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Interview with Shenggen
Fan
As world leaders gather in New York for a special
summit convened by the United Nations to accelerate action on the
Millennium Development Goals, Shenggen Fan, Director General of the
International Food Policy Research Institute, warns that the goal
of halving hunger enshrined in the first MDG runs the risk of not
being achieved. He urges the global community to adopt a
"business as unusual" approach to get back on
track.
Q: What effect have the food and financial crises had on world
hunger? How much is really at stake?
SF: We are moving away from the world community's goal of
halving the percentage of hungry people between 1990 and 2015.
Between 2008 and 2009, the number of hungry shot up by 105 million,
to 1.02 billion people due to the food and financial crises. At
that point, we were confronted with the need to raise 73 million
people out of hunger every year until 2015 to achieve the first
MDG. It is now 2010 and this objective appears to be slipping
away.
Q: In 2005, the Group of Eight met at Gleneagles and committed
to substantially increase development assistance. At L'Aquila
last year, they promised to advance global food security. Why keep
pressing for commitments?
SF: Past commitments to development and food security have not
been fully met. Yet, we do see some disbursement of funds and
additional promises. The G8 leaders, when they met in Canada in
June, for example, pledged additional resources to improve maternal
health and reduce child mortality. But much more needs to be done
to ensure that commitments are fulfilled and funds are delivered in
a timely manner. More than 100 heads of state or government are
expected at the UN special summit, and they now have the chance and
obligation to follow up on this.
Q: Assuming the political will can be found, what course of
action is called for?
SF: Achieving MDG-1 will require a more innovative and effective
approach, or business as unusual. First, invest in agriculture and
rural development. For every million rupees India invested in rural
roads in the 1990s, 881 people were brought out of poverty -- one
person for every $26. In Uganda, every $16 in additional
agricultural research raised a person out of poverty. Second,
prioritize social protection and emphasize boosting the nutrition
and health of the poorest and hungriest households. Third, and more
importantly, combine these two types of investment. Evidence from
Ethiopia and elsewhere shows that such interventions can be
particularly cost-effective.
Q: This will take money from governments at a time when they
seem to be focused on deficit control. Can donors take up the
challenge of ensuring global food security?
SF: More money will be needed, but some of it will come from new
actors in global development-chiefly emerging economies but also
civil society and the private sector. Emerging economies are
playing a growing role in trade and investment, and in providing
development assistance. They need to be fully integrated into the
global food security agenda. Civil society and the private sector
can also provide effective and sustainable investment and
innovation.
Q: What changes are needed at the other end of the equation, in
developing countries?
SF: Experience shows that effective and sustainable policies
that are well adapted to the local context can help countries
maximize the impact of the global agenda and tap external
assistance. Successful reforms also need to be local in nature,
with poor people acting as a driving force in the development
process. At the same time, issues such as climate change, trade,
and disease control must be addressed regionally and globally. But
it is individual countries that must integrate these issues in
developing their own strategies.
Q: How best to find what works?
SF: Let evidence and experimentation determine policy, and allow
for positive deviance from the strictures of traditional donors.
The success of agrarian and market reforms in China, India,
Vietnam, and elsewhere can be attributed to unorthodox policies
such as partial liberalization. To reap similar rewards,
policymakers must allow experiments to be monitored impartially and
they must rapidly transform lessons learned into large-scale
reforms.
Q: How to ensure that once we are back on track we stay on
track?
SF: In a word, accountability. Mutual accountability between
global and national actors is essential to help sustain
progress.
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