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The message is not new, but the figures are now up-to-date again: Global hunger remains scandalously high and there has been hardly any progress over the past years. Hunger levels are serious or alarming in 42 countries across the global. In total, 733 million people lack access to sufficient calories. In some countries, more than half of the population is undernourished. Africa South of the Sahara and South Asia are the regions where the situation is most severe. These are some of the main messages of the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) published on October 10th by Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency, and the German non-government organisation Welthungerhilfe. “That hunger persists on such a scale with all the resources in the modern world is deeply troubling. That progress being made in addressing hunger has stalled due to the man-made impact of conflict and climate change should be alarming,” said David Regan, Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide. “How can we ignore over 2.8 billion people who cannot afford a healthy diet?’ Apart from armed conflict and the impacts of climate changes, hunger is also driven by high domestic food prices, market disruptions, high debt burdens among low- and middle-income countries, income inequality, and economic downturns, among other structural inequalities. Achieving Zero Hunger by the target date of 2030 as the international community had envisaged appears highly unlikely. In 22 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2024 GHI scores, hunger has actually increased since 2016. The world’s poorest countries and people are hit hardest. Women and girls are particularly affected by food insecurity and malnutrition. They also suffer disproportionately from the effects of weather extremes and climate emergencies, says the GHI.

The report is published each year by the two organisations. For this year’s edition, data was assessed for 136 countries. The GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators: the share of undernourished people in the population (insufficient caloric intake), the share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition (stunting), the share of children under five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition (wasting) and child mortality in this age group. Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best and 100 being the worst score. The scale encompasses low, moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming hunger levels. There was sufficient data to calculate 2024 GHI scores for 127 countries. For 9 countries, individual scores could not be calculated and ranks could not be determined owing to lack of data. However, for three of these countries (Burundi, South Sudan and Lesotho) provisional designations of the severity of hunger were determined based on several known factors such as past GHI scores or other data sources.

According to the report, hunger remains serious or alarming in 42 countries. Six countries have alarming levels of hunger: Burundi, Chad, Madagascar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. The GHI finds that Somalia and Chad both are facing the compounding effects of conflict, climate change, and economic downturns. Yemen is particularly affected by conflict and climate extremes, and Madagascar is facing extraordinary challenges posed by climate change. Somalia leads the ranking in this year’s report with a score of 44.1. The country is facing a protracted hunger crisis, while the state only has limited capacity to carry out basic government functions. Over half the population (51.3%) were undernourished in the period 2021-2023, meaning that they lack sufficient calories and are consistently unable to meet minimum dietary energy needs. With this score, Somalia has the second-highest value for this indicator, being hard on the heels of Democratic Republic of the Congo that ranks first with 53,5% of the population being undernourished. In another 36 countries, hunger is designated as serious. In this group, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Niger are at the forefront. In 37 countries, the index indicates moderate hunger levels. The countries with the worst scores in this group are Gambia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Namibia. They are close to falling into the category of serious hunger. In a further 51 countries, the hunger scores are “low”.

The sad news is that the situation is hardly improving in many places. In 20 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2024 hunger levels, progress has largely stalled and their 2024 GHI scores have declined by less than 5% from their 2016 GHI scores. However, there is also some glimmer of hope: A small number of countries, such as Bangladesh, Mozambique, Nepal, Somalia, and Togo, have made significant improvements in their GHI scores although hunger remains a serious problem. The average score for the whole world is 18.3, which is considered moderate and is only slightly below the 2016 score of 18.8. However, this global average score obscures wide regional variations in hunger. The situation is most severe in Africa South of the Sahara where the regional score is 41.7. This high regional aggregate is driven by the highest undernourishment and child mortality rates of any region by far. In South Asia, serious hunger (a score of 37.6) reflects rising undernourishment and persistently high child undernutrition. “Achieving Zero Hunger by the target date of 2030 appears unreachable. Globally, 733 million people – significantly more than a decade ago – lack access to sufficient calories, and 2.8 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. Acute food insecurity and the risk of famine are on the rise, and starvation is proliferating as a weapon of war,” Mathias Mogge, Secretary General of the Welthungerhilfe (WHH), and David Regan, Chief Executive Officer of Concern Worldwide, write in the foreword to the report. If progress remains at the pace observed since 2016, the world will not reach even low hunger until 2160 – more than 130 years from now.

