Social protection schemes hold key to beating world hunger by FAO, IFAD, WFP, ILO, agencies 9:42pm 8th Oct, 2015   October 2015    Social protection is emerging as a critical tool in the drive to eradicate hunger, yet the vast majority of the world''s rural poor are yet to be covered.    The State of Food and Agriculture 2015 finds that in poor countries, social protection schemes - such as cash transfers, school feeding and public works - offer an economical way to provide vulnerable people with opportunities to move out of extreme poverty and hunger and to improve their children''s health, education and life chances.    Such programmes currently benefit 2.1 billion people in developing countries in various ways -- including keeping 150 million people out of extreme poverty.    Expanding such programs in rural areas and linking them to inclusive agricultural growth policies would rapidly reduce the number of poor people, the report says.    The report was released on the eve of World Food Day (16 October), whose focus is on social protection''s role in breaking the cycle of rural poverty.    "It is urgent that we act to support the most vulnerable people in order to free the world of hunger," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.    "Social protection programs allow households to access more food -- often by increasing what they grow themselves -- and also make their diets more diverse and healthier. These programs can have positive impacts on infant and maternal nutrition, reduce child labor and raise school attendance, all of which increase productivity," he said.    Only about a third of the world''s poorest people are covered by any form of social protection. Coverage rates dip even lower in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, regions with the highest incidence of extreme poverty, the report said.    Without such assistance, many poor and vulnerable people will never have the opportunity to break out of the poverty trap -- in which hunger, illness and lack of education perpetuate poverty for future generations, according to the report.    Most countries -- even the poorest -- can afford some kind of social protection program. FAO estimates that globally, some $67 billion a year in income supplements, mostly provided by social protection programs, would -- along with other targeted pro-poor investments in agriculture -- allow for the eradication of hunger by 2030. That is less than 0.10 percent of world GDP.    Currently many extremely poor households are forced to sell off productive assets, put children to work, over-exploit their small landholdings unsustainably, or settle for badly paid jobs.    Yet basic social transfer schemes offer the poor an opportunity to improve their own productive potential. They also have positive spillover effects on local economies, increasing business opportunities, raising rural wages, and allowing the poorest to acquire or invest in assets.    In Zambia for example, a pilot cash-grants program led recipient households to greatly increase livestock ownership as well as land under cultivation, input use and ownership of tools such as hoes, sickles and axes, leading to a 50 percent jump in the overall value of locally produced agricultural commodities.    Beneficiaries also spent more on food, clothing and health-and-hygiene - an amount 25 percent greater than the value of the initial transfer. The wider community also benefited through the increased demand for locally produced goods and services generated by the transfer-every dollar transferred generates an additional 79 cents in income, often for non-beneficiaries providing these goods and services.    At least 145 countries today provide one or more forms of social assistance, including unconditional cash transfers, meaning outright grants for eligible recipients, conditional cash transfers, usually linked to school attendance or health checkups and, public-works programs that offer guaranteed employment. Other forms include in-kind transfers, including food distribution and school feeding programs.    The report stresses that the notion that social protection reduces people''s work effort is a myth. Rather, recipients often respond to social protection positively, including improving the nutrition and education of their children, relying more on home production rather than poorly paid wage work and also increasing their participation in existing networks, a common form of risk management in many traditional communities.    Social protection schemes can also be transformative over time. One well-designed Bangladeshi programme gave poor rural women livestock and other productive assets, as well as a monthly stipend to cover the period until recipients were able to earn additional incomes.    The FAO report also cites other successful examples of social protection programs in Ethiopia, Ghana and Lesotho.    Such findings show how social protection is an investment, rather than a cost. It is also clearly illustrated by Brazil''s Bolsa Família, a well-integrated scheme that reaches a quarter of the country''s population and costs only 0.5 percent of GDP.    Still, the report stresses how social protection alone cannot sustainably eradicate hunger and rural poverty. It therefore underscores the importance of combining and coordinating public investment in social protection with investments in the productive sectors of agriculture and rural development. Such actions will ensure inclusive economic growth as a sustainable way to break the cycle of rural poverty.    