The issue of hunger and undernutrition is introduced here.

According to the most recent estimates, there are 925 million hungry people on the planet. Stunted pre-schoolers
account for little about 180 million of the world's youngest citizens. This famine is not the result of a lack of
food supply. Most everyday activities need 2,100 kcal of energy per person per day; present global food
production is substantially in excess of this demand. Global hunger is not an intractable issue, since there is
more than enough food to feed the world's population.

Our emphasis in this chapter, as in prior Copenhagen Consensus publications on this issue, is on the
instrumental argument for reducing hunger and undernourishment; this is consistent with earlier Copenhagen
Consensus articles on this topic, such as Behrman et al. (2004) and Horton et al. (2008). This chapter's
fundamental claim is that the investments in question are sound financial decisions. In certain respects, our
proposals vary from the Copenhagen Consensus of the past. In the first place, we re-introduce the emphasis on
solutions to hunger with a focus on investments that will enhance global food output.

To put it another way, hunger is "a state in which individuals are deprived of the essential food intake that is
necessary to sustain them and enable them to lead productive lives" (Hunger Task Force, 2003: 33). There is a
correlation between hunger and food insecurity, but they are not the same thing. Families and individuals may
be forced to go hungry in times of crisis in order to protect their future food supply, even if they do not feel
hungry at the moment.

The prevalence of hunger and undernutrition in the world.

Hunger

Our definitional and conceptual discussions have led us to investigate assessing such notions as "food security,"
"hunger," "household food acquisition," and "food intake" as well as "nutritional status". At the global level,
information is confined to a certain measure of hunger and nutritional status aspects, despite the fact that
individual research give multiple measurements of these. The number of persons that are food insecure is
unknown. There's no way to know just how many people are going hungry. A comparison of measured intakes
and the minimal nutritional needs can't be used to get any direct estimations. UN Food and Agriculture
Organization statistics are the most often quoted source of information on the number of people who are deemed
to be hungry worldwide (FAO). According to FAO, the following is an indirect measure:

Census data on population size, broken down by age and sex, is used to calculate DER. Due to differences in
basal metabolic rates between men and women, it is necessary to have this statistics broken down by gender and
age. Physical activity levels (PALs) are then modified to reflect a minimum level of physical activity "consistent
with healthy existence" (Cafieroand Gennari, 2011: 17) and to take into account that a certain proportion of the
female population will be pregnant in any given year (FAO,2008). Two pieces of information are combined to
make DEC. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) compiles estimates of the
average amount of dietary energy consumed per person on a regular basis.

Production, inventories, post-harvest losses, food assistance, and exports all go into a "food balance sheet," a
commercial import term. A three-year average is used to determine the number of undernourished persons. Once
this supply has been determined, a distribution is imposed. As a result of the household budget survey, estimates
of household caloric intake are generally, although not always, taken into account.

The creation of DERs at the nation level is straightforward, provided that census data is used. Other
components, on the other hand, have sparked debate. Food and stock estimations, two famously difficult to
measure components of dietary energy supply, are communicated to it since it cannot be assessed directly
(Jacobs and Sumner, 2002). The design of an estimated calorie intake distribution is of much more relevance. A
recent "National Household Budget Survey in the fictitious nation," for example, might be used as an illustration
of this distribution (FAO, 2008: 6). This reveals that the average DEC per person per day for the lowest decile is
1,554 kcal. 3,093 for the second richest decile and 3,373 for the wealthiest decile. Both of these issues need
attention. Minnesota Starvation Experiment individuals were fed a diet that, had it lasted longer than twenty-
four weeks, would have almost certainly resulted in their deaths. The DEC value for the lowest decile is
approximately comparable to this diet (Keys et al., 1950). When it comes to rich families, growing DEC is at
odds with the micro-econometric research of Hoddinott and others that reveals that caloric-income elasticities
are nearly negative. As an additional example, you might look at the FAO's technical appendix (2010). Updated
distributional statistics for India lowered the projected number of hungry individuals by 31 million people
between 2005 and 2007 and 57 million people between 2000 and 2002, according to this study

The data supplied by the FAO remain the most commonly used in talks about global hunger, despite ongoing
disagreements over this approach. For the years 1969–1971 through 2010, Table 6.1 shows these estimations.
Between 1969 and 1971 and 1995 and 1997, there was a gradual decrease in the absolute number of people.
After the 2008 food price crisis, the number of people who are chronically malnourished went increased and
then reduced. Between 1969–1971 and 2000–2002, the worldwide prevalence of hunger decreased from 33 to
14 percent, peaking to 18 percent in 2009. A breakdown of undernourished populations by region is shown in
Table6.2. More than 90 percent of the world's hungry people live in Asia (567 million people) and Sub-Saharan
Africa (217 million people). Even this geographic disaggregation isn't all that useful, however. There were six
nations that were responsible for 62% of world hunger in 2006–2008 — China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Ethiopia, and the DRC. The "headline" variations in worldwide estimates of hunger are dominated by changes
in these nations' estimations. For example, the number of hungry people in China decreased by 80 million
between 1990 and 1992 but increased by 65 million in India and 14 million in Pakistan between 2005 and 2007.
The number of hungry in the Democratic Republic of Congo increased by 32 million between 1990 and 1992
and 2005 and 2007, accounting for 60 percent of the rise in undernourishment across the continent.

