During our previous “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” dedicated blog entry we presented the 1st SDG “NO POVERTY”. Following on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in this entry we present you the 2nd SDG “ZERO HUNGER”. Poverty and hunger are interrelated conditions since the different types of poverty can have a direct impact on food access and production.
Learn more about the 2nd SDG: facts, targets and progress...
The 2nd Sustainable Development Goal
ZERO HUNGER The second global goal sets the goal to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. Undernutrition and severe food insecurity are major problems facing humanity. Globally, 1 in 9 people is undernourished, whereas 2019, 144 million children under the age of 5 were stunted, and 47 million were affected by wasting.
In 2019 more than 690 million people where undernourished, due to several conditions such as ongoing conflicts, climate change, the locust crisis and since 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic, which is estimated to worsen the malnutrition problem even further. Additionally, the fact that undernutrition primarily affects people in specific regions – mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America – creates inequalities in human development and lifts barriers on the development of developing countries.
Targets
The main target of SDG-2 is to end all forms of poverty for all by the year 2030. Its specific targets – as defined in the official UN SDGs website – are to:
2.1 End hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
2.2 End all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons.
2.3 Double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
2.4 Ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
2.5 Maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.
2.A Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries.
2.B Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round.
2.C Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.
Progress
During the past two decades many developing countries achieved to meet their nutritional needs, which caused in dropping the global hunger rates by almost 50%. However, this progress begun to drop gradually since 2015, thus making unlikely to meet the global target of Zero Hunger by 2030. In the contrary, by 2030 it is projected that if recent trends continue, the number of people affected by hunger would exceed 840 million by 2030.
All the aforementioned facts call for taking immediate actions to end hunger.
CODECA aspires to contribute to the achievement of SDG-2 and raise awareness on the causes and effects of hunger worldwide. It is aimed to achieve that through projects related to Ecoliteracy, environmental interventions and mobilisation of youth.
Stay tuned to learn about the 3rd Sustainable Development Goal in our upcoming blog entries!