This year’s report focuses on the linkages between gender inequality, food and nutrition insecurity and climate change. In a guest essay, Nitya Rao (University of East Anglia), Siera Vercillo (Wageningen University), and Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey (University of Ghana) criticise that “despite decades of galvanizing rhetoric about the need to ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women, severe gender inequality persists.” The effects of the gender gap do not only have an impact on women’s lives but also have stark implications for the world’s food security, nutrition, and resilience to a changing climate. “Among the undernourished, women consistently remain the most food insecure,” the three scientists write. The gap in food security between men and women can be as high as 19 percentage points in some countries. The situation for women is especially severe in countries affected by conflict. “Women who are poor, rural, migrants, refugees, or engaged in informal employment are even more vulnerable. Even in peacetime, women and girls around the world sometimes eat last and least, given the inequalities prevalent in cultures, communities, and households,” the authors write. However, food systems in general also discriminate against women. Agrifood policy approaches and finance policies often do not respond to the underlying power relations between men and women, such as discriminatory norms, labour burdens, and land inheritance regimes, even though they rely on women’s unpaid farm labour and caregiving to sustain an unjust food system. The authors lament that even in countries where women’s land rights are enshrined in law, sociocultural norms and practices constrain their land access and ownership.

The three authors of the guest chapter point to the fact that gender justice – i.e. equity between people in all spheres of life – is critical to a just world and to achieving climate and food justice. It consists of three interconnected dimensions: recognition, redistribution, and representation. The report elaborates in more detail on what this actually means, what the implications are for government action and programme planning and which reforms are needed to incorporate gender justice at all scales and levels, ranging from individuals to entire systems and from formal mechanisms to informal social and cultural norms. Rao, Vercillo and Torvikey argue that “while enabling access to resources for women is essential, structural inequalities – including class dynamics, rising income inequality, corporate control over production systems, and lack of high-quality basic services – must be addressed for real systemic and social change to happen.” Mathias Mogge also highlights the importance of gender equality and reform: “Addressing gender inequality has the potential to lift millions out of hunger, improve child nutrition, and boost overall well-being. Governments must urgently use public investments in care, education, health, and rural development to address discriminatory norms and promote equitable distribution of labour,” he said. (ab)

Our planet is in bad shape and the risk is increasing that the stability and resilience of the Earth system could soon be compromised. For this reason, scientists will from now on give “patient Earth” an annual health check in order to keep an eye on the situation, develop treatment options and identify the underlying causes. The findings of the first annual examination were released on September 24th: the Planetary Health Check (PHC), a scientific report compiled by The Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience), a new initiative led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The scientists examined critical Earth system processes that regulate life support systems on Earth in order to determine whether we are still operating in the safe space within which humanity can thrive while keeping the planet stable and resilient. Nine planetary boundaries (PB) were defined: Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Change, Biogeochemical Flows, the Introduction of Novel Entities, Ocean Acidification, Atmospheric Aerosol Loading and Stratospheric Ozone Depletion. Once a boundary is breached, there is a risk of large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. “The overall diagnostic is that the patient, Planet Earth, is in critical condition. Six of nine Planetary Boundaries are transgressed. Seven PB processes show a trend of increasing pressure so that we will soon see the majority of the Planetary Health Check parameters in the high-risk zone,” says PIK Director Johan Rockström.