http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/335748/icode/ http://www.fao.org/publications/sofa/2015/en/    15 Facts on Social Protection and Safety Nets. (World Food Programme)    Here are some key facts on the link between social protection, hunger, nutrition and climate change adaptation from the World Food Programme    People who are poor are vulnerable to hunger and shocks - even small ones - that can push them closer to destitution, malnutrition and starvation, even premature mortality. Social protection policies and programmes play a critical role in reducing poverty, hunger and malnutrition and the World Food Programme (WFP) supports nutrition and climate-sensitive social protection and safety net interventions around the world.    1) Social safety nets, a major component of social protection systems, are among the main instruments for building resilience and for protecting the poor in fragile, conflict-, and violence-affected situations.    2) Social safety net programs have been shown to positively impact household expenditures on food and household food security and studies have shown that the impact of these interventions persists well after programme exit.    3) Cash transfer programs can help encourage changes in caregiving practices to promote early childhood nutrition, psychosocial stimulation, or health thus enhancing early childhood development.    4) Many of the 18,000 child deaths that occur every day could be prevented through social protection and essential cash transfers that could help improve their nutrition, health, education and care services.    5) Only 28 percent of women in employment worldwide receive maternity cash benefits which provide some income and food security during the final stages of pregnancy and after childbirth.    6) Social pensions provide an additional stream of income at the household level that can contribute to household food security and nutrition. Research shows that children in South African households receiving a pension grow on average 5cm taller than those in households without a pension.    7) School feeding programmes help reduce hunger and improve food security and encourage children - particularly girls, to attend school by providing food which helps them concentrate and learn, and ultimately increases their chances for a better future.    8) Successful asset creation programmes have been able to mitigate the impact of specific climate shocks by ensuring food is on the table all year round, creating or maintaining useful infrastructure and improving agricultural yields thereby enhancing the incomes and food security of the rural poor.    9) Unconditional cash transfers can stimulate investment in agriculture and other livelihood activities by easing household cash flow constraints1 while also improving the amount and quantity of food available for consumption, particularly during shocks or lean periods.    10) In Nicaragua research has found that boys exposed to a conditional cash transfer programme during their first 1,000 days of life have better cognitive outcomes when they are 10 years old than those exposed to the same programme later in life.    11) Evidence from Indonesia and the Philippines shows that cash transfer programs increased prenatal and postnatal care, regular age-appropriate weighing, and facility-based deliveries for pregnant women and new mothers.    12) In Kenya, Lesotho, Mexico and Zambia higher income from predictable cash transfers have helped rural households increase investments in agricultural and non-agricultural activities to generate income.    13) Cash transfer programs have major a positive spill-over effect on the local economy of targeted communities, with a nominal total income multiplier ranging from US$1.08 to US$2.52 dollars for each dollar transferred.    14) The majority of the world''s population do not have access to the fundamental human right to social security: 73 percent are only covered partially or not at all by comprehensive social security systems.    15) Although 1.9 billion people are enrolled in social safety net programs around the world, only one-third of the poor is covered by any type of social safety net.    http://www.wfp.org/stories/15-facts-social-protection-and-safety-nets    July 2015    Towards Achieving Zero Hunger: Combining social protection with pro-poor investments. (FAO, WFP, IFAD)    An additional $160 per year for each person living in extreme poverty will help to end chronic hunger new UN estimates show.    Eradicating world hunger sustainably by 2030 will require an estimated additional $267 billion per year on average for investments in rural and urban areas and in social protection, so poor people have access to food and can improve their livelihoods, a new UN report says. This would average $160 annually for each person living in extreme poverty over the 15 year period.    Prepared by FAO, the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), the report, which was presented in Rome today, comes ahead of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 13 - 16 July 2015.    The report notes that despite the progress made in recent decades, today nearly 800 million people, most of them in rural areas, still do not have enough food to eat.    Eliminating chronic undernourishment by 2030 is a key element of the proposed Sustainable Development Goal 2 of the new post-2015 agenda to be adopted by the international community later this year and is also at the heart of the Zero Hunger Challenge promoted by the UN Secretary-General.    The message of the report is clear: if we adopt a "business as usual" approach, by 2030, we would still have more than 650 million people suffering from hunger. This is why we are championing an approach that combines social protection with additional targeted investments in rural development, agriculture and urban areas that will chiefly benefit the poor," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.    "Our report estimates that this will require a total investment of some US$267 billion per year over the next 15 years. Given that this is more or less equivalent to 0.3 percent of the global GDP, I personally think it is a relatively small price to pay to end hunger," Graziano da Silva added.    "This report helps us to see the magnitude of the challenge ahead of us, but we believe that we won''t see gains in reducing poverty and hunger unless we seriously invest in rural people," said IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze.    "Given the right kind of tools and resources, small-scale agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs can transform struggling communities into thriving places," the IFAD President added.    "We need a dramatic shift in thinking to help the world''s poorest break the cycle of hunger and poverty by 2030. We cannot allow them to be left behind," said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin. "We must invest in the most vulnerable and ensure that they have the tools they need not only to overcome hunger, but to enhance their resources and capabilities."    The report noted how the international community needs to build on the successful experiences of some countries that have effectively used a combination of investment and social protection to combat hunger and poverty in rural and urban areas.    In an advocacy note accompanying the report, the FAO, IFAD and WFP chiefs also noted that the Addis Ababa conference seeks to ensure that all countries, especially developing countries, have the means to implement national policies and programmes to achieve their development objectives, including the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.    Lifting people from below the poverty line and making this sustainable    According to the report, a "business as usual" approach would still leave some 650 million people hungry in 2030.    It contrasts this with a combined social protection and investment scenario whereby public funded transfers will be used to lift people out of chronic hunger by ensuring that they reach a US$1.25/day income which corresponds to the World Bank-determined poverty line level.    This social protection measure would cost an additional $116 billion per year - $75 billion for rural areas and $41 billion for urban areas. Some $151 billion in additional pro-poor investments - $105 billion for rural development and agriculture and $46 billion for urban areas - would also be required to stimulate income generation to the advantage of those living in poverty. The combination of social protection and investments brings the total to $267 billion.    Most of the investment would normally come from the private sector, especially farmers. However, private investments need to be complemented by additional public sector investments in rural infrastructure, transport, health and education.    In rural areas, pro-poor public investments could target small-scale irrigation and other infrastructure benefitting small holders. They could include measures such as food processing to reduce post-harvest waste and losses, as well as stronger institutional arrangements for land and water tenure, credit facilities, labour legislation, and other areas, to make farm and off-farm activities and markets accessible to marginalized groups, including women and young people.    In urban areas, the additional investments should ensure that people living in extreme poverty will eventually be able to provide for themselves. The investments could, for example, target capacity building to impart entrepreneurial and other skills, including craftsmanship, and ensure fair labour contracts, provide credit facilities, housing as well as nutrition-related services.    From social protection to production    Social protection in the form of cash transfers will eliminate hunger immediately, and will improve nutrition by allowing the poor to afford more diverse and thus healthier diets and also fight "hidden hunger" - micronutrient deficiencies, including the inadequate intake of vitamins, iron and other minerals.    Given their meagre means and assets, people living in extreme poverty are initially not expected to be able to invest much in productive activities. However, as they become more productive through investments, they will earn more, and also save and invest more, and thus further increase their earnings.    http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/297804/icode/    May 2015    Social protection schemes hold key to beating world hunger. (FAO, IFAD, WFP)    Link between economic inequality and undernourishment highlighted in UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s report on global food insecurity.    If targets to end world hunger by 2030 are to be met, governments and donors in developing countries must spend more on cash transfers to poor farmers, school meals and other social protection schemes, a UN report has said.    Economic inequality, which is particularly acute in rural areas, is a key reason why 795 million people do not have enough food enough to eat, according to a report released by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad).    “What we need is to put in place a more distributive [mechanism] of growth, and we have learned from Latin America a very important tool, which is social protection. Expanding social protection schemes helps a lot to tackle undernourishment,” said the FAO’s director general, Jose Graziano da Silva.    About 150 million people have been kept from falling into extreme poverty because of social safety nets, but roughly 70% of the global population lacks access to some form of social security, the report said. The world’s next development agenda, the sustainable development goals (SDGs), includes a target to “implement nationally appropriate social protection measures” by 2030.    