Table 6.1 Global estimates of undernourishment (hunger), 1969–2010

No. of undernourished Prevalence

Period (million) (%)
1969–1971 875 33
1979–1981 850 25
1990–1992 848 16
1995–1997 792 14
2000–2002 836 14
2006–2008 850 13
2009 1023 18 2010925 16

Source: FAO (2010) (for 1969–1971 and 1979–1981) and spreadsheet downloaded from FAO for all
others. Data for 2009 and 2010 are FAO extrapolations based on US Department of Agriculture
projections.

Table 6.2 Regional estimates of undernourishment, 1990–2008

1990–1992 1995–1997 2000–2002 2006–
2008
Africa 170.9 193.6 203.3 223.6
Northern Africa 5.0 5.4 5.6 6.1
SSA 165.9 188.2 197.7 217.5
Latin America and the Caribbean 54.4 53.4 50.8 47.0
Asia 607.1 526.2 565.7 567.8
Oceania 0.7 0.8 1.0 1.0
Source: Spreadsheet downloaded
from FAO.

There are two more caveats to be aware of. The intensity of hunger cannot be gauged by any of these metrics.
Despite the fact that hunger for the latter is substantially more intense and debilitating, they make no difference
between those whose DEC is just a few percentage points over or below this criterion. Second, they don't
indicate where in a country's population there are people who are starving. There are around 50 percent of the
world's hungry living in agricultural families, 22 percent in rural regions with no access to land, 20 percent in
urban areas, and 8 percent who are resource-dependent, according to data from the UN's Hunger Task Force
(Hunger Task Force, 2003). (Pastoralists, fishers, etc). These statistics haven't been updated, which is a shame.

IMPORTANT DATA RELATING TO GLOBAL HUNGER CURRENTLY

811 million people are still going hungry despite the fact that there is enough food being produced to feed the
world's population. 9.9 percent of the world's population suffers from hunger, which has been slowly decreasing
for a decade. The number of people suffering from malnutrition increased by 161 million between 2019 and
2020, partly as a result of war, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A major reduction in hunger has been achieved prior to this latest surge. World leaders joined the UN and civil
society in 2000 to pledge to achieving eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the first of which was to
"eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.”

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER?

Poverty and hunger are inextricably linked, and a wide range of social, political, demographic, and cultural
issues have a role. Poverty is often accompanied with a lack of food security in the home, poor health care
practices, and dangerous living conditions, including poor access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene, as well
as a lack of health care and education.

In May 2018, the UN Security Council formally acknowledged that conflict is a major contributor to severe
food crises, including famine. When there are long-term conflicts and poor institutions, hunger and
undernutrition are significantly worse. Climate-related shocks have contributed to an increase in the number of
conflicts. People and organizations fighting hunger need to be more conflict-sensitive than ever before. 8

Many countries have seen an increase in food insecurity as a result of weather-related events that are linked to
climate change. There has been an increase in food insecurity due to economic downturns in countries that rely
on oil and other primary-commodity export revenues.

In recent years, food insecurity has increased, and the coronavirus has exacerbated the problem in 2020.
However, what are the prospects for the next ten years? Climate change, economic growth, and demographic
shifts in the 2020s will have what effect on food security? For the next ten years, the World Data Lab has used
machine learning techniques and the most up-to-date forecasts of global change to estimate the dynamics of
food insecurity in the developing world. The World Hunger Clock displays this forecast at subnational spatial
resolution, allowing policymakers to explore the data and answer important questions about hunger.

Many researchers in food security studies have relied on crude metrics like the amount of food per capita or the
rate of stunting in children for many years. However, there are a number of drawbacks to these approaches.
Inequalities in access to food and infectious disease and parasites complicate population-level metrics like rates
of stunting, which are based on the amount of food stored in national reserves.

People's actual experiences of hunger are now being measured using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale
rather than crude proxies for hunger. Concerns over running out of food and having enough to eat over the past
year are included in the questions. Food insecurity was chosen as one of the key indicators for Zero Hunger's
second Sustainable Development Goal because of its usefulness across cultures. It is now possible to study this
important metric at high spatial resolution, including future projections for the entire world, with the World
Hunger Clock.

Conclusion
People who are food insecure are now less common in East Asia as a result of the region's continued
development and improvement in food availability. People are not only escaping poverty and food insecurity,
but they are also achieving middle-class status. When it comes to food security, people and policymakers in this
region are increasingly concerned with ensuring that their diets don't lead to obesity and don't have an excessive
environmental impact.
Sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, will continue to see an increase in the number of people who are food
insecure. In many parts of Africa, population growth will outpace improvements in food security, despite rapid
economic growth. Africa's food insecurity will continue to rise in absolute numbers, particularly in lower-
middle-income countries like Senegal and Ghana but also in countries like Nigeria and Kenya.

Finally, food insecurity in South Asia is expected to improve. It is expected that the number of people who are
moderately or severely food insecure will begin to decline in the early 2020s. People are rising out of poverty as
a result of economic growth and long-term trends in reduced stunting and malnutrition. Nobel Peace Prize
recipient the World Food Program's recent recognition of the importance of ensuring that all people on the
planet have access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food shows that this is an important goal to pursue.