The concept of the planetary boundaries is not new: In 2009, a group of 29 scientists published a ground-breaking article in the journal Nature titled “A safe operating space for humanity”. In 2015, an update was released which came to the conclusion that the safe operating space for four of the nine systems had already been clearly exceeded, namely in the area of climate change, land-system change, human interference with the biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen) and the loss of biodiversity. In 2023, another study was published which, for the first time, provides a complete analysis of all nine processes and systems that determine the stability and resilience of the planet. The „Planetary Health Check” will now take stock each year and combine earth and world data, the latest scientific information and multidisciplinary insights with the aim of bringing our planet back to a safe operating zone. “Six of the nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, put into context in the report by high-resolution spatial maps of local and regional trends for all nine boundaries,” explains Levke Caesar, PIK Scientist, Co-Lead of PBScience, and one of the lead authors of the PHC. “The message is clear, local actions impact the planet, and a planet under pressure can impact everyone, everywhere. Securing human wellbeing, economic development, and stable societies requires a holistic approach where the protection of the planet takes center stage,” she added.

The authors of the PHC evaluate 13 control variables across the nine planetary boundary processes to report on the overall health of our planet. The six processes that have breached safe levels are: Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Change, Biogeochemical Flows (phosphorus and nitrogen), and the Introduction of Novel Entities. In these areas, the situation is deteriorating, making further transgression in the near future very likely. “Our updated diagnosis shows that vital organs of the Earth system are weakening, leading to a loss of resilience and rising risks of crossing tipping points,” says Caesar. With regard to climate change, the report shows that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been continuously rising since industrialization and are now higher than at any time in the last 15 million years. A persistent warming trend is observed that has accelerated since the late 20th century. Global mean temperatures are now higher than at any point since human civilizations emerged on Earth. The changes in biosphere integrity are also alarming: The two indicators here, the global loss of genetic diversity and the decline in functional integrity (measured as energy available to ecosystems), have both exceeded safe levels. This trend is accelerating, particularly in regions with intensive land use. As a result, Earth’s biosphere is losing resilience, adaptability, and its capacity to mitigate various pressures, including those from transgressing other planetary boundaries. Land system change, especially due to deforestation and urbanization, is diminishing ecological functions like carbon sequestration, moisture recycling, and habitats for wildlife. Due to land use and increasingly also due to climate change, global and regional forests have declined steadily over the last few decades across all major forest biomes. Most regions are already in the High Risk Zone, well beyond their safe boundaries, while some areas, such as temperate and tropical America, have only recently surpassed them.

There are two indicators to measure the alteration of freshwater cycles: Human-induced disturbance of “blue water” (referring to water in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs) and of “green water” (referring to the stock of soil moisture which is the water available to plants). Local streamflow and soil moisture deviations have significantly increased since the late 19th century, surpassing their respective boundaries in the early 20th century. On around 18% of the global land area, blue water in lakes, rivers and reservoirs is experiencing dry/wet deviations beyond safe levels. And around 16% of the global land area experience soil moisture levels beyond safe levels. “The increasing variability and instability in global freshwater and terrestrial water systems signal growing concerns for water resource management and environmental stability,” according to the executive summary of the report. The biogeochemical flows analysed in the report are the global nutrient cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus. The use of these nutrients in agriculture has exceeded safe boundary levels. This has led to severe environmental impacts such as water pollution, eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, and so-called “dead zones” in freshwater and marine ecosystems. The problem has been prevalent in industrialized countries for a long time and is becoming an growing threat in developing regions as well.

