The Sustainable Development Goal number 2 - A world without hunger from a green perspective
Danil Granin, a Soviet writer and war veteran who survived the siege of Leningrad, said in 2014 during the Holocaust celebrations in the German parliament that he could not forgive the Germans for a long time for waiting for the capitulation of the city. It was dishonorable for him that hunger was sent to the city instead of soldiers.
The siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany, which lasted from 1941 to 1944, remained in the shadows for decades, as the not so well-known suffering of civilians. One of the reasons why the scope of this crime was missing from many of the most significant crimes of the Second World War is that most of the innocent inhabitants of Leningrad did not suffer from the bullet but were left to die of starvation.
From the very beginning of the siege, which blocked all roads to Leningrad, there was scarcity and famine. Already the first winter was fatal for the weakest, and by the end of the siege over a million people had died of starvation and freezing. The only road led across a frozen lake and it was more than dangerous, so those who remained in the city constantly lacked food and heating.
More than 75 years have passed since the crime that took place in Leningrad, but still many people in the world are starving and dying of hunger and malnutrition, despite the fact that more than enough food is already produced for everyone, and there are opportunities to further increase food production. While on the one hand a lot of food is thrown away, and even often destroyed if the market price is not satisfactory, on the other hand we have people who are constantly hungry.
Small farmers, who actually feed more than 70% of the world's population, are constantly under attack, while their yields are becoming increasingly uncertain due to the growing number of natural disasters and climate change. Traditional crops are less and less successful in a changed climate, while the pressure of multinational corporations that control most resources and impose new expensive technologies is growing. Climate change and rising debts have contributed to nearly 60,000 Indian farmers and agricultural workers committing suicide over the past three decades.
A dream of a world without hunger
Eradicating hunger has been one of the first and always priority goals of the United Nations (UN) since its inception after World War II. Eradicating hunger and extreme poverty was one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, and it found its place in the Sustainable Development Goals that inherited them. Ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture is a priority of the second Sustainable Development Goal of the UN Agenda 2030.
In this Goal, it is stated that the purpose of the Sustainable Development Goals is to eradicate all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, taking care that everyone - especially children and the most vulnerable - have enough quality food throughout the year. This includes the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices; improving the lives and capacities of small farmers, with equal access to land, technology and markets. Also, international cooperation is needed, which will ensure investments in infrastructure and technology and thus increase productivity in agriculture.
The UN Secretary-General's Progress Report on the Sustainable Development Goals confirms that we are still far from achieving the civilizational goal of eradicating hunger. Moreover, according to the tendencies from the last couple of years, it seems like we are going in the opposite direction, and the global COVID-19 pandemic will only further increase the number of hungry people in the world.
The total number of people[1] suffering from serious food insecurity has been on the rise since 2015, and there are still millions of malnourished children. It is estimated that 26.4% of the world's population, or about 2 billion people, were affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2018, an increase from 23.2% in 2014, mainly due to increased food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Slightly more than 700 million people, or 9.2% of the world's population, experienced serious food insecurity in 2018, which means a reduction in the amount of food consumed to the extent that they felt hungry. The share of children under the age of 5 who suffered from chronic malnutrition decreased from 23.1% in 2015 to 21.3% in 2019. Three quarters of them live in Central and South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. The share of government expenditure in the agricultural sector, measured by government spending on agriculture divided by the sector's share of GDP, fell worldwide, from 0.42 to 0.31 and 0.28 percent in 2001, 2015 and 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic poses an additional threat to food production and food safety globally, as the pandemic has slowed agricultural work. In addition to the pandemic, military conflicts that cause hunger, such as the one in Yemen, which pushed millions of people over the edge of hunger, are also a constant threat to food security and the reduction of hunger. Climate change brings long dry periods that are interrupted by heavy rainfall, which in combination leads to reduced yields and what is left, again due to worsening climatic conditions, is literally eaten by locusts.
Fight for a world without hunger
A world without hunger is not a utopian dream but a real possibility, but in order to reach such a world, global solidarity and a focus on sustainable agricultural practices are necessary. Modern agricultural production today is dependent on fossil fuels and is in the hands of multinational corporations that control large areas under arable land, use a lot of artificial fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides that kill nature and feed only a small percentage of the world's population. Agriculture is responsible for 10-12% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, while as much as half of global CH4 methane emissions come from agriculture (IPCC, 2013).
Small farmers, who feed almost 70% of the world's population in a much more sustainable way, are under economic and climate impact.
The problem of world hunger is not even a question of food production technology, but a question of food distribution. Enough food is produced annually to meet the nutritional needs of more than 7.8 billion people living on planet Earth today. As much as a third of the total food produced is not used and thrown away (FAO source). Also, large amounts of food that people could use go to animal nutrition, and significant areas of land are under crops intended for biofuel production, instead of producing food on them.
Serbia is often described as a country where hunger has been eradicated, but according to data for 2014, as many as 6% of children under the age of five are moderately or severely retarded due to thinness or overweight. According to the data of the Red Cross, the program of Open kitchens in 77 municipalities in Serbia is used by 33,715 people, of which as many as 11,000 are children. And that even this is not enough to completely suppress hunger in Serbia is shown by more and more self-organized initiatives such as Solidarity Kitchen, in which volunteers prepare meals and distribute to the most vulnerable, whose number is growing especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Satisfying the need for food is at the very bottom of Maslow’s pyramid of needs, and is a prerequisite for everything else. However, we must not forget the dignity of people who, despite hunger, must be treated with respect. The case of the siege of Leningrad showed that despite the chronic lack of food, life continued in this heroic city, so in the first winter of the blockade, about 2,500 students graduated. Theatrical performances were held, museums were opened, and in the summer of 1942, in the center of the city, under the attack of the Germans, the Seventh Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich, which he had composed only a year earlier, was premiered.
Predrag Momcilovic
Photo source: Belgrad Open School
[1] Without reliable access to a sufficient amount of affordable and nutritious food.