Davos --On a scale of zero to ten, global efforts to reduce hunger scored only three, according to the Global Governance Initiative Annual Report, 2005. Efforts to diminish poverty earned a rating of four.

The report was prepared for the World Economic Forum, to be presented at its meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 25. A panel led by Sartaj Aziz, former finance and foreign minister of Pakistan, and Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), assessed global progress in the fight against hunger and poverty. Actual achievements were compared to these international goals:

• Cutting the number of people suffering from hunger – currently about 800 million – in half by 2015 (set by heads of State at the World Food Summit in 1996)
• Reducing the proportion of people with incomes less than $1 a day by 50 percent between 1990 and 2015, from 28 to 14 percent (a central Millennium Development Goal).

The low scores given by the panel reflect the fact that the world is not on track to meet these milestones. A score of zero would mean going backwards, one would mean stagnation, and ten would mean that the world is on course to reach the goals.

If current trends continue, there will still be about 600 million hungry people in 2015, far short of the target. To reach that goal, the current pace of reduction would need to be accelerated more than 12 times.

”Barring a paradigm shift,” the report contends, “this scenario will not materialize.”

The total number of people surviving on less than $1 a day has declined by just 12 million in the last decade, leaving more than one billion in absolute poverty. Latin America and the Caribbean saw no decrease in the number of people living in absolute poverty, and the situation in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe has deteriorated significantly. In fact, if the substantial reduction achieved by China is excluded, the number of absolute poor in the rest of the developing world was higher in 2004 than in 1990.

Only South Asia and East Asia are projected to reduce the incidence of poverty substantially by 2015. Poverty reduction in Latin and America and the Caribbean, the Near East, and North America will be minimal, if current trends continue. In sub-Saharan Africa, the poverty rate is expected to persist at a staggering 45 percent.

Nevertheless, significant progress could be made. The report calls on governments to increase investment in clean water, education, and health care. It also highlights the need for improving governance, assuring fair trade between developing country farmers and industrialized nations, reducing the debt burden of heavily indebted poor countries, providing safety nets for poor households, and reforming agriculture.

“Agriculture has a tremendously important role to play in meeting these goals. Half of the world’s hungry people live in farm households, and three quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas,” said von Braun. “Investments to enhance agricultural productivity and access to markets would not only increase income for small-scale farmers, but also reduce the cost of food for poor consumers.”

The report emphasizes the role that the private sector can play, not just in providing philanthropy, but also by investing in markets in developing countries.

“Nearly half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, a huge and untapped market,” said Aziz. “By working in public-private partnerships, corporations can help provide basic needs, such as water, energy, food, and communications to poor people on an affordable basis. This approach provides businesses new alternatives to increasingly saturated Western markets.”

The Global Governance Initiative, which issued the report, was created by the World Economic Forum. The Initiative provides an annual assessment of the level of effort being made towards achieving the world’s goals by governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations.

“In 2004, world leaders made progress only in words and planning. To come anywhere near reaching the goals by 2015, 2005 must be a year of concerted action,” von Braun concluded.

For more information, contact:

• Michael Rubinstein, 202/862.5670
  m.rubinstein@cgiar.org