418
eking out grueling daily minute-by-minute routines in the shadows of sugar and
water on the lips of their waning offspring, to the beat of their own looming starvation. Yet, clear progress in combating famines—as a historic trend—has been made.
7
Others focusing on future food security have long been caught in the debate
between GMOs and fast-growing species logics, food availability for nearly eight
billion people, and the systemic debacles curtailing efficient and egalitarian food
distribution.
8
The points of view are obviously exacerbated by five dominant factors: a continuing human demographic Mount Everest, availability of water for agriculture, human consumption of other animals, climate change, and civil wars
aggravating all of the above. In addition, researchers have long examined volatility
in food prices, protective management of ecosystem services, and the realization
that “an ecological perspective is important for increasing synergies among different land uses and objectives such that conservation, food production, and livelihood
goals can simultaneously be achieved across rural landscapes.”
9
According to the last two U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO)
reports, over 800 million people currently suffer from hunger. The 17 Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN General Assembly of 2015, UN Resolution 70/1,
aspire to see the gaps reconciled by 2030. They list as their top three agendas: No
Poverty, Zero Hunger, and Good Health/Well-Being. The “hunger” issue is
addressed through the proposed mechanisms of achieving “food security and
improved nutrition” and the promotion of “sustainable agriculture.”
10
These are
generic well-wishes for one species that has broken down the muddles into such
generic categories as the “Global Hunger Index,” the components of investment in
children, better agronomy and high-nutrition crops at local and regional scale (and
hence, a “global nutrition agenda”), supply chain issues key to efficient distribution
of food, and how best to augment crop and soil resiliency against increasing desertification and fast warming trends.
11
From the vantage of those most afflicted, such
grand phrases and government aspirations are vacuous and wearisome.
7 See Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, by Alex de Waal, Amazon.com Services,
2012, https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Mass+Starvation%3A+The+History+and+Future+of+Fami
ne-p-9781509524662.
8 See the website, “Political Ecology of the World Food System,” https://courses.washington.edu/
ps385/category/hu.
9 See, “Ecology and Hunger,” by Sean Smukler, Jeff Milder, Roselin Reimans and Fabrice Declerck,
94
th Ecological Society of America Annual Convention, 2009, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267284895_Ecology_and_hunger; See also, “The Food-Insecurity Obesity Paradox: A
Resource Scarcity Hypothesis,” by Emily J. Dhurandhar, Ph.D., Physiol Behav. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 Aug 1. Physiol Behav. 2016 Aug 1; 162: 88–92., Published online
2016 Apr 26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.04.025, PMCID: PMC5394740,
NIHMSID: NIHMS845194. PMID: 27126969, NCBI, PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
articles/PMC5394740/. Accessed April 27, 2020.
10 See United Nations, 2018. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018, Foreword by
António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2018/
TheSustainableDevelopmentGoalsReport2018-EN.pdf, Accessed April 27, 2020.
11 See The State Of Food Security And Nutrition In The World, 2018, http://www.fao.org/3/I955
3EN/i9553en.pdf; See also, Global Hunger Index. Global Hunger Index and the Paradox of
46 Famine in Bangladesh
eking out grueling daily minute-by-minute routines in the shadows of sugar and
water on the lips of their waning offspring, to the beat of their own looming starvation. Yet, clear progress in combating famines—as a historic trend—has been made.
7
Others focusing on future food security have long been caught in the debate
between GMOs and fast-growing species logics, food availability for nearly eight
billion people, and the systemic debacles curtailing efficient and egalitarian food
distribution.
8
The points of view are obviously exacerbated by five dominant factors: a continuing human demographic Mount Everest, availability of water for agriculture, human consumption of other animals, climate change, and civil wars
aggravating all of the above. In addition, researchers have long examined volatility
in food prices, protective management of ecosystem services, and the realization
that “an ecological perspective is important for increasing synergies among different land uses and objectives such that conservation, food production, and livelihood
goals can simultaneously be achieved across rural landscapes.”
9
According to the last two U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO)
reports, over 800 million people currently suffer from hunger. The 17 Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN General Assembly of 2015, UN Resolution 70/1,
aspire to see the gaps reconciled by 2030. They list as their top three agendas: No
Poverty, Zero Hunger, and Good Health/Well-Being. The “hunger” issue is
addressed through the proposed mechanisms of achieving “food security and
improved nutrition” and the promotion of “sustainable agriculture.”
10
These are
generic well-wishes for one species that has broken down the muddles into such
generic categories as the “Global Hunger Index,” the components of investment in
children, better agronomy and high-nutrition crops at local and regional scale (and
hence, a “global nutrition agenda”), supply chain issues key to efficient distribution
of food, and how best to augment crop and soil resiliency against increasing desertification and fast warming trends.
11
From the vantage of those most afflicted, such
grand phrases and government aspirations are vacuous and wearisome.
7 See Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, by Alex de Waal, Amazon.com Services,
2012, https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Mass+Starvation%3A+The+History+and+Future+of+Fami
ne-p-9781509524662.
8 See the website, “Political Ecology of the World Food System,” https://courses.washington.edu/
ps385/category/hu.
9 See, “Ecology and Hunger,” by Sean Smukler, Jeff Milder, Roselin Reimans and Fabrice Declerck,
94
th Ecological Society of America Annual Convention, 2009, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267284895_Ecology_and_hunger; See also, “The Food-Insecurity Obesity Paradox: A
Resource Scarcity Hypothesis,” by Emily J. Dhurandhar, Ph.D., Physiol Behav. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 Aug 1. Physiol Behav. 2016 Aug 1; 162: 88–92., Published online
2016 Apr 26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.04.025, PMCID: PMC5394740,
NIHMSID: NIHMS845194. PMID: 27126969, NCBI, PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
articles/PMC5394740/. Accessed April 27, 2020.
10 See United Nations, 2018. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018, Foreword by
António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2018/
TheSustainableDevelopmentGoalsReport2018-EN.pdf, Accessed April 27, 2020.
11 See The State Of Food Security And Nutrition In The World, 2018, http://www.fao.org/3/I955
3EN/i9553en.pdf; See also, Global Hunger Index. Global Hunger Index and the Paradox of
46 Famine in Bangladesh