Global Reform
Political Will
The world can achieve the Hunger MDG if it chooses to do so. The critical constraint to achieving the MDG for Hunger is political commitment and clear assignment of who takes what actions. The contrast between commitments made at international summits (Millennium Declaration, World Food Summits and Johannesburg) and the persistence of hunger indicates that mobilising political action for hunger alleviation is as critical as goals to finance and implement specific technical actions for nutrition, rural development and income growth.
Financing
If the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be achieved this depends critically on increased resource commitments by rich countries.
It is estimated that this will require developed countries to double their aid commitment, from the current level of $55 billion to over $100 billion per annum. Progress towards this can be measured in the success of developed countries to contribute 0.7 percent of GNI as Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries - a target agreed as part of the UN Millennium Conference.
Only a handful of countries have achieved this goal, and for many more it remains a remote aspiration. For example, the US sits at the bottom of the international league providing just 0.15 percent of GNI and the EU is committed to reaching 0.42 percent by 2006. In 2003 Ireland committed 0.41% of GNI to ODA.
Financing What?
The efficiency, as well as volume, of ODA must also be examined. For example the level of ODA devoted to agriculture has declined dramatically since 1990. Between 1990 and 1999 total ODA fell by 31% to agriculture broadly defined. In this time period the total volume of lending to agriculture by International Financial Institutions declined by 40% in real terms.
Similarly food aid has also declined dramatically since the mid-1990s and in particular food aid devoted to relief (as opposed to development food aid, which for example is the principle instrument of EC aid related to food security). Food aid as a risk reducing safety net is critically important as a means of livelihood protection.
National Policy Reform
The primary responsibility for development must rest with national political leadership.
National policies must be aligned in ways that are supportive (or at least neutral) to the eradication of hunger. The following eight policy improvements together constitute the entry point for countries with a high prevalence of undernutrition.
Agricultural and Rural investment
| Priority Areas | Recommendations | |
| 1 | Agricultural and Rural investment | This must be ltlected in budgetary increases to agriculture and nutrition sectors. Governments should promote policies that reduce direct and indirect agricultural taxation, stimulate agricultural production and support public investments in rural areas and in agriculture that increases rural incomes and employment. |
| 2 | Capacity for policy implementation | Developing countries lack absorptive capacity and resources to benefit from investment. Improving human capital in the areas of agriculture, nutrition and markets is vital. Government and NGO programmes and rural communities can all contribute. |
| 3 | Rural Infrastructure | This involves the development or repair of roads, railroads, energy, communications, school facilities, health posts, agricultural research and extension services. |
| 4 | Empower women and invest in girls | Affirmative polices should explicitly recognize and promote the equality of females e.g. increased school enrolment of girls, improved property rights, inheritance, activities that reduce physical work burdens, education on reproductive rights. |
| 5 | Safety Nets | Provide safety nets to minimize temporary vulnerability for individuals unable to work. These policies should be assistance orientated and should ensure minimal distortion of local food markets. |
| 6 | Natural Resource Management | Provide incentives to promote sustainability. Ecologically sound agricultural practices can minimize the trade offs between the need to increase productivity and the preservation of the natural resource base. |
| 7 | Property Rights | Policies that promote increased access to land by the poor and assure tenure, especially in countries where land is very unequally distributed, will motivate investment. |
| 8 | Macroeconomic & Trade Policy | Macroeconomic and trade policy should provide stability and a level playing field. This includes maintaining undistorted exchange rates and trade and taxation policies that do not discriminate against the agricultural sector. National policies that address issues related to subsidies on inputs and their equity effects must be supportive. Attention should be paid to subsidies in OECD countries and their impact on global the global agricultural trade system. |
Source: HTF, 2003.
Local Level Reform
Re-shaping policy to promote smallholder agricultural development is necessary to create the conditions for long-term poverty reduction and economic growth and can result in significant short and medium term hunger reduction. However evidence shows that when implemented alone, the results will often bypass large groups of food insecure people.
The UN Hunger Task Force (2003) focuses on three coordinated and mutually reinforcing interventions carried simultaneously in a "bottom-up" manner to benefit from the synergies they generate. They are "entry points" - actions that must be undertaken first and cannot be bypassed, and that would open the way for a range of other actions.
- Community Based Nutrition Interventions: Much of the malnutrition that happens in early childhood - either through low birth weight, or malnourishment in the first two years - is irreversible. Therefore community-based and community - driven interventions targeted at life cycle periods between pregnancy through the first two years of age is the backbone of the proposed nutrition interventions. These packages may include the use of growth promotion as a tool for regular contact with mothers and young children, linked to targeted supplementary feeding and provision of nutrition and health services.
- Make Markets work for the Rural Poor: In many hungry countries markets do not work effectively for the rural poor. Governments need to create an environment conducive to the development of functioning markets, business enterprises and farms, including the legal framework with a commercial code that respects contracts and capacity to adjudicate contract disputes. Governments should eliminate distortionate market policies such as transport and marketing barriers, and the mismanagement of food aid.
- Increase Agricultural Productivity in Smallholder Farms: Known technologies can do much to raise the productivity of smallholder farmers. Many new farm technologies - appropriate for more marginal and less favoured areas - have been developed to enhance soil quality, manage water at the local level, improve germplasm and manage pests in environmentally friendly ways. Community participation in research and development can yield valuable results.