The sixth boundary that has been transgressed is related to the introduction of novel entities worldwide. This includes synthetic chemicals and substances (e.g., microplastics, endocrine disruptors, organic pollutants), radioactive materials (e.g., nuclear waste, nuclear weapons), and human interventions in evolutionary processes, such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). According to the report, novel entities have been introduced at a large scale, yet a significant portion of these substances remains untested for their environmental impacts: “This indicates that the boundary is likely exceeded, although exact figures are uncertain. Novel entities can disrupt critical Earth system processes (e.g., CFCs notably damaged the ozone layer), harm ecosystems (e.g., pesticides have caused significant declines in insect and pollinator populations), and lead to long-term, possibly irreversible changes in the environment, including the contamination of soil and water bodies and the alteration of natural habitats,” the authors warn. Apart from the six boundaries that have already been breached, another one is close to being transgressed: Ocean acidification - the phenomenon of increasing acidity (decreasing pH) in ocean water due to the absorption of atmospheric CO2 - is approaching a critical threshold. There have been significant declines in surface aragonite saturation, particularly in high-latitude regions like the Arctic and Southern Ocean. Aragonite is a form of calcium carbonate used by many calcifying organisms (e.g., corals and shellfish) to construct their shells or skeletons. This process harms calcifying organisms, impacting marine ecosystems, and reduces the ocean's efficiency in acting as a carbon sink. “When we look at the trends of Earth’s health indicators, we see that soon the majority of them will be in the high-risk zone,” highlights Boris Sakschewski, Co-lead of PBScience and lead author of the report. “We need to reverse this trend. We know that all Planetary Boundary processes act together and each one needs protection to protect the whole system”, he concluded. (ab)

We have already reached Earth Overshoot Day this year: August 1st marks the date by which humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services has exceeded what Earth can regenerate in 2024. For the rest of the year, we will be living on resources borrowed from future generations. This is the sad message spread by the Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that calculates the date each year, using National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts data. These are produced by the Footprint Data Foundation with York University in Toronto and are based on comprehensive UN data sets as well as complementary data from the most recent scientific literature. The calculations are contrasting the world’s demand on nature (ecological footprint), including demand for food, timber, fibres (cotton) and space for urban infrastructure with the planet’s ability to replenish resources and absorb waste, including carbon dioxide emissions. Humanity has accumulated an enormous deficit over the past fifty years and is currently living as if 1.75 Earths were available. “This overshoot is possible because people can harvest more than is being renewed, thereby depleting natural capital,” the Global Footprint Network explains in a press release. “The consequences of ecological overspending are evident in deforestation, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which leads to more frequent extreme weather events and reduced food production.”

Last year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2nd. However, even though the date seems to hold steady, this isn’t good news because the pressure on the planet keeps increasing, since damage from overshoot accumulates over time. Each year, the GFN recalculates the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity metrics to maintain consistency with the latest data and science which means that the annual dates of past Earth Overshoot Days change accordingly. Since 1971, the date has been creeping up the calendar every year, although at a slowing rate. The first overshoot day was on December 25, 1971. In the 90s, it was in October and in 2005, the date moved to the end of August. Since then, the date has been in the first few days of August, with an outlier in 2020, when the date arrived as “late” as August 16. The reason was a decline in resource usage in the first half of the year due to the pandemic-related lockdowns. The network also publishes national Earth Overshoot Days for individual countries, which are determined on the one hand by how many natural resources each country has available and on the other by the level of consumption. The data for this is still based on the 2023 edition of the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. Qatar ranks first and has used up the resources that can be regenerated in one year already on February 11. The country is followed by Luxembourg on February 20. The United States reached Earth Overshoot Day on March 14, Denmark on March 16 and Germany on May 2. However, not all countries have an overshoot day. If a country’s Ecological Footprint per person is smaller than global biocapacity per person, then the world would not use up the entire regenerative resource budget for the year within a year, if all humanity lived like them. The USA is particularly wasteful in its use of natural resources. If all people were as resource-hungry as US citizens, a total of five Earths would be required. Australia consumes 4.7 planets and Russia 3.3, while Germany needs 3 Earths. On the other hand, if everyone lived like people in India we would only need 0.7 Earths. (ab)

The number of people suffering from undernourishment globally remains scandalously high, pushing the world far off track to meet the goal of eliminating hunger and malnutrition. According to a report released on July 24th by five UN agencies, around 733 million people worldwide were chronically undernourished in 2023. This is around 152 million people more than in 2019 before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ (SOFI), a report released each year by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), shows enormous setbacks, with levels of undernourishment comparable to those in 2008-2009. “While we have made some progress, improvements have been uneven and insufficient. We have seen improvement in more populous countries with growing economies, but hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition continue to increase in many countries around the world,” the heads of the five UN organisations write in their joint foreword to the report. “This is affecting millions of people especially in rural areas, where extreme poverty and food insecurity remain deeply entrenched. Vulnerable populations, particularly women, youth and Indigenous Peoples, are disproportionately affected.” If current trends continue, about 582 million people will still be chronically undernourished in 2030, more than half of them in Africa, making it virtually impossible to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 of zero hunger.

