What do you call it when families around the world find themselves, once again, stalked by a killer of our own creation? A tragedy? A nightmare? Or, perhaps, more accurately, a crime on a planetary scale?
The war in Ukraine has exacerbated these problems but it did not create them. The truth is, our food system is broken. Even before recent events, roughly three billion people could not afford a healthy diet; while at the same time, around a third of all food produced globally was being wasted. Similarly, while the global food crisis shows up differently in Madagascar, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan to Germany, the United Kingdom or the United States, the hunger and hopelessness it generates knows no borders. As with global crises, this needs to be designated a shared emergency to be met with a collective response.
In the longer term, donors including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund must offer countries hit hardest by the food and climate crises serious, strategic long-term financing so they can build their resilience to this and future shocks. Looking at the damage done in recent weeks by torrential rains and flooding in Pakistan, it is unmistakably clear that we must invest now to prepare for — and help prevent the worse version of — a volatile future.
In 2005, at the Make Poverty History rally in Trafalgar Square in London, Nelson Mandela urged world leaders: “Do not look the other way; do not hesitate. Recognise that the world is hungry for action, not words.