The International Food Policy Research Institute has published the Global Food Policy Report 2023 at Kathmandu in Nepal.
IFPRI’s South Asia Regional Office, in partnership with the Institute for Integrated Development Studies, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, organised the two-day regional launch event on Monday, said a press release.
The Global Food Policy Report, IFPRI’s flagship publication, draws on a wealth of evidence built over many years by IFPRI and partners on policy recommendations that can contribute to preparing for, detecting, averting, mitigating and responding to food crises.
The three focused key areas of the report were crisis prediction and preparation, building resilience before and during crises, and making crisis response supportive and inclusive of women, forced migrants and other vulnerable groups.
The Global Report on Food Crises 2022 estimates that as many as 205 million people in 45 countries experienced crisis-level acute food insecurity or worse due to the protracted Covid pandemic, natural disasters, civil unrest and political instability, the growing impacts of climate change and the global repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war.
‘All these crises are coming together, one after another, and we are also witnessing a strong increase in the volatility and shocks to our systems. Crises, shocks, and volatility are no longer exceptions and may become the new normal. Thus, the report is focused on rethinking food crisis responses in such a world and features concrete strategies and recommendations for crises response with a focus on different regions and countries,’ said Johan Swinnen, director general of IFPRI and managing director of the CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group.
South Asia has also been affected by the global rise in food, fuel and fertiliser prices.
In September 2022, the year-on-year consumer inflation rate for food was 66 per cent in Sri Lanka, 36 per cent in Pakistan and about 8 per cent in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
HE Tenzin Lekphell, BIMSTEC secretary general observed, ‘The Covid pandemic along with other crises has exacerbated the existing vulnerabilities and exposed the fragility of our food systems. It has highlighted the urgent need for collective action, innovative solution, and resilient policies. So, the focus of this report is not only timely, but critical and it calls for a comprehensive and inclusive approach to address rising food prices and promote long term resilience in our food systems.’
‘The call for modifying food crises response system has never been stronger. The system that worked previously no longer works efficiently in this 21st century. The report thus, is quite useful in indicating the action areas we need to concentrate on, especially for issues like early warning systems, anticipatory action, social protection, forced migration, agri-food value chains, finance mechanisms and effective governance,’ said Jamal Uddin Ahmed, director, agriculture at Rural Development and SAARC Development Fund.
Commenting on the importance of building a resilient food system in South Asia, Shahidur Rashid, director, South Asia, IFPRI, said, ‘Climate extremes have become the norm across South Asia and 2022 saw the highest temperatures recorded in South Asia in nearly a hundred years. So, South Asia’s success in building resilient crisis response systems has implications for global development agenda and the sustainability of global food systems as well.’
This article was originally published in New Age on June 19, 2023.
Featured photo credit: Md. Shafiqul Karim/IFPRI