The Global Food Security Index ranks 105 countries according to their access to affordable, available and quality food. The index was launched in 2012 by The Economist – Intelligence Unit (EIU) with sponsorship from the DuPont Corporation. The index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative scoring model, constructed from 25 unique indicators which measure drivers of food security across both developing and developed countries.
Food security is defined as the state in which people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a healthy and active life based on the definition established at the 1996 World Food Summit. The overall goal of the study is to assess which countries are most and least vulnerable to food insecurity through the categories of Affordability, Availability, and Quality and Safety.
Beginning in October 2012, the EIU began updating the index on a quarterly basis to adjust for the impact of fluctuating food prices. This food price adjustment factor is applied to each country’s Affordability score and is based on changes in income growth and global and domestic food prices. Over time, countries’ scores improve if food prices fall, and deteriorate if prices rise. The country-specific adjustments and their goal of translating fluctuations in global food prices to the national level result in different levels of score changes for each country, with vulnerable countries hurt the most by rising prices.
All scores are normalized on a scale of 0-100 where 100=most favorable. There are scores based on three categories: 1. Affordability, 2. Availability, and 3. Quality and Safety.
As of the first quarter of 2013, the top three scores and the bottom three scores in each category are as follows:
Affordability
Top three countries: USA (95.2), Australia (92.4), Switzerland (91.5)
Bottom three countries: Madagascar (20.4), DR Congo (17.4), Chad (14.4)
Availability
Top three countries: Denmark (92.4), Norway (91.8), France (88.3)
Bottom three countries: Niger (25.0), Haiti (22.4), Chad (21.7)
Quality & Safety
Top three countries: France (90.2), Israel (90.2), USA (89.3)
Bottom three countries: Togo (22.7), Ethiopia (20.0), DR Congo (16.1)
In a report titled ‘The Global Food Security Index 2012: An assessment of food affordability, availability and quality’, the EIU found that there is a positive correlation between countries with good food security and their related policies. Example policies include improving access to financing for local farmers, developing food safety net programs like school feeding programs, investing in agricultural technology, research & development, and promoting nutrition awareness.
Other key findings from the report :
- The U.S., Denmark, Norway and France are the most food-secure countries in the world.
- The food supply in advanced countries averages 1,200 calories more per person per day than in low-income economies.
- Most food secure nations score less well for micronutrient availability.
- Several of the sub-Saharan African countries that finished in the bottom third of the index, including Mozambique, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Nigeria, will be among the world’s faster-growing economies during the next two years.
- China experienced the least volatility of agricultural production during the last 20 years, and three North African countries—Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria—among the most.
- Landlocked countries fared nearly as well as those with a coastline.
– Maria Caluag
Source: Global Food Security Index
Photo: UN Earth News
What Does USCAN Stand For?
Created in 1989, The U.S. Climate Action Network (abbreviated USCAN) is a network of organizations dedicated to fighting climate change. An affiliate of the global Climate Action Network (CAN), USCAN works to connect the multiple organizations working to spread awareness and tackle an issue that has reached critical levels of urgency.
USCAN has been present at all major environmental summits. It aided in developing the policy at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and again for the Kyoto protocol in 1997. Since 2007, it has worked to lobby support for environmentally friendly policies against a notoriously resistant government, both at home and internationally.
Currently, USCAN is focusing on supporting five key areas. The first is the Clean Air Act, which regulates emissions and controls the quality of air and the impact of industrial activity on the ozone layer. The second is monitoring the international agreements the United States makes in order to cooperate with international efforts in conservation. The third is raising awareness regarding tar sands, where the U.S. extracts oil through a process that causes huge trauma to the environment, with the destruction of habitat, water wastage and the release of toxins that lead to cancer and respiratory infections. They conduct continuous climate polls to keep a finger on the pulse of the nation’s interest in climate change and environmental issues.
Recently, they have also been involved in garnering support and spreading awareness of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, an extensive proposal outlining the steps the nation should take in order to balance economic progress with vital environmental conservation.
USCAN is part of a large group of organizations – 700 worldwide – working together to fight the rapid destruction of our environment. As an organization themselves, they have little sway but have collaborated to harness the power of several individuals and institutions to rally the support necessary to influence policymakers. As stated in their description, “Only by working together to build effective pressure on the policymakers at all levels of government will we win the strong actions required to confront the climate crisis.”
– Farahnaz Mohammed
Sources: USCAN, CAN, Climate Action Plan
Photo: Flickr
New Goals for the Fourth World
This past week, the UN considered a set of recommendations for reworking the Millennium Development Goals at their headquarters in New York. This time, however, a new group wants a seat at the discussion: the extreme poor.
