Water Wheel March/April 2014

Abstract

Fluid Thoughts Fluid Thoughts WRC CEO, Dhesigen Naidoo According to the official statistics of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), in 2011-13, there were 842 million people defined as chronically undernourished in the world. Chronic hunger is defined as ‘not getting enough food to lead active and healthy lives’ . This is one in eight people in the world. Of this, 826.3 million are in the developing world while only 15.7 million reside in OECD countries. According to FOA DG, Jose Graziano da Silva, this was a vast improvement on the 1990 figures when more than a billion people worldwide were deemed to be chronically hungry. This progress is significant especially given that there has been an exponential growth in population in that period. The largest gains though have been in East Asia, South East Asia and Latin America where we have witnessed a 17% decrease in the total number of undernourished people from 995.5 million in 1990-92 to 826.6 million in 2011-13.

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