Since 1990, the number of people who do not receive enough nutrients to live an active and healthy life has been cut by 216 million, according to the State of Food Insecurity report, which covers 129 countries in the developing world.    At least 72 countries have met the millennium development goal (MDG) to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of undernourished people, the FAO said. In the past year alone, eight countries – Bolivia, Costa Rica, Laos, Mozambique, Nepal, the Solomon Islands, Suriname and Uzbekistan – met the MDG hunger target, according to the report.    But the global average has failed to drop to half of the 1990 rate, meaning that the world will not meet the hunger goal, said Da Silva.    Development targets should also help people in rural areas to access jobs and education, which will contribute to lifting them out of poverty and create lasting food security, said Ifad’s director, Kanayo Nwanze. “We must invest in rural areas so that our nations can have balanced growth and so that the three billion people who live in rural areas can fulfil their potential,” Nwanze said.    About 80% of poor people depend on vulnerable jobs in the informal economy, according to the report. Promoting enterprise in rural areas of developing countries will help to spread economic growth more evenly, said Josefina Stubbs, Ifad’s associate-vice president. “We need to encourage business in the rural sector as a way of distributing the benefits [of economic growth] to the society.”    Most of the world’s poor live in Asia or Africa, with only a small number in Latin America, the Middle East or the Americas, according to the report. “Across the developing world, the majority of the poor and most of the hungry live in rural areas, where family farming and smallholder agriculture is a prevailing – albeit not universal – mode of farm organisation,” the report said.    China has succeeded in reducing hunger by combining government investment in rural areas with agricultural subsidies and tax exemptions. China accounts for almost two-thirds of the reduction in the number of undernourished people in poor countries since 1990, the report said.    East Asia and Latin America have made the most progress in reducing the amount of hungry people over the past 25 years, according to the FAO. Mostly because of China’s success, east Asia’s hungry population fell from 295 million in 1990 to 145 million in 2016.    Sub-Saharan Africa and western Asia, areas struggling with several ongoing conflicts, have been slow to reduce hunger, the report said. Sustained unrest has wreaked havoc on food security in countries such as Central African Republic, Syria and Somalia. About 19% of the world’s hungry live in areas affected by protracted crises.    More aid needs to be directed towards long-term development projects that aim to boost infrastructure and services that help people afford to buy food. Prolonged crises have diverted 80% of all development aid away from long-term development projects, which are needed to bring about food security, Da Silva said. “We cannot compromise the long-term aid for developing countries, especially for the poorest countries.”    At least 24 African countries are facing food crises, which present serious challenges to meeting the SDG hunger target. About 19 of these countries have been struggling with severe food shortages for at least eight of the past 10 years as a result of internal conflicts.    Da Silva said: “The near-achievement of the MDG hunger targets shows us that we can indeed eliminate the scourge of hunger in our lifetime. We must be the zero hunger generation. That goal should be mainstreamed into all policy interventions and at the heart of the new sustainable development agenda to be established this year.”    We can End Chronic Hunger, writes Jomo Kwame Sundaram the Coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the Food and Agriculture Organization.    At the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), heads of government and the international community committed to reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half. Five years later, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lowered this level of ambition by only seeking to halve the proportion of the hungry.    The latest State of World Food Insecurity (SOFI) report for 2015 by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates almost 795 million people—one in nine people worldwide—remain chronically hungry.    The number of undernourished people—those regularly unable to consume enough food for an active and healthy life—in the world has thus only declined by slightly over a fifth from the 1010.6 million estimated for 1991 to 929.6 million in 2001, 820.7 million in 2011 and 794.6 million in 2014.    With the number of chronically hungry people in developing countries declining from 990.7 million in 1991 to 779.9 million in 2014, their share in developing countries has declined by 44.4 per cent, from 23.4 to 12.9 per cent over the 23 years, but still short of the 11.7 per cent target.    Thus, the MDG 1c target of halving the chronically undernourished’s share of the world’s population by the end of 2015 is unlikely to be met at the current rate of progress. However, meeting the target is still possible, with sufficient, immediate, additional effort to accelerate progress, especially in countries which have showed little progress thus far.    Overall progress has been highly uneven. All but 15 million of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. Some countries and regions have seen only slow progress in reducing hunger, while the absolute number of hungry has even increased in several cases.    By the end of 2014, 72 of the 129 developing countries monitored had reached the MDG 1c target — to either reduce the share of hungry people by half, or keep the share of the chronically undernourished under five per cent. Several more are likely to do so by the end of 2015.    