such nutrition failures are due not only to insufficient food access, but also to poor health conditions and the high incidence of diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Food security and nutrition

Hunger is conventionally measured in terms of the prevalence of undernourishment, the FAO estimate of chronic inadequacy of dietary energy. While such a measure is useful for estimating hunger, it needs to be complemented by more measures to capture other dimensions of food security.

SOFI’s suite of indicators measures different dimensions of food security. Information thus generated can guide priority policy actions. For example, in countries where low undernourishment coexists with high malnutrition, specially-designed nutrition-enhancing interventions may be crucial to address early childhood stunting.

With the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals likely to seek to overcome hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, FAO has recently developed and tested a new Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) in over 150 countries to measure the severity of reported food insecurity.

Lessons

Improvements in nutrition generally require complementary policies, including improving health conditions, hygiene, water supply and education. More sophisticated and creative approaches to coordination and governance are needed, with more, and more effective, resources to end hunger and malnutrition in our lifetimes.

With high levels of deprivation, unemployment and underemployment continuing and likely to prevail in the world in the foreseeable future, poverty and hunger are unlikely to be overcome without universalising social protection to all in need, but also to provide the means for future livelihoods and resilience.

The forthcoming Second International Conference of Nutrition in Rome on November 19-21 is expected to articulate coherent bases for accelerated progress to overcome undernutrition as well as for greater international cooperation and support for enhanced and more integrated national nutrition efforts.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Yilmaz Akyüz
GENEVA, Jul 16 2014 (IPS)

Since the onset of the crisis, the South Centre has argued that policy responses to the crisis by the European Union and the United States has suffered from serious shortcomings that would delay recovery and entail unnecessary losses of income and jobs, and also endanger future growth and stability. 

Despite cautious optimism from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the world economy is not in good shape. Six years into the crisis, the United States has not fully recovered, the Euro zone has barely started recovering, and developing countries are losing steam. There is fear that the crisis is moving to developing countries.

Yilmaz Akyuz

There is concern in regard to the longer-term prospects for three main reasons.

First, the crisis and policy response aggravated systemic problems, whereby inequality has widened. Inequality is no longer only a social problem, but also presents a macroeconomic problem. Inequality is holding back growth and creating temptation to rely on financial bubbles once again in order to generate spending.

Second, global trade imbalances have been redistributed at the expense of developing countries, whereby the Euro zone especially Germany has become a deadweight on global expansion.

Third, systemic financial instability remains unaddressed, despite the initial enthusiasm in terms of reform of governance of international finance, and in addition new fragilities have been added due to the ultra-easy monetary policy.“The external financial vulnerability of the South is linked to developing countries’ integration in global financial markets and the significant liberalisation of external finance and capital accounts in these countries” – Yilmaz Akyuz

The policy response to the crisis has been an inconsistent policy mix, including fiscal austerity and an ultra-easy monetary policy. While the crisis was created by finance, the solution was still sought through finance. Countries focused on a search for a finance-driven boom in private spending via asset price bubbles and credit expansion. Fiscal policy has been invariably tight.

The ultra-easy monetary policy created over one trillion dollars in fiscal benefits in the United States – which was more than the initial fiscal stimulus; the entire initial fiscal stimulus was limited to 800 billion dollars.

There was reluctance to remove debt overhang through comprehensive restructuring (i.e. for mortgages in the United States and sovereign and bank debt in the European Union). Thus, the focus was on bailing out creditors.

There was also reluctance to remove mortgage overhang and no attempt to tax the rich and support the poor, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States – where marginal tax rates are low compared with continental Europe. There has been resistance against permanent monetisation of public deficits and debt, which does not pose more dangers for prices and financial stability than the ultra-easy monetary policy.

The situation in the United States has been better than in other advanced economies. The United States dealt with the financial but not with the economic crisis, whereby recovery has been slow due to fiscal drag and debt overhang. And employment is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels before 2018.

As for the Euro zone, Japan and the United Kingdom, all have had second or third dips since 2008. None of them have restored pre-crisis incomes and jobs.

Meanwhile, trade imbalances have not been removed, but redistributed. East Asian surplus has dropped sharply and Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa have moved to large deficits. Developing countries’ surplus has fallen from 720 billion dollars to 260 billion dollars. On the contrary, advanced economies have moved from deficit to surplus, whereby U.S. deficits have fallen and the Euro zone has moved from a 100 billion dollars deficit to a 300 billion dollars surplus.

