The UN Sustainable Development agenda provides schools with a renewed focus on one of the most enduring development issues – world hunger. After steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger is again on the increase and is now the grim reality for over 815 million people.
“...on one side we have extreme wealth and overconsumption, whilst on the other we still have enduring poverty and hunger.”
SDG 2: Zero Hunger
Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets out an ambitious agenda to ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture’ by 2030. This is a complex challenge linked to many other development issues such as economics, conflict, health and the environment.
Ironically, hunger has relatively little to do with the amount of food being produced. The challenge is inequality: on one side we have extreme wealth and overconsumption, whilst on the other we still have enduring poverty and hunger. Achieving the goal of zero hunger is not a question of producing enough food. There is already enough food in the world to feed everyone. It is more about fixing a broken food system which denies 1 in 9 people their right to food.
“80% of those going hungry are the very people growing food.”
A broken food system
Unsurprisingly, the majority of the world's hungry live in the Global South. What is surprising though is that 80% of those going hungry are the very people growing food.
In addition to the impacts of conflict and climate change, a major cause of hunger is that food and land are increasingly being treated as commodities, bought and sold in a global market. Wealthy governments and businesses are seeking out land in the Global South to grow food and biofuel crops for export to countries such as the UK.
While small-scale food producers are losing the land they need to grow food on, wealthy nations are wasting almost as much food as the net production of Sub Saharan Africa. Our broken food system has created a situation where investors are able to make millions betting on food prices in global markets but this makes food prices unstable: bad news for farmers and putting food out of reach for many.
If zero hunger is to become a reality, we need to transform a global food system which places profits above human rights. This will require shifts in policy and the ways in which businesses and markets operate, but it is also something we all have direct involvement with. Our choices as consumers individually and collectively, shape a system which either supports or undermines sustainable food production.
“We need to transform a global food system which places profits above human rights.”
Making connections
Achieving zero hunger is a complex task which raises all sorts of interesting questions about how we make progress on all 17 goals at the same time. The pursuit of one target will inevitably have consequences for others. For example, biodiversity could be threatened if forests are cut down to grow more food. People may become hungry if food crops are changed to biofuels to meet renewable energy targets. Top soil could be lost if farming is intensified, impacting on our ability to feed ourselves in the long-term. If we are to contribute towards progress on sustainable development, we need to provide space in education not only to learn about the goals, but to make connections between them, and to debate and critically evaluate them.
Exploring food security using a Global Citizenship approach not only opens our eyes to the right to food, but allows us to explore the many issues and challenges involved in the exercise of this right. It also helps develop critical and systems thinking, key elements of Learning for Sustainability. By using this approach, we can help develop young people as active global citizens motivated to take action for a fairer food system.
