June 15, 1995

International Conference Hears Call for Human Right to Food, Global Action Plan for Preventing Hunger While Protecting the Environment to Year 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C., Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general of the Washington, D.C.-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), predicted today that the world will be faced with pervasive malnutrition and suffering in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which could lead to a global refugee crisis, unless actions are taken now to reduce poverty and prevent malnutrition in these regions in the coming years. At the conference A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, Pinstrup-Andersen also warned that water could become the battleground of the 21st century unless the world takes measures to conserve water in all sectors of society. His comments were based on IFPRI's sweeping assessment of the challenges and actions needed to prevent hunger and feed the world while protecting the environment to the year 2020.

"The most important question today is not whether we can feed the world," said Pinstrup-Andersen to the conference of more than 500 people, including the vice president of Uganda, ministers, prominent scientists and economists, and leaders of aid and nongovernmental organizations, which was held at the National Geographic Society. "Rather, it is whether civil society and governments in both developing and developed countries have the political will to feed the world, and commit to taking the actions that are needed today. We must act now. For each day we wait, many thousands of children will die and many millions of people will be hungry, poor, and desperate. Lack of action today could lead to social and political instability throughout many regions of the world, as well as a global refugee crisis. There has been a 10-fold increase in refugees since the mid-1970s to 50 million displaced persons today. As poverty and hunger become more entrenched, this number will only grow."

The IFPRI assessment, "A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment: The Vision, Challenge, and Recommended Action," calls for "a world where every person has economic and physical access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life, where malnutrition is absent, and where food originates from efficient, effective, and low-cost food and agricultural systems that are compatible with sustainable use and management of natural resources. The 2020 Vision is based on the principle affirmed by the United Nations and its members that freedom from hunger is a human right."

Specifically, IFPRI charged world leaders with responsibility for the following actions:

1. The international development community, as well as national governments the world over, must depart from the popular view that weak government or no government is good government. Nongovernmental organizations and the private sector cannot achieve the 2020 Vision alone. Developing-country governments must be strengthened to undertake those crucial activities best done by governments and must let go of activities best done by other groups in society, such as private enterprises and nongovernmental organizations.

2. Developing countries, although constrained by limited financial resources and often beset by civil strife, must nonetheless invest in poor people. People must have access to employment, productive resources (such as land and credit), basic health care, and education in order to increase their capacity to earn a decent living.

3. Developing countries must increase agricultural growth, for such growth is the most efficient means of alleviating poverty, protecting the environment, and generating broad-based economic growth. Most poor developing countries should spend at least 1 percent of their revenues from agricultural production on agricultural research, which will increase agricultural production and lower the cost of food. This research must contribute to low-cost agriculture, not the high-cost, subsidized agriculture pursued in the industrialized world. Such a low-cost strategy is essential if developing countries are to be competitive in the new international trade environment and, even more important, if they are to be able to feed their people.

4. Development assistance and national policies should demonstrate particular commitment to areas with fragile soils, limited rainfall, and widespread poverty.

   Furthermore, water must be used much more efficiently, with far more attention paid to eliminating waste, in order to avoid the looming prospect of dramatic water shortages and civil and international water wars. Such conflicts are already brewing in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and South Asia.

   Developing countries must also pursue alternatives to excessive use of pesticides in agriculture. The most promising solution is integrated pest management, which combines the use of biological controls, such as natural predators, with limited application of chemicals. The challenge is for the entire world to put integrated pest management into practice.

5. In order to reduce the extremely high cost of bringing food from the farmer to the consumer in the poorest developing countries, governments should invest in improving rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, and telecommunications). They should either increase public sector investment in infrastructure or effectively regulate private sector investment in infrastructure.

6. Although foreign assistance can only provide a small fraction of the financial resources that will be needed to achieve the 2020 Vision, it is crucial to achieving the Vision. The current downward trend in international development assistance should be reversed. All industrialized countries should contribute at least 0.7 percent of their GNP to foreign assistance. The urgent need for foreign assistance to support the 2020 Vision in lower-income developing countries should take precedence over current assistance to higher-income developing countries. Foreign assistance for agricultural research can bring tangible benefits to donors. Each dollar invested in agricultural research in developing countries brings a four-dollar return in export markets, and this provides opportunities for competitive industrialized countries.

"The actions we recommend for achieving the 2020 Vision can be summarized in this way," continued Pinstrup-Andersen. "Developing-country governments and foreign assistance agencies should invest in poor people, agricultural productivity, measures to conserve water and other natural resources, and improvements in agricultural markets.

"Our time is running out," continued Pinstrup-Andersen. "Already over 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day, 800 million people go to bed hungry, and over 200 million preschool children are malnourished. Business as usual will beget increased poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and an unchanged, still severe, poverty situation in South Asia. It is not ethical or wise for the world to continue to harbor such poverty. There is tremendous human suffering associated with these numbers, and the productivity of starving, malnourished people is low, to say the least.

The 2020 Vision will not be achieved unless the productivity of poor people is increased and their access to emloyment enhanced." The conference, A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, is part of a larger effort by the same name led by IFPRI and an international committee of distinguished leaders and development experts, chaired by H.E. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. The 2020 Vision initiative is funded by the governments of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States; the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations; Germany-based AgrEvo Gmbh; France-based Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le D‚veloppement (CIRAD); Switzerland-based Ciba-Geigy; Canada-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC); Italy-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC); the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

IFPRI was established in 1975 to identify and analyze policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world. IFPRI is one of 16 international research organizations supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an informal association of some 40 countries, international and regional organizations, and foundations whose mission is to contribute to sustainable improvements in agricultural productivity.