4 ways countries are successfully fighting hunger. This is part of a series on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This article focuses on goal 2 – End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture Problems can be complicated, but solutions must be simple if they are going to be embraced, implemented and solved. No goal is more complicated, than the goal of sustainable development. This is reflected in the United Nations’ SDGs, with its 17 goals and their 169 related targets. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Many are already questioning whether such lofty ambitions can realistically be met. Even more worrying is our tendency to subdivide problems, put them in boxes and treat them independently of others – almost universally leading to even more problems.
How do we traverse and embrace this complexity but also identify practical interventions and approaches that ensure sustainable development? Source: Jakob Trollbäck India Kenya Colombia. How can the development goals be achieved? This weekend in New York, the United Nations will agree a new roadmap for humanity’s development. The fact that a consensus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been agreed in the first place is in itself impressive; that they are so long on ambition and comprehensiveness is even more so. But are they achievable? We asked World Economic Forum experts for their take, and round-up the best content from our blog, Agenda, on each of the 17 goals.
Source: Jakob Trollbäck Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere Is this goal ambitious? Read more: How can we eradicate poverty by 2030? Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture Hunger can be eliminated within this lifetime, if we create better opportunities for farmers and focus on the needs of undernourished groups. Read more: 4 ways countries are successfully fighting hunger, The 100-year-old reality of food security Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries. SDG Report. World Food Summit. Key messages | FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
This year´s annual State of Food Insecurity in the World report takes stock of progress made towards achieving the internationally established Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) and World Food Summit hunger targets and reflects on what needs to be done, as we transition to the new post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. The report reviews progress made since 1990 for every country and region as well as for the world as a whole.
Progress towards the MDG 1 target, however, is assessed not only by measuring undernourishment, or hunger, but also by a second indicator – the prevalence of underweight children under five yearsof age. Progress for the two indicators across regions and over time, is compared, providing insights into the complexity of food security. Overall progress not with standing, much work remains to be done to eradicate hunger and achieve food security across all its dimensions. Four threats to global food security and what we can do about them. Can we really feed nine billion people? That’s the estimated global population in the year 2050. It should be possible, but things are looking tricky – especially when we also factor in the climatic instability caused by global warming.
These are some of the current threats to food security and what we could do about them. 1. Demands for water for human use and to grow crops are increasing, but changing weather patterns because of global warming mean we can’t rely on enough rain falling where we need it. So how can crops still thrive in a warmer world? If plants reduce their water loss they can’t take up as much carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and thus growth. 2. Pathogens – anything which causes disease, such as a virus, bacterium or fungi – have always been a feature of agriculture and there are a number of current causes for concern.
Crops often already have resistance mechanisms that could stop a new pathogen in its tracks. 3. 4. So how to wean ourselves off fertiliser?