Guyana cuts under-nourishment by more than half — as Latin America, Caribbean becomes world’s first to reach international hunger goals
GUYANA is among only six Caribbean countries to have attained the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on hunger and feature promising indicators with regards to food security and nutrition.
Political commitment, economic growth and social safety nets and programmes have been key to the Region’s success
According to the latest report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) titled ‘Panorama of Food Insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean 2015’, Guyana, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Cuba and the Dominican Republic have achieved the feat.
The report noted that Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has made a huge step towards the total eradication of hunger by reducing both the percentage and total number of undernourished people to less than half.
According to the report, in 1990-92, Latin America and the Caribbean began the challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with 14.7% of its population affected by hunger; in 2014-16, this prevalence has fallen to 5.5%, so that the Region achieved the hunger goal of the MDGs.
The Region also met the goal of the World Food Summit (WFS), having reduced the total number of undernourished people to 34.3 million.
Guyana has cut by more than half the percentage of its under-nourished population in the period elapsing between 1990-92 and 2014-16
“The Region’s success story is based on the positive macroeconomic situation during the past two decades and the solid and continued political commitment of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean with the eradication of hunger,” said Raul Benitez, FAO’s Regional Representative.
The FAO in its Regional Overview of Food Insecurity Latin America and the Caribbean 2015, said Guyana has cut by more than half the percentage of the under-nourished population in the period between 1990-92 and 2014-16.
Such percentage dropped from 22.8% in the 1990-92 triennium to 10.6%, in the 2014-16 triennium.
Likewise, Guyana also achieved the goal of the WFS by reducing the absolute number of people affected by hunger. In any event, it may be observed in the period under analysis, that in the 2000s, such reduction stagnated and the prevalence of under-nourishment even increased slightly, which was reversed in the last triennium.
POSITIVE TRENDS
In fact, as in the case of under-nourishment, other socio-economic indicators of the country have shown positive trends in the last 20 years, which nonetheless conceal certain nuances.
For instance, the annual GDP growth rate between 1990 and 2013 was 3.2%, although the economic performance of the country between 1998 and 2006 was irregular, registering an average of -0.2% (World Bank, online).
As for poverty indicators, despite showing a reduction of 6.9 percentage points between 1997 and 2006, as well as 10 percentage points in the case of indigence, such rates were affected by the decrease in economic growth, remaining practically stagnant between 1999 and 2006.
This is directly linked to the status of calorie supply in the country. Although between the 1990-92 triennium and the estimates for 2014-16, such rate shows an increase of 16%, making it possible to meet the calorie needs of the population of Guyana, between 2000-02 and 2008-10, such rate showed a steady drop, along with the decline in the under-nourishment situation.
To face this situation, lately the country has implemented an important number of public policies aimed at boosting agricultural production. Some of the most prominent policies include the ‘Grow More Food Campaign’ launched in 2008, encompassing programmes such as the Agricultural Diversification Programme and the Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Development Project, which made a joint investment of over US$27 million in production aid.
It is important to point out that Guyana is a net importer of total goods, but a net exporter of agri-food products. Agri-food exports account for nearly 43.4% of total exports, whereas agri-food imports account for 14.8% of the country’s total imports (FAO, 2015).
As for the utilisation dimension, Guyana has made relevant progress in access to basic infrastructural services, with a coverage of 97.6% of the population in 2012, while in the case of access to sanitation infrastructure, the rate for the same year is 83.6%
STUNTING
On the other hand, on the nutrition front, 19.5% of children under the age of five suffered from stunting in 2009.
This entails an increase of six percentage points with respect to the previous measurement conducted in 1997. Given the characteristics of Guyana, which is a country with long distances to cover, subject to a variety of natural and anthropogenic (caused by human activity) disasters, the nutritional risks for the vulnerable population are significant. These are particularly so for inland communities, which register malnutrition rates twice as high as those observed in coastal areas (Guyana Ministry of Health, 2010).
The Food and Nutrition Security Strategy for Guyana was implemented to face these challenges. Such strategy has components aimed at strengthening the availability, acceptability and accessibility of food for the whole population, especially the most vulnerable ones.
Meanwhile, according to the FAO publication, the Region pioneered the proposal to not only decrease, but to fully eradicate hunger, through the Hunger Free Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, which has been endorsed by all countries in the Region since the year 2005.
Many agreements and alliances have been formed to work towards the same goal, such as Hunger Free Mesoamerica and the Hunger and the Hugo Chavez Hunger and Poverty Eradication Plan in the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americs (ALBA, in Spanish) and PetroCaribe, as well as outstanding national projects and policies such as Zero Poverty in Brazil and the Mexico without Hunger Crusade.
POLITICAL COMMITMENT
The culmination of this process of political commitment over the past two decades was the adoption by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, in Spanish) –the main regional integration body– of its Plan for Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication, in January 2015.
This plan seeks to promote and boost regional efforts and has set 2025 as the deadline for regional hunger eradication. “The CELAC Plan represents a one-of-a-kind commitment and can be one of the factors that may lead the current generation to be the last to live with hunger,” said Benitez.
The Panorama report notes that the approach in the fight against hunger has changed from a sectoral look to a cross-sectoral approach. This allowed countries to meet the needs of their populations both in the short and medium term, addressing the various causes of hunger with the participation of all stakeholders.
SUB-REGIONS
Although the Region as a whole has been the first in the world to achieve both goals, progress has been different in each sub-region and at country level.
South America is the sub-region that made the most progress both in reducing the number of under-nourished and its prevalence. However, it should be noted that the largest number of under-nourished people live in this sub-region, the population of which amounts to 65.9% of the regional total.
Central America has succeeded in reducing hunger from 12.6 million in 1990-92 to 11.4 million in 2014-2016, a reduction from 10.7% to 6.6% of the population in the same period. However, it is important to note that hunger reduction in absolute terms has stagnated since 2013.
The Caribbean is the Region which has made the least progress: currently, 7.5 million people suffer under-nourishment in this sub-region, little progress since 1990-92, when hunger affected 8.1 million people. The prevalence of under-nourishment fell only 7.2 percentage points, from 27% in 1990-92 to 19.8% in 2014-16.
This is due, in large part, to the situation of Haiti: the country accounts for 75% of the under-nourished population of the Caribbean and faces the most critical situation in all Latin America and the Caribbean.
