According to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Sustainable Development Report 2024, all countries globally are failing in the battle to end hunger. No country has achieved the goal. Nor is any country close. Very few countries are designated as having “challenges remain(ing)” or “significant challenges remain(ing).” Most—almost all—countries are classified as having “major challenges remain(ing).” This includes most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. It also includes a majority of OECD countries, many classified as being some of the wealthiest in the world. So how can the poorest and the richest countries all be failing? While summaries of progress towards ending hunger tend to focus on the numbers of people experiencing food poverty or food insecurity—both indicators associated with hunger, the indicator for SDG 2 actually includes much more information than that. It includes metrics associated with sustainable consumption and agriculture. It also includes BMI for obesity, a contested statistic that correlates to some extent with social class, but which is not generally used as a proxy for hunger. By including so much diverse information within one indicator, those countries experiencing relatively high levels of hunger and food insecurity (often in the Global South) are lumped in with countries with hyper-consumption and neo-liberal food and trade policies (often in the Global North) which support the mass overproduction of food for export. This chapter examines each indicator monitored for SDG 2 by the Sustainable Development Report to highlight the global inequalities that are currently hidden within the composite indicator for SDG 2.

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Global Inequalities Within SDG 2 and the Battle Against Hunger

  • Amy E. Healy

摘要

According to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Sustainable Development Report 2024, all countries globally are failing in the battle to end hunger. No country has achieved the goal. Nor is any country close. Very few countries are designated as having “challenges remain(ing)” or “significant challenges remain(ing).” Most—almost all—countries are classified as having “major challenges remain(ing).” This includes most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. It also includes a majority of OECD countries, many classified as being some of the wealthiest in the world. So how can the poorest and the richest countries all be failing? While summaries of progress towards ending hunger tend to focus on the numbers of people experiencing food poverty or food insecurity—both indicators associated with hunger, the indicator for SDG 2 actually includes much more information than that. It includes metrics associated with sustainable consumption and agriculture. It also includes BMI for obesity, a contested statistic that correlates to some extent with social class, but which is not generally used as a proxy for hunger. By including so much diverse information within one indicator, those countries experiencing relatively high levels of hunger and food insecurity (often in the Global South) are lumped in with countries with hyper-consumption and neo-liberal food and trade policies (often in the Global North) which support the mass overproduction of food for export. This chapter examines each indicator monitored for SDG 2 by the Sustainable Development Report to highlight the global inequalities that are currently hidden within the composite indicator for SDG 2.