Save the Children is to be
applauded for reminding us all of one of the most extraordinary and humiliating
aspects of living in the modern world: child hunger. Drawing a parallel with
the fight to abolish slavery, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah
recently asked what future generations will condemn us for. One sure candidate
is the needless human carnage wrought by hunger. Some 850 million people (one
in eight of the world's population) go to bed hungry every night.
Such hunger is not due to a shortage
of food – globally there is enough to go round and if (a big if) we make the
right decisions now, we can continue to feed the world despite population
growth and climate change. By some estimates, stopping the waste of food after
harvest due to poor storage or transport infrastructure, and then in our own
kitchens, could free up half of all food grown.
The number of overweight and
obese people in the world, suffering their own health problems, including a
sharp rise in heart disease and diabetes, is roughly equal to the number of
hungry people. That highlights one of the underlying causes of hunger – extreme
levels of inequality, both within and between countries.
That focus on national decisions
and national politics highlights how fast the world is changing. In many cases,
aid is no longer the main story – countries like India, growing at 8% a year
and with a mushrooming middle class, need to take responsibility for their
hungry masses, introducing proper taxation and effective social services to end
hunger and malnutrition
Beyond supporting aid for food
and agricultural investment, what else can we in the well-fed countries do?
Start by putting our own house in order. The rich countries are part of both
the solution and the problem. Europe and America's push to reduce their
dependence on imported oil and gas has led them to introduce targets and
subsidies for biofuels, but these compete directly with food production,
forcing up prices for poor people
Rich country greenhouse gas
emissions are driving climate change at a pace that outstrips even the most
pessimistic projections of the climate modellers, and there are few signs of
governments agreeing (still less achieving) the kinds of reductions needed to
avoid catastrophic temperature rises that will particularly harm tropical
agriculture. We urgently need an international effort to find a way to feed the
planet's growing population without destroying its ecosystems, yet current
investments are feeble.
Hunger is both a cause and a
symptom of poverty. Damaged bodies and brains are a moral scandal and a tragic
waste of economic potential. That hunger exists at all shows the urgency of
redistributing income and assets to achieve a fairer world.
Referensi : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/15/ending-world-hunger