The new edition of the SOFI report, like the three previous ones, gives a range of people suffering from hunger to reflect the uncertainty in data collection. It is estimated that chronic hunger affected between 713 and 757 million people in 2023. Considering the middle of the projected range (733 million), the number of undernourished people has increased by 26% since 2019 when it stood at 581,3 million based on the revised figures of this report. The proportion of people affected by hunger (called the prevalence of undernourishment) rose from 7.5% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2023, meaning that one in eleven people go hungry. According to the UN agencies, the drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition are “conflict, climate variability and extremes, economic slowdowns and downturns, lack of access to and unaffordability of healthy diets, unhealthy food environments, and high and persistent inequality”.

The trends across and within world regions varied significantly. Africa remains the worst-affected region with respect to the prevalence of undernourishment, with one in five people (20.4%) going hungry on the continent – more than twice the global average – whereas Asia accounts for the largest total numbers. More than half (52.4%) of the 733 million people who were undernourished in 2023 lived in Asia (384.5 million people), followed by Africa with 298.4 million (or 40.7%) and Latin America and the Caribbean with 41 million (5.6%). Hunger increased in most subregions of Africa from 2022 to 2023, with the exception of Eastern Africa and Southern Africa. In Middle Africa, the sub-region including countries such as Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the prevalence of undernourishment rose by 3.3 percentage points to reach 30.8%. In Eastern Africa, 28.6% of the population faced hunger in 2023. In Asia, 8.1% of all people were affected in 2023 but the figure was much higher for the sub-regions of South Asia (13.9%) and Western Asia (12.4%). In Southern Asia, some progress was made compared to the previous two years while the situation deteriorated in Western Asia, where hunger has been on the rise since 2015. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region has shown progress for two consecutive years, with the share of undernourished people decreasing to 6.1% in 2023. This is mainly driven by improvements in South America while the prevalence of undernourishment in the Caribbean increased to 17.2%.

The report also offers some key insights into other nutrition-related topics. It provides data on the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Moderate food insecurity is defined as “a level of severity of food insecurity at which people face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food” meaning that they are forced “to reduce, at times during the year, the quality and/or quantity of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources”. Overall, 28.9% of the world population or 2.33 billion people did not have year-round access to adequate food in 2023. This is an increase of almost 383 million people compared to 2015 or 3.9 percentage points. Out of these 2.33 billion people, 864.1 million people (or 10.7% of all people in the world), were severely food insecure which means they ran out of food, experienced hunger and, at the most extreme, went for days without eating, putting their health and well-being at grave risk. This is an increase of almost 310 million people compared 2015. At 58%, Africa remains the region with the largest proportion of the population facing moderate or severe food insecurity – nearly double the global average. From 2022 to 2023, moderate or severe food insecurity remained virtually unchanged in Africa and Asia, while it worsened in Oceania and, to a lesser extent, in Northern America and Europe. In contrast, some progress was made in Latin American.

Another problem is the limited capacity of people to access healthy diets. The average cost of a healthy diet globally rose to 3.96 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, up from 3.56 PPP dollars in 2021. Disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine contributed to significant increases in international food and energy prices, exacerbating the pressures of inflation. In 2022, more than 2.8 billion people – or 35.5% of people globally – could not afford a healthy diet. The good news is that the number decreased slightly from 36.5% in 2021. However, the recovery has been uneven across regions, the report warns: “The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in Asia, and Northern America and Europe, while increasing substantially in Africa, where it rose to 924.8 million in 2022, up by 24.6 million from 2021, and by 73.4 million from 2019.” If country income groups are compared, the situation is very difficult for low-income countries, where a healthy diet was out of reach for 503.2 million people in 2022 – the highest number since 2017. In low-income countries the percentage of the population that could not afford a healthy diet was 71.5% whereas in high-income countries the figure was 6.3%.