The Fourth World, as it is called, has always been home to the population most at-risk and, unfortunately, the most difficult to help. Juan Baltazar, a former street-dweller in Bolivia and current development researcher, says he never knew about development efforts when he was homeless.
ATD Fourth World, an organization dedicated to studying and eradicating extreme poverty, compiled a report based on a three-year action-research program across twelve countries and involving over 2,000 men and women like Baltazar. Entitled “Towards Sustainable Development that Leaves No One Behind: The Challenge of the Post-2015 Agenda”, the report lists the five most important new development goals based on suggestions from the extreme poor. They are:
1. Leave no one behind: Fighting discrimination based on race, gender, and class is the most urgent need of those living in extreme poverty to access education, jobs, and so forth.
2. Introduce people living in poverty as new partners in building knowledge on development: The best way to assist the highly marginalized is to bilaterally share information and support to foster input and agency on their part.
3. Promote decent jobs and social protection: Policies that drive job-creation and fair social outcomes are essential to helping the poor help themselves.
4. Achieve education and training for all: Education must be relevant, equitable, and accessible to everyone in order to provide a firm social foundation for the “Fourth World.”
5. Promote participatory governance: Democracy is key to any sustainable approach to poverty alleviation, and the voices of the disempowered must be heard in order to help them effectively.
The report seeks to shift the emphasis in development from economic and health benchmarks to aligning policy with human rights standards. Pursuant to that, ATD believes that no real progress can be made without hearing the contributions of the poor themselves.
– John Mahon
Sources: Devex, ATD Fourth World
Photo: Amazonaws
Food Crisis in Syria
The Syrian Civil War has created a food crisis in Syria. According to the United Nations, nearly “four million Syrians, a fifth of the population, are unable to produce or buy enough food, and farmers are short of the seed and fertilizers they need to plant their crop.”
The food shortage in Syria is a result of “massive population displacement, disruption of agricultural production, unemployment, economic sanctions and high food and fuel prices.” Overall, Syria’s poultry production has decreased by 50 percent and its wheat production is down 40 percent. As a result, food prices have spiked dramatically, with the average monthly price of wheat flour more than doubling between May of 2011 and May of 2013.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has requested $41.7 million to assist 768,000 people in Syria. So far, the agency has only $3.3 million of the requested funds. The Food and Agriculture Organization is working to assist those who are internally displaced in Syria as well as providing aid to the 1.6 million Syrians who have sought refuge from the conflict in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.
In addition to creating a food shortage throughout the nation, the Syrian Civil War has created problems in maintaining health standards for both humans and animals. Before the food crisis, “9.3 percent of children suffer[ed] from wasting and 23 percent of them stunted.” It is likely that these rates have increased since the onset of the food crisis. Additionally, child vaccination coverage has decreased from 95 percent in 2009 to 80 percent in 2012, creating concerns about the spread of diseases. Likewise, “there are practically no routine drugs or vaccines for animals and no vets to administer them,” creating the potential for diseases being transmitted among livestock and intensifying the food crisis.
– Jordan Kline
Sources: The Guardian, Reuters
What Does BRAC USA Do?
BRAC USA is part of the largest international development program in the world, BRAC, which aids the world’s extreme poor through sustainable solutions to poverty. Though the program focuses on an American audience, its effect is felt globally. By raising awareness in the United States and other developed nations, BRAC USA allows Americans and others to invest in their own future, as well as the futures of those in extreme poverty.
BRAC is an international development organization that focuses on alleviating poverty and issues related to poverty in 11 developing nations across the globe. Their organization model concentrates on empowerment of the poor through local, community-based programs, such as “barefoot lawyers,” a project that increases awareness legal rights and delivers services to the doorsteps of the poor. This program helps impoverished individuals recognize and defend their legal rights, including vital property rights.
Most important to its continued success, the international organization takes an approach mindful of establishing self-sustainable programs to better equip target communities, both women and farmers, to continue to address the causes and symptoms of extreme poverty and take matters into their own hands. The organization’s micro-financing program offers micro-loans to women to promote economic entrepreneurship in local communities and revitalize local economies, while also addressing issues related to gender inequality.
BRAC USA, a sub-group of BRAC, reaches out to Americans to encourage support for the global program in three ways: public education, strategic and program services, and grant-making. In the context of public education, the United States-based BRAC branch employs social and traditional media, as well as speaking engagements and word of mouth initiatives to increase American awareness of global poverty and the organization’s work. Some of the strategic and program services supported by BRAC USA include assistance with design and implementation of international development projects in developing nations, alongside enabling access to financing that makes these projects feasible. This assistance also takes the form of grants, made possible by the American program.