As tapering comes to an end and the U.S. Federal Reserve stops buying further assets, the attention will be turned to the question of exit, normalisation and the expectations of increased instability of financial markets for both the United States and the emerging economies.

This exit will also create fiscal problems for the United States because, as bonds held by the Federal Reserve mature and quantitative easing ends, long-term interest rates will rise and the fiscal benefits of the ultra-easy monetary policy would be reversed.

Developing countries lost steam as recovery in advanced economies remained weak or absent due to the fading effect of counter-cyclical policies and the narrowing of policy space. China could not keep on investing and doing the same thing. Another factor contributing to the change of context in developing countries has been the weakened capital inflows that became highly unstable with the deepening of the Euro zone crisis and then Federal Reserve tapering. Several emerging economies have been under stress as markets are pricing-in normalisation of monetary policy even before it has started.

The external financial vulnerability of the South is linked to developing countries’ integration in global financial markets and the significant liberalisation of external finance and capital accounts in these countries. These include opening up securities markets, private borrowing abroad, resident outflows, and opening up to foreign banks. While developing countries did not manage capital flows adequately, the IMF did not provide support in this area, tolerating capital controls only as a last resort and on a temporary basis.

Several deficit developing countries with asset, credit and spending bubbles are particularly vulnerable.  Countries with strong foreign reserves and current account positions would not be insulated from shocks, as seen after the Lehman crisis. When a country is integrated in the international financial system, it will feel the shock one way or another, although those countries with deficits remain more vulnerable.

In regard to policy responses in the case of a renewed turmoil, it is convenient to avoid business-as-usual, including using reserves and borrowing from the IMF or advanced economies to finance large outflows. The IMF lends, not to revive the economy but to keep stable the debt levels and avoid default. It is also inconvenient to adjust through retrenching and austerity.

Ways should be found to bail-in foreign investors and lenders, and use exchange controls and temporary debt standstills. In this sense, the IMF should support such approaches through lending into arrears.

More importantly, the U.S. Federal Reserve is responsible for the emergence of this situation and should take on its responsibility and act as a lender of last resort to emerging economies, through swaps or buying bonds as and when needed. These are not necessarily more toxic than the bonds issued at the time of subprime crisis. The United States has much at stake in the stability of emerging economies. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

*   A longer version of this column has been published in the South Centre Bulletin (No. 80, 30 June 2014).

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden hold a meeting with Combatant Commanders and Military Leadership in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Nov. 12, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 29 2013 (IPS)

From the Middle East to the East China Sea, the last week’s events have offered a particularly vivid example of the much-heralded shift in foreign policy priorities under the administration of President Barack Obama.

Just four days ago, the U.S. and its P5+1 partners (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) announced a historic agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme, an accord that many analysts believe could pave the way for an eventual strategic rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.Obama is determined to minimise U.S. military commitments and resources in the Greater Middle East to free them up for use elsewhere.

Predictably, the accord came under sharp criticism from Washington’s closest Mideast allies, especially Israel and its hawkish supporters here, as the latest and most worrisome example of Obama’s “weakness” and “appeasement” in dealing with Washington’s deadliest foes.

Just two days later, the administration sent two B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea to demonstrate its solidarity with its East Asian allies in defiance of Beijing’s declaration earlier in the week of a new “air defence identification zone” (ADIZ) over the area.

That show of force drew praise from, among others, the ultra-hawkish Wall Street Journal which two days before had led the chorus of criticism against the Iran deal.

In the meantime, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, flew to Kabul to personally warn President Hamid Karzai that Washington was prepared to abandon Afghanistan to its fate after 2014 unless he signs a just-concluded long-term bilateral security agreement by Dec. 31 that would keep as many as 10,000 U.S. troops to train and advise the Afghan army and carry out missions against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Taken together, the three events dramatised Washington’s eagerness to extricate itself militarily from more than a decade of war in the Greater Middle East and “pivot” its strategic focus and resources more toward the Asia/Pacific and its highly complex relationships with China and key U.S. allies there.

Because of Washington’s status as the world’s sole military superpower, such a shift necessarily reverberates strongly throughout the affected regions, forcing lesser powers to adjust their stance to protect their own interests under changing circumstances.

