(par 5.2.1.5 ) UN Moves To Address Food Challenges In Developing Regions

UN Moves To Address Food Challenges In Developing Regions

http://www.ventures-africa.com/2014/11/un-moves-to-address-food-challenges-in-developing-regions/

November 25, 2014 Editor Corporate Social Responsibility, Leadership

VENTURES AFRICA – At the recent Cookstoves Future Summit in New York, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced plans to provide safe cooking energy to 10 million people by 2020. This it hopes will bring the world closer to eradicating global hunger.

To achieve this, the WFP will heavily lean on the SAFE initiative (Safe Access to Fuel and Energy) which supports women with fuel-efficient stoves and other opportunities to make a living. The idea of the stoves is to provide a means to properly cook food without compromising the environment or the safety of rural women who usually travel long distances to acquire firewood.

“WFP’s food assistance programmes implement an innovative combination of activities to address the risks faced by people collecting firewood and preparing food, and to mitigate the effects on their already fragile environments. This is a sustainable way to work towards a zero hunger world and we want to play a big role in it,” said ManojJuneja, WFP Assistant Executive Director, at the summit.

This new commitment would require about $20 million to implement, and also involves increasing current target of 6 million people by 2015 to 10 million by 2020. Already, the WFP has reached some 2.8 million people in Haiti, Kenya, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Ethiopia. Funding, obviously, will be a critical success factor for this expansion, which is already reported to be one of the most significant in the humanitarian field.

Because of its impact on hunger, food security and nutrition, the WFP, which is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger and delivering food assistance worldwide, is also interested in the discussion on climate change which, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), can cause increased water stress for 75 million to 250 million people in Africa by 2020. This is in addition to reducing yields from rain-fed agriculture by as much as 50 percent in some developing countries.

Today’s world, though blessed with a surge of unprecedented growth and development opportunities, is also faced with environmental and developmental challenges. It is a paradox that the pursuits of man in line with civilization and industrialization leave a dent on the environment, one that proves too deep for governments alone to remedy. Quite ironically, the developing world suffers the most from the impact of efforts made by the more advanced regions.

Could the solution to this lie in less development? Is it time to place a lid on further development in certain regions on earth? Or do we just spin off more humanitarian organizations to clean up the mess caused inadvertently by civilization?