Programs like BRAC USA that encourage sustainable development in developing nations actually give back to developed nations, like the United States. By promoting development abroad, the program increases the likelihood that target nations will foster a market for developed-world goods. That is, by creating sustainable markets, we also create sustainable consumers that are historically proven to direct their newly-acquired purchasing power toward the nation providing initial development aid. To encourage investment in our own economy, we have all the more reason to encourage market development and a sustainable economy in developing nations abroad.
– Herman Watson
Sources: BRAC USA, The Borgen Project
The Story of Iraq’s Baby Noor
Baby Noor was found at only 3 months old. She had been born with a severe case of Spina Bifida, a spinal cord defect. Without medical treatment, the defect would certainly kill her. In war-torn Iraq, proper medical care would be next to impossible to find.
The soldiers immediately wanted to move her to a place where she could find the care she needed. Col. Brown urged the U.S. Army to help the child. His persuasion worked. Soon Noor was on a C-130 transport plane with her father and grandmother en route to Atlanta, Georgia. It was there where doctors successfully operated and treated Noor’s Spina Bifida. During her stay in the United States, Baby Noor charmed the world. Photos of her smile were soon spread across television screens and newspapers. “Iraq’s Miracle Baby” enthralled the country.
Noor returned to Baghdad six months later in June 2006. While life may have seemed blissfully hopeful in Atlanta, reality soon set in. For a poor family, caring for a child with special needs was extremely difficult. Noor was paralyzed from the waist down. She was prone to urinary tract infections, and she had headaches caused by the shunt doctors inserted into her brain to collect fluid buildup. Noor was also quickly running out of medical supplies, and her family could not afford to repurchase them.
In addition to the challenges of raising a special needs child, Noor’s family also faced retribution for their association with Americans. Her father claims that he was kidnapped and accused of spying by men associated with Al Qaeda who demanded a ransom from the poor family.
While Noor was growing up, Col. Brown never forgot about her, wondering what happened to the child he had rescued. Then one day, Brown saw CNN’s story “The Unfinished Miracle of Baby Noor.” As it turns out, readers had responded to the story of Noor by donating money to Childspring International, the very same charity that helped Noor stay in the US the first time. With the money collected, Childspring was able to purchase a two-year supply of medical equipment, including a wheelchair and many children’s toys.
Seeing this as the perfect opportunity to reconnect with Noor, Brown stepped in to help ship the large package to Baghdad. Through his connections with the U.S. Embassy, Brown was able to enlist the help of USAID’s Iraq Access to Justice Program and the Iraqi Alliance of Disabilities Organization. Along with CNN staffers, these groups coordinated to bring the shipment to Noor’s home in Baghdad.
Is Noor’s story finished then? Certainly not, Noor will continue to need medical supplies for the rest of her life. However, the story of Iraq’s miracle baby is not only special because she was saved once; it is truly a miracle because her story continues today.
– Grace Zhao
Sources: CNN, Viral Nova
Photo: Flickr
Can GMOs End Global Hunger?
While genetically modified (GM) foods have become a hot topic in the United States, they have received enormous attention in Africa.
At the same time that the United States has begun to debate mandatory labels for GM foods, scientists, farmers, and international organizations in Africa are pressuring governments to relax restrictions on GM technology.
This disparity in opinions towards GM crops mirrors the similar disparity of interests between the developed and developing world.
Despite the U.S.’s concern that GM crops will require more pesticides which contaminate and harm the environment, international relief organizations argue that GM crops can potentially alleviate plant diseases, the effects of climate change, and other grave threats to food production that African farmers may face.
In countries like Uganda, most people are farmers living off of their own crops and thus are more vulnerable to invasive pests and weather changes than Americans who shop in supermarkets and are more distanced from their food production.
The banana provides one example of a way that GM crops can help Uganda farmers and consumers. In the past year, “bacterial wilt disease has been cutting banana yields from 30 to 50 percent in Uganda.” When one considers that Ugandans consume up to one pound of bananas each day, it’s clear that this decrease in crop output means disastrous consequences for the Ugandans’ diet.
Recently, the National Agricultural Research Organization genetically engineered a bacteria-resistant version of the banana by breeding the fruit with pepper genes. Unless the Ugandan government passes a law that allows for use of GM crops, however, the disease-resistant banana hybrid will remain in the lab, untouched.
