Achieving food security: SDG guidelines

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Inclusion of new areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities, are interconnected - often the success of one will be reliant on the success of another. With the spirit of partnership and pragmatism to make the right choices to improve life in a sustainable way for future generations, the SDGs provide clear guidelines and targets for all countries to adopt in accordance with their own priorities and the environmental challenges of the world at large. Therefore, SDGs are an inclusive agenda.
It is very much pertinent that apart from ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture constitute an integral part of SDG. It is time to rethink how to grow, share and consume food. If done right, agriculture, forestry and fisheries can provide nutritious food for all and generate decent incomes, while supporting people-centred rural development and protecting the environment. Right now, soil, fresh water, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded globally. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources human and all other lives depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters such as droughts and floods. Many rural women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land which forces them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities. A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed to nourish today's 795 million hungry and the additional two billion people expected by 2050.
BASIC FACTS ON GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY SCENARIO:
* Agriculture is the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 per cent of today's global population. It is the largest source of income and jobs for poor rural households.
* 500 million small farms worldwide, most still rain-fed, provide up to 80 per cent of food consumed in a large part of the developing world. Investing in smallholder women and men is an important way to increase food security and nutrition for the poorest, as well as food production for local and global markets.
* Since the 1900s, some 75 per cent of crop diversity has been lost from farmers' fields. Better use of agricultural biodiversity can contribute to more nutritious diets, enhanced livelihoods for farming communities and more resilient and sustainable farming systems.
* If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
* 1.4 billion people have no access to electricity worldwide - most of whom live in rural areas of the developing world. Energy poverty in many regions is a fundamental barrier to reducing hunger and ensuring that the world can produce enough food to meet future demand.
GLOBAL SDG TARGET FOR ACHIEVING FOOD SECURITY BY 2030:
* Ending  all forms of malnutrition, including achieving internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and addressing the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons
* Doubling agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular of women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land.
* Ensuring sustainable food production systems and implementing resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding etc and progressively improve land and soil quality
* Maintaining  the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promoting access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed
* Increasing  investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries
* Correcting  and preventing  trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round
* Adopt measures to ensure proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility
* Governments will be busy for the next 15 years working to achieve the goals, but that doesn't mean all the work falls on them. The private sector and civil society organisations can all help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. But sometimes it's not that easy to know where to start. There are 17 goals after all, each one with different target and indicator.
AN OVERVIEW OF FOOD SECURITY SITUATION IN BANGLADESH: The causes of food insecurity stem from extreme poverty linked to unemployment or underemployment, inadequate access to land for cultivation, social marginalisation and vulnerability to natural disasters. Women and girls, in particular, often face additional challenges that increase food and nutrition insecurity, such as fewer income earning opportunities and complex intra- household dynamics where women and children's food needs are not prioritised, particularly during pregnancy and after delivery.
Despite a high level of food insecurity in Bangladesh, food availability is adequate and markets function effectively. However, seasonality and the price of food have a significant impact on food security and nutritional status of vulnerable populations. The country's two lean seasons exacerbate levels of food insecurity and under-nutrition, and contribute to reduced food availability and a lack of employment opportunities, particularly for the rural ultra poor.
Bangladesh has about 60 million people in urban and rural areas who are food insecure and unable to consume the minimum daily food intake required for a healthy life. Bangladesh has alarming rates of chronic and acute undernutrition, including the highest prevalence of underweight children in South Asia. Almost one in two children under-five is chronically undernourished (stunted) and 14 per cent suffer from acute undernutrition (wasting). Undernutrition leads to lower productivity and higher morbidity and mortality, with the WHO estimating that two in three deaths in children under five attribute to undernutrition.
Of the 60 million people who are food insecure, less than half is covered by safety net programmes. These programmes have had a beneficial impact but the effectiveness of the safety net system is impacted by poor coverage, imprecise targeting and weak administration. According to the government's National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction, the key elements in the fight against hunger include strengthening social safety nets and welfare programmes, improving the status of women, ensuring modern and child nutrition, increasing school enrolment and expanding school feeding programmes, and preparing for the impacts of natural disasters and climate change.
Based on these priorities, WFP's aim is to contribute towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by improving maternal and child nutrition, continue to scale up and support school feeding programmes, enhance community resilience to disasters and the effects of climate change, and strengthen government safety nets.
Despite recent progress in Bangladesh in the areas of poverty and human development indicators such as literacy and life expectancy, inequalities in income and consumption rates have increased, with 43 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.
Bangladesh's stability is further threatened by increasingly common environmental disasters, and is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Furthermore, many Bangladeshis above the poverty line do not have economic safety nets, and therefore could fall back into poverty if they are struck by natural disasters or lose their jobs.
Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to food insecurity. This means that food supplies are often limited or too expensive for people to afford. Furthermore, there are concerns over the safety of food available in Bangladesh given the extensive amounts of chemicals used to grow food, and the lack of standards ensuring careful application of these.
The dominant determinant of access to food is obviously the level and the growth of income. In Bangladesh, the per capita income remained almost stagnant until the end of 1980s due to slow growth of GNP and high population growth. The income growth per year has accelerated since 1990, reaching 6.5 per cent in recent years. Bangladesh has also achieved considerable progress in population control. But, the income is highly unequally distributed and disparity has been growing. As a result, nearly one-third of the people still live below the poverty line, with inadequate income to access food from the market.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Mazid, former Secretary, analyses development economics.
mazid.muhammad@gmail.com