07.10.2021
Global Report on Food Crises 2021
More than 155 million people experienced acute food insecurity at crisis level or worse around the world in 2020, an increase of 20 million from 2019 and a five-year high, as the COVID-19 pandemic compounded economic shocks, conflicts, and climate and severe weather impacts, estimates the 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC). The Global Report highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. While conflict continues to displace people, disrupt livelihoods and damage economies, the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures have exacerbated pre-existing drivers of fragility, widened inequalities and exposed structural vulnerabilities of local and global food systems, hitting the most economically vulnerable households particularly hard. The shocks come amid the frequent threat of weather extremes that result in crop and livestock losses, destroy homes and displace people. Together and separately, such shocks – especially when persistent or recurrent – drive millions of people to lose their livelihoods and lack adequate food. These shocks also increase the risk of all forms of malnutrition, and, in the most extreme cases, cause death. Credit: DW
Poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care and of life's most basic necessities- safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world's population but control about 80 percent of the world's wealth.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