Though GM foods do have some clear benefits, they also come with disadvantages that prevent Ugandan farmers from fully supporting the GM law. Many Ugandans practice organic farming that rejects the use of pesticides and fertilizers because they can consequently damage other organisms like bees and fish that are important national exports.
GMOs can improve developing nations’ economies and prevent chronic hunger, but they may harm the environment and cultural traditions of these community farms in the process. This conflict of interest has many Ugandan farmers—and farmers around the world who have a stake in GM crop production—on edge, as they anxiously wait to see whether the futuristic potential of GM foods will be harnessed or rejected.
– Alexandra Bruschi
Source: NPR, FAO, International Society for Horticultural Science, National Banana Research Program
Photo: Tumblr
How a Teenage Soccer Player Provides Clean Water
Over a year ago, Jake Yonally of Santa Barbara joined the youth movement for global water access, Hands4Others (H4O). He and his teammates in the Santa Barbara Soccer Club even went on to create their own chapter, Soccer4Water. Hands4Others is a group of young people who came together to look past their own lives and help those in need. It was started by 3 local teenagers after they witnessed the disparity between those with water and those without. Their goal is to provide sustainable access to clean water all across the world by helping more than two million people in 500 villages by 2015. They have already helped over 100,000 people in 10 countries and are quite capable of executing their goals.
Presidio Sports, Santa Barbara’s sports news site, interviewed Jake when he came back from his most recent trip to Honduras. There he and others from Hands4Others worked for a week to install safe water systems and latrines for the people of various villages across South America. Honduras is among the poorest countries in Latin America, with 60% of its population living below the poverty line. And where there is poverty, there is a lack of clean drinking water.
Jake was not just building while he was in Honduras, though. He and his teammates also spent time playing soccer with children in the village with balls donated by the soccer club. He stated, “I love to connect with people through soccer and help others at the same time.” His coach, family, and the board members of the soccer club all stand behind his dream of helping others.
Jake, his teammates, and other members of their soccer club raised money in support of his goal to get a total of $10,000 to provide an entire clean water system for a village during the Hands4Others Walk4Water last June in Santa Barbara. Jake has also raised money by scoring goals in soccer matches, sending out direct appeal letters, and working in his family’s olive grove in his free time. So far, he has raised 60% of his goal and hopes to reach the full amount by the end of the summer.
Without the assistance of people like Jake and his team, 9 million people will die from a lack of clean water to drink this year alone. But when someone stands up and decides they will no longer accept the idea that so many people live in poverty, we see real sustainable change take place.
– Chelsea Evans
Sources: Presidio Sports, Hands4Others, World Vision
What is the Global Food Security Index?
The Global Food Security Index ranks 105 countries according to their access to affordable, available and quality food. The index was launched in 2012 by The Economist – Intelligence Unit (EIU) with sponsorship from the DuPont Corporation. The index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative scoring model, constructed from 25 unique indicators which measure drivers of food security across both developing and developed countries.
Food security is defined as the state in which people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a healthy and active life based on the definition established at the 1996 World Food Summit. The overall goal of the study is to assess which countries are most and least vulnerable to food insecurity through the categories of Affordability, Availability, and Quality and Safety.
Beginning in October 2012, the EIU began updating the index on a quarterly basis to adjust for the impact of fluctuating food prices. This food price adjustment factor is applied to each country’s Affordability score and is based on changes in income growth and global and domestic food prices. Over time, countries’ scores improve if food prices fall, and deteriorate if prices rise. The country-specific adjustments and their goal of translating fluctuations in global food prices to the national level result in different levels of score changes for each country, with vulnerable countries hurt the most by rising prices.
All scores are normalized on a scale of 0-100 where 100=most favorable. There are scores based on three categories: 1. Affordability, 2. Availability, and 3. Quality and Safety.
As of the first quarter of 2013, the top three scores and the bottom three scores in each category are as follows:
Affordability
Top three countries: USA (95.2), Australia (92.4), Switzerland (91.5)
Bottom three countries: Madagascar (20.4), DR Congo (17.4), Chad (14.4)
Availability
Top three countries: Denmark (92.4), Norway (91.8), France (88.3)
Bottom three countries: Niger (25.0), Haiti (22.4), Chad (21.7)
Quality & Safety
Top three countries: France (90.2), Israel (90.2), USA (89.3)
Bottom three countries: Togo (22.7), Ethiopia (20.0), DR Congo (16.1)
In a report titled ‘The Global Food Security Index 2012: An assessment of food affordability, availability and quality’, the EIU found that there is a positive correlation between countries with good food security and their related policies. Example policies include improving access to financing for local farmers, developing food safety net programs like school feeding programs, investing in agricultural technology, research & development, and promoting nutrition awareness.