Instead of halving the number of hungry in developing regions by 476 million, this number was only reduced by 221 million, just under half the earlier, more ambitious WFS goal. Nevertheless, some 29 countries succeeded in at least halving the number of hungry. This is significant as this shows that achieving and sustaining rapid progress in reducing hunger is feasible.    Marked differences in undernourishment persist across the regions. There have been significant reductions in both the share and number of undernourished in most countries in South-East Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean—where the MDG target of halving the hunger rate has been reached.    While sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of the chronically hungry, almost one in four, South Asia has the highest number, with over half a billion undernourished. West Asia alone has seen an actual rise in the share of the hungry compared to 1991, while progress in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania has not been sufficient to meet the MDG hunger target by 2015.    Despite the shortfall in achieving the MDG1c target and the failure to get near the WFS goal of halving the number of hungry, world leaders are likely to commit to eliminating hunger and poverty by 2030 when they announce the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations in September.    To be sure, there is enough food produced to feed everyone in the world. However, hundreds of millions of people do not have the means to access enough food to meet their dietary energy needs, let alone what is needed for diverse diets to avoid ‘hidden hunger’ by meeting their micronutrient requirements.    With high levels of deprivation, unemployment and underemployment likely to prevail in the world in the foreseeable future, poverty and hunger are unlikely to be overcome by 2030 without universally establishing a social protection floor for all. Such efforts will also need to provide the means for sustainable livelihoods and resilience.    The Second International Conference of Nutrition in Rome last November articulated commitments and proposals for accelerated progress to overcome undernutrition.    Improvements in nutrition will require sustained and integrated efforts involving complementary policies, including improving health conditions, food systems, social protection, hygiene, water supply and education.    * At a higher poverty line over 2.2 billion people live on less than US $2 a day according to world bank figures. Estimates prepared by United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in the 2014 Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific reveal that the number of people in the region living on less than 1.25 dollars a day fell from 52 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2011 – a reduction from 1.7 billion to 772 million people.    While this is a real improvement, it does not change the fact that too many millions are still eking out an existent on practically nothing, while a further 40 percent of the region’s population, some 933 million people – although not classified as the “poorest of the poor” – are in similarly dire straits, earning less than two dollars a day.    The 2014 annual statistical publication of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) takes an even deeper look at poverty statistics in the region, suggesting that the gains made in the past two decades may not be as bright as they seem.    According to the Bank’s sub-regional overview of declining extreme poverty, East Asia drove the drop in numbers with a 48.6-percent decline, followed by a 39-percent drop in Central and West Asia, 31 percent in Southeast Asia and 19 percent in South Asia.    However, the Bank highlighted three reasons for why the conventional 1.25-dollar poverty line is an inadequate measure of the costs required to maintain a minimum living standard by the poor: “Updated consumption data specific to Asia’s poor; the impact of volatile and rising costs associated with food insecurity; and the region’s increasing vulnerability to natural disasters, climate change, economic crises, and other shocks.”    By increasing the base poverty line to 1.51 dollars per person per day, as well as factoring in the impacts of food insecurity and vulnerability to natural disasters and other shocks, Asia’s extreme poverty rate shoots up to 49.5 percent of the population, or roughly 1.7 billion people.    http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/288229/icode/ http://www.fao.org/hunger/key-messages/en/ http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/food-security http://www.fao.org/righttofood/news-and-events/news-detail/en/c/284369/ http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/resources http://www.fao.org/righttofood/news-and-events/2014-right-to-food-guidelines10/en/ http://globalnutritionreport.org/2014/12/17/the-planetary-crisis-affecting-almost-all-of-us-poor-nutrition/ http://www.fao.org/about/meetings/icn2/toolkit/key-messages/en/ http://www.fian.org/news/newslist/    http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/world-social-security-report/2014/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_310210/lang--en/index.htm http://www.socialsecurityextension.org/gimi/gess/ShowMainPage.do http://www.srfood.org/en/social-protection-2 http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SocialProtection.aspx http://www.fao.org/social-protection/en/ http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_socialprotection.html http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePager247.pdf
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