24/01/2023, Bangkok – Asia’s cities
are growing at such a fast pace that nearly 55 percent of
the region’s enormous population is expected to reside in
urban areas by 2030, and that will have equally enormous
consequences for urban food security and nutrition,
according to the main
findings of a new report by four United Nations
agencies.
But the threat is not only a future concern,
the results are being felt now, according to the ‘Asia and
the Pacific Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition
2022 – Urban Food Systems and Nutrition’. Published
jointly each year, the “SOFI” report is prepared by the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the
World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization
(WHO).
The convergence of an increase in low-income
settlements, the rising costs of food and the need for
developing an urban food agenda that takes into account
infrastructure, transport, clean water and waste management
are posing new challenges to planners and national
policymakers across the Asia-Pacific region.
This
report’s highlights, revealed today, capture the
challenges and system-level determinants of unhealthy diets
in urban areas, both with regard to undernutrition and
overweight and obesity. They profile various urban
environments, interventions, experiences and the
opportunities to innovate at multiple levels to transform
urban areas into sustainable cities. Increasingly, food
security and nutrition in the urban context will determine
progress, or lack thereof, towards achieving the Sustainable
Development Goal to eliminate hunger (SDG2) and the World
Health Assembly (WHA) 2030 targets on food security and
nutrition.
Asia-Pacific already backsliding in food
security targets
This is the fifth annual
Asia-Pacific regional SOFI report. In recent years, previous
editions reported that progress in the fight against hunger
and all forms of malnutrition was stalling, then regressing
and more recently pushing us further off track from
achieving the SDGs.
This reverse was evident even
before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020. But as the
pandemic continued, albeit in a milder form in most parts of
the region by 2022, the 5F crisis emerged (lack of food,
feed, fuel, fertilizer and finance), as did the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine, two of the world’s major
agricultural producers. The convergence of these and other
issues during the past year resulted in unprecedented food
and energy price rises that have hit households and
livelihoods hard and pushed additional millions more into
hunger and poverty.
In March 2022, the FAO Food Price
Index (FPI) capped a steady rise through the previous two
years of the COVID-19 pandemic and rose to the highest level
since its inception. Since then the FPI has fallen somewhat
but remains significantly higher by 28 percent over 2020.
High agricultural input prices, concerns about the weather
and climate, and increased market uncertainties stemming
from the continuing war in Ukraine, are contributing to a
tightening of food markets. Food import bills are likely to
touch a new record of USD 1.94 trillion this year, according
to FAO’s latest Food Outlook published in November.
Without doubt, the convergence of these negative factors
will exacerbate hunger and poverty in Asia and the Pacific,
the world’s most populous region.
Urgent action
needed to combat stunting, overweight and obesity
The
report’s figures paint a grim picture, one that requires a
call for urgent action. In 2021, 396 million people in the
region were undernourished and an estimated 1.05 billion
people suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity.
Nearly 75 million children below the age of five in Asia and
the Pacific are stunted, amounting to half of the world’s
total. Ten percent are affected by wasting, while poor diet
quality also drives overall increases in child overweight
and obesity.
Among older children and adults, obesity
continues to rise in every country of this region. The
Pacific Island Countries have the highest prevalence of
overweight and obesity in the world. Obesity is a risk
factor for many non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) and
it has a major impact on national economies by reducing
productivity and life expectancy and increasing disability
and health care costs. No country in Asia and the Pacific is
on track to meet the WHA target of no increase in adult
obesity.
Making the situation worse is the cost of
attaining a healthy diet. In this region, a healthy diet is
unaffordable in most countries for nearly two billion
inhabitants (1.9 billion persons, which is 44.5 percent of
the region’s population). The combined impacts of the
pandemic and ongoing inflation have pushed up the average
cost of a healthy diet to nearly USD 4 per day (USD 3.98 per
person, per day), the report finds.
A call to action
and action underway
During the year, as the 5F crisis
intensified, our four UN agencies took the initiative to
join hands at regional and country level to deliver
coordinated technical support to countries and actions. We
called upon all country representatives and directors to
synergize their efforts to address the short-term effects as
well as the medium- to long-term impacts, the crisis will
have on economies, households and individuals, particularly
women and children, in the region.
At the same time,
the key principals of the report pointed out that the crisis
is an opportunity to build on the momentum of the UN Food
Systems Summit of 2021. Together, the agencies are
intensifying efforts with member countries to reshape and
reimagine food systems across the region to make them more
efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, leaving no
one behind. However, governments, civil society, the private
sector, funding and development agencies will need to
continue to demonstrate leadership and partnership to bring
about transformative change in agrifood systems and show
improved figures in this flagship report in the years to
come.
The main findings of the report were launched
today at an event in Bangkok. The full
report will be available online
soon.