Other key findings from the report :
– Maria Caluag
Source: Global Food Security Index
Photo: UN Earth News
Japan Invests in Michigan
A Japanese pension fund has purchased a Michigan power plant, the Midland Cogeneration Venture, for $2 billion with a Canadian partner.
The organization, Japan’s Pension Fund Organization, will be co-owners of the plant along with Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, and Omers, a Canadian pension fund. The investment is being made through the Global Strategic Investment Alliance (GSIA), a partnership with Omers to target North American infrastructure assets.
Japan, the country with the third-highest overall GDP, is a major trading partner with the U.S. and has significant investments in the country. These types of investments bring money into the U.S. economy, diversify the financial backing of U.S. infrastructure, and give foreign countries a stake in the U.S. economy. Overall, having one of the largest economies in the world invested in the U.S. economy is very positive for the U.S. economy.
Japan, however, was not always one of the world’s economic powerhouses. After the Second World War, Japan was a struggling nation and needed assistance to recover. Its infrastructure was obliterated, its government collapsed, and the country was occupied by foreign powers.
The U.S. stepped in after WWII with vast amounts of aid provided mostly under its Government and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) grants. According to statistics from the Federation of American Scientists’ report U.S. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan, assistance to Japan during the U.S. occupation totaled roughly $15.2 billion. This aid is what enabled Japan to enact its miraculous postwar recovery and become one of the United States’ top 4 trading partners today.
As current U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made clear in his first speech in the country, 11 out of the US’s top 15 trading partners are former beneficiaries of U.S. foreign assistance. Yet despite the effectiveness of giving over $15 billion in aid to postwar Japan, the U.S. now only gives $30 billion a year in aid, which amounts to less than one percent of GDP. If the U.S. can learn anything from its past successes, it is that aid is highly effective and investment in the future of the American economy.
– Martin Drake
Source: Financial Times, Federation of American Scientists, The Borgen Project, Foreign Policy Association
Photo: Bay City Times
The UNDP in Rural Belarus
Despite the fact that Belarus has one of the lowest poverty rates of the post-Soviet states, poverty, though not extreme, threatens the welfare of her people. Only 1% of Belarusians are living on less than $1 a day, but a more concerning 27.1% are below the poverty line, with 17.8% living below the minimum subsistence level. The “minimum subsistence level” is defined per the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs as “a minimum level of income, which is considered to be necessary to ensure sustenance and other basic personal needs at a level allowing the individual to survive.” The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Belarus identifies the “rural population, children, and single-parent households” as the most vulnerable victims of poverty.
Fortunately, the UNDP is executing a poverty reduction plan in Belarus that fosters the development of small businesses and, therefore, encourages a vibrant private sector. The plan is spearheaded by multiple players, from the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank to the Belarusian government and small rural Belarusian businesses. The UNDP hopes that the installation of an agricultural business sector will rejuvenate rural Belarus and bring an end to poverty in the Eastern European country.
Rural initiatives are especially necessary in former Soviet territories where local economies have declined due to the rocky transition from collective to private farming that occurred after the fall of the USSR in the early 1990’s. Agricultural workers were completely unprepared to grow crops on their own. This resulted in a situation in which uneducated farmers with limited resources in a now free-market economy were unable to maximize the productivity of their land.
Part of the UNDP’s strategy has included the establishment of the Rural Business Development Center outside of Minsk, the nation’s capital. The Center is the legal hub for the development of former Soviet collective farms into efficient private enterprises. The director of the Center, Alla Voitekhovich, describes the day-to-day activities of the Center as including the “registration of small enterprises, the conducting of market surveys, (and) the facilitation of job creation,” among other efforts. The RBDC also holds workshops for small business owners and entrepreneurs and has recently begun to encourage local farmers to exploit agro-tourism as a means of job creation in the region.
The UNDP says that rural poverty has been significantly reduced in Belarus in the last decade, stating “From 2000 to 2009, the share of poor households dropped by 7.4 times in rural areas.” Surely, the UNDP has made great strides in Belarus, breathing new life into an agricultural system that only a short time ago seemed irreparably broken. The success of the UNDP in rural Belarus is truly a testament to the resourcefulness and efficiency of the United Nations.
– Josh Forgét
Sources: UNDP Belarus, CIA World Factbook, Czech Republic Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs
Photo: Spotlight