Bangladesh on track to meet MDG1 hunger target, but pockets of poverty still remain: ActionAid

By AKM Moinuddin

Dhaka, Sept 19 (UNB) - Bangladesh is on track to meet the MDG1 hunger target, ranking sixth in this year’s ‘HungerFREE Scorecard’ brought out by ActionAid as part of its annual report.
But the joint impact of the food and financial crises may see Bangladesh knocked off track and failing to meet the target, according to the same report released on Sunday.
ActionAid, an international anti-poverty agency working in over 40 countries, says Bangladesh’s high ranking in the HungerFREE Scorecard reflects the progress it has made in reducing hunger amongst its population, which has come down to 26 percent of the population , from 36 percent in 1990.
The report was released to coincide with world leaders preparing to meet at the UN Headquarters in New York to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals.
DR Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Lesotho bring up the rear of the HungerFREE scorecard. But surprisingly, it is not only poor, war-torn or disaster-struck countries that rank low.
Despite a radical and rapid increase in economic growth, drastic cuts in agriculture and support to small farms means nearly half the children in India are malnourished, and one in five of the population goes hungry.
Although Bangladesh has taken progressive strides in achieving its millennium development targets, pockets of poverty still remain, says the report titled “Who’s Really Fighting Hunger-2010.”
Negative developments were particularly prevalent in the Monga-prone northern part of the country, where ActionAid Bangladesh conducted a study titled “The Monga Panel Survey 1” with its strategic partners.
There, it was found that the number of families who take food less than twice a day during the Monga season has gone up sharply from 24 percent during the benchmark survey (conducted end 2007 – spring 2008) to 47 percent in the panel survey (conducted end 2009 – spring 2010).
The income earning opportunities are limited to 7 months, with 53 percent of the workforce being seasonally employed, and less than 2 percent who can be termed as employed full-time.
The average income for a family of four during those seven months is Tk 2542, and during the rest of the year it is Tk 1230, with individual daily disposable income of the family being Tk 20 and Tk 9.7 respectively.
Therefore, given the Millennium Development Goal-1 target is to halve the proportion of the population earning less than $1 a day (Purchasing Power Parity), then in the monga region if the PPP value is set at Tk 18.5, average daily income per person is $1.08 Dollar during the seasonal seven months of employment, and falls to just 53 cents during the rest of the year in the Monga region.
Bangladesh’s impressive reduction in hunger levels is however relative – the country started from very high rates of hunger and malnutrition.
Today, overall around 65.3 million Bangladeshis still do not have sufficient food to eat. This is around half of all Bangladeshis. In addition to this, the child underweight rate is the highest in South Asia, and one of the highest in the world.
Although Bangladesh has almost attained self-sufficiency in food production, rice production in Bangladesh is expected to fall by about 3.9 percent each year due to climate change.
Land is a critical issue in Bangladesh, with almost 60 percent of farmers being functionally landless, and farm sizes too small to support a family.
One percent of arable land is being lost each year due to climate change and urbanization, the report states. Women’s rights to land are particularly constrained.
The report therefore advocates wide-scale introduction of sustainable agriculture, alongside urgent land reform.
The government responded to the food crisis with a large stimulus package for agriculture, and a large scaling up of its social safety net programme, which accounted for 12.6 percent of the national budget for 2009/10.
Employment generation programmes will now need to be significantly expanded as part of the government’s forthcoming Food Security Investment Plan.
Global Scenario:
As far as the global scenario is concerned, the new report says hunger is costing poor nations $450 billion a year, more than ten times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal-1.
The report reveals that 20 out of 28 poor nations are off track to halving hunger by 2015, with 12 of them going backwards, despite UN claims that the world is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
If China, the most successful growing economy is removed from the scoring, the percentage of hungry people in the world is the same as when the goals were set two decades ago, the report says.
ActionAid’s CEO Joanna Kerr said, “Fighting hunger now will be ten times cheaper than ignoring it. Every year reduced worker productivity, poor health and lost education costs poor countries billions.
“And the cost is not just financial. If governments don’t act now, over a million more children could die by 2015 and half of Africa won’t have enough food in ten years,” she said, adding that recent food riots are a sharp reminder that poor countries cannot rely on unstable global food markets.
She also said investing in local farms where the world’s hungry live is the best way to avert another food crisis.
ActionAid says the hunger goal is going backwards globally, largely because of a lack of aid to agriculture and rural development, few legal rights to food in poor nations and little or no support services to help farming communities when harvests fail.
Brazil, China, Ghana, Malawi and Vietnam, who top ActionAid’s scorecard slashed hunger by dramatically scaling-up investment in small farms and introducing social protection schemes such as public works employment, cash transfers, food rations, and free school meals.
Malawi has reduced the number of people living on food handouts from 1.5 million to 150,000 in just five years. Brazil has halved the number of underweight children in less than 10 years. China will meet its hunger goal five years early.
Rich nations also scored. Luxembourg, France, Spain, Sweden and Canada who pledged agricultural aid to help fight the 2009 food crisis scored top as donor nations.
Portugal, Korea, Greece, New Zealand and Austria ranked bottom. G8 nations pledged $22 billion in 2009 to fight hunger, yet ActionAid estimates $14 billion of this is in fact old aid promises repackaged in new forms, and it is still unclear when or how the money will be spent.
ActionAid’s Africa HungerFREE Coordinator Henry Malumo said: “Times are hard and budgets are tight, so now more than ever it’s important for governments to invest in the right places. Rich countries must stop pulling statistical tricks and show us how and when the money they have promised will reach the people who need it most.”
Malawi and Ghana are shining examples of how supporting small scale farmers are keys to halving hunger. With only five years left and a billion people hungry, it’s critical the world follow their example, he added.
END/UNB/