Those reverberations were most clearly audible in the Middle East, where Iran’s 1979 revolution reinforced pre-existing U.S. alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia, in particular, and transformed Tehran from erstwhile strategic partner to the region’s Public Enemy Number One.

For the succeeding 34 years, Israel and the Sunni-led Gulf states enjoyed virtually unconditional U.S. support, even when their policies and actions actually undermined Washington interests – be it Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories or aggressive Saudi export of Wahabism – in the region. With Washington’s superpower status tipping the scales, the balance of power weighed heavily in their favour.

The accord struck between the P5+1 and Iran, however tentative, could alter that balance in fundamental ways, particularly if it develops into closer cooperation between Washington and Tehran on key issues extending from the eastern Mediterranean to the South Asian subcontinent.

For Saudi Arabia, whose government offered faint praise for the agreement but whose media has been filled with fear and trembling, the accord is particularly ominous.

“The Saudis are not merely concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” wrote Gregory Gause, a Saudi expert at the University of Vermont, in The New Yorker Tuesday. “They have a more profound fear: that geopolitical trends in the Middle East are aligning against them, threatening both their regional stature and their domestic security.

“The Saudis see an Iran that is dominant in Iraq and Lebanon, holding onto its ally in Syria, and now forging a new relationship with Washington – a rival, in short, without any obstacles to regional dominance,” according to Gause.

As for Israel, its military primacy – particularly if the interim accord blossoms into a comprehensive agreement that would effectively preclude Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – is assured for the foreseeable future.

But it, too, could be negatively affected by any rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran, if for no other reason than the defusing of longstanding tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme could refocus international attention on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Moreover, given its relatively well-educated population of 80 million, as well as its abundant oil and gas reserves, Iran “has far more power potential than any of the other states in the region,” noted Stephen Walt, a top international relations expert at HarvardUniversity, on his foreign-policy.com blog.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are “worried that a powerful Iran would over time exert greater influence in the region, in all the ways that major powers do,” he wrote. “From the perspective of Tel Aviv and Riyadh, the goal is to try to keep Iran in a box for as long as possible – isolated, friendless, and artificially weakened.”

U.S. rapprochement with Iran and Tehran’s integration into a revised regional security structure, on the other hand, could greatly benefit Washington’s own foreign policy objectives at both the regional and global level.

Regionally, not only would such moves eliminate the possibility of yet another U.S. war against a Muslim country. Properly handled – meaning in close consultation with Washington’s current allies – they could also help quell the broader Sunni-Shia conflict that has wrought disaster in Syria and increasingly threatens to destabilise the entire region.

Over the last year – and especially since it became clear that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had, with Tehran’s support, far more staying power than previously thought – the administration appears to have concluded that it actually needs Iran’s co-operation to stabilise the region (a conclusion seemingly shared by its ally, Turkey, which has moved quickly in recent weeks toward its own rapprochement with Iran).

Indeed, an intensification and spread of the Sunni-Shia conflict seriously threatens Obama’s strategy of extricating the U.S. from the region – or, more precisely, resuming the role of “off-shore balancer” that it played with considerable success from 1945 to 1990, according to Walt. As the civil war in Syria has shown, Iran, despite its isolation and weakened economy, remains influential enough to spoil those hopes.

But cooperation with Iran as part of a larger off-shore balancing strategy at the regional level is also critical to Obama’s larger strategy of implementing his Asian “pivot”. Its urgency was demonstrated by this week’s Chinese ADIZ declaration, the latest escalation of tensions between Beijing and its neighbours, most importantly an increasingly nationalistic Japan with which Washington has a mutual defence treaty.

Since the pivot – or “rebalancing” – was first announced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two years ago, its credibility has suffered from the perception, particularly among Asian analysts themselves, that Washington remained too preoccupied with the Greater Middle East – including Afghanistan, the pressure to intervene in Syria, and, above all, the threat of war with Iran – to be taken seriously.

But, taken in combination, September’s last-minute U.S.-Russian accord that effectively averted a U.S. strike against Syria, last week’s nuclear agreement with Iran, and Rice’s message to Karzai clearly convey the message Obama is indeed determined to minimise U.S. military commitments and resources in the region to free them up for use elsewhere.

In that context, Tuesday’s B-52 flights over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands appeared designed to highlight that impression.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.