Just $160 per year for each person
living in extreme poverty would eradicate world hunger by 2030, the
United Nations said on Friday, recommending the money should be
delivered through both cash transfers and “pro-poor” investments.
Eliminating hunger is one of the U.N.’s
sustainable development goals (SDGs), new objectives set to replace the
eight expiring U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The SDGs will be finalised in September,
but U.N. officials say member states have identified 17 goals and 169
targets. The second goal targets hunger, malnutrition and food
insecurity.
“If we adopt a ‘business as usual’
approach, by 2030, we would still have more than 650 million people
suffering from hunger,” said José Graziano da Silva, director general of
the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The new report, prepared by FAO, the
World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agriculture
Development (IFAD), comes ahead of a major international conference on
financing for development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia next week.
The U.N. wants cash transfers to
“eliminate hunger immediately” by bringing people up to the World Bank’s
poverty line of $1.25 per day. It estimates this would cost $116
billion per year, $75 billion of which would go to rural areas.
To ensure the drop in hunger is
sustainable, “pro-poor” investments of $151 billion per year are needed
in areas such as irrigation, infrastructure and credit facilities on top
of cash transfers, the U.N. said.
The total sum the U.N. says is needed
each year is $267 billion. “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 said in a
statement.
Though much progress has been made in
recent years, nearly 800 million people worldwide do not have enough to
eat. Most live outside cities.
“We cannot allow them to be left behind,” said Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the World Food Programme.
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