The report also paints a gloomy picture of the nutritional situation of the world’s children. The global prevalence of wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade. An estimated 45 million children under the age of five (6.8%) were suffering from wasting in 2022, down slightly from 7.5% in 2012. Affected children are dangerously thin, with weakened immunity and a higher risk of mortality. In addition, the global prevalence of stunting in children under five years of age is still at 22.3%, affecting 148.1 million children who are too short for their age due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets. Although the figure is down from 26.3% or 177.9 million children in 2012, the world is currently not on track to achieve the target of halving the number of stunted children under five by 2030 since it is projected that 19.5% will still be stunted by then. The global prevalence of overweight among children under five years of age has stagnated, with little change from 5.5% (37 million) in 2012 to 5.6% (37 million) in 2022. By 2030, 5.7% of children under five are projected to be overweight, which is almost double the 2030 global target of 3%.

To cut a long story short, the world is not on track to reach any of the seven global nutrition targets by 2030. The five UN agencies say that in order to attain the scale of actions needed, sufficient levels of and equal access to financing to address food security and nutrition challenges are essential. The theme of this year’s report therefore focuses on the financing required to end hunger and malnutrition. The report highlights that countries most in need of increased financing face significant challenges in access. Among the 119 low- and middle-income countries analysed, around 63% have limited or moderate access to financing. Additionally, the majority of these countries (74%) are impacted by one or more major factors contributing to food insecurity and malnutrition. “The fastest route out of hunger and poverty is proven to be through investments in agriculture in rural areas. But the global and financial landscape has become far more complex since the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015,” says IFAD President Alvaro Lario. “Ending hunger and malnutrition demands that we invest more - and more smartly.” (ab)

A new wave of land grabbing, a surge in green grabs for carbon schemes, the rising loss of farmland to mining, urbanization and mega-developments, as well as the loss of control over food production and land use are putting enormous pressures on farmland and small-scale food producers, a new IPES-Food report has revealed. These pressures lead to widespread land concentration and degradation, critically undermining the livelihoods of farmers, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, and marginalized groups and posing major threats to food security. According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), a global thinktank that unites 25 food system experts from around the world, land inequality is on the rise in all regions. Since 2000, an area twice the size of Germany has been acquired through transnational land deals. Between 2008 and 2022, land prices nearly doubled globally – and tripled in Central-Eastern Europe. “Land isn’t just dirt beneath our feet, it’s the bedrock of our food systems keeping us all fed. Yet we’re seeing soaring land prices and grabs driving an unprecedented ‘land squeeze’, accelerating inequality and threatening food production,” says IPES-Food expert Susan Chomba who works at the World Resources Institute, Kenya.

“Land squeeze” is also the title of the report that was released on May 12th and presented and discussed at an online event on May 28th. “Today’s land inequality is rooted in long-standing processes, structures and narratives that uphold powerful interests and exclude certain groups. However, those processes are continually evolving, and it is crucial to capture the latest, emerging dynamics as they drive land inequality in the present,” the authors of the report write. For this reason, they analyse four trends behind the current pressures on land. The first driver is what they dub “Land grabbing 2.0”, a dynamic characterised by various forms of deregulation, financialization and rapid resource extraction. The financial crash and food price crisis of 2007-2008 unleashed a huge wave of land grabs. Investors, agri-food companies, and sovereign wealth funds acquired large areas of farmland around the world. The ‘land rush’ slowed down around 2013, but the pressures never went away, the authors explain. Powerful governments, financial actors, speculators, and big agribusinesses are gaining control over land through new waves of land grabbing. “The food price spikes that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have revived ‘feed the world’ narratives, sparking a renewed push to secure land for export commodity production, with agribusinesses, investors and foreign governments finding new ways to unlock and appropriate farmland,” the authors point out. Land grabs are also increasingly being deployed to seize control over other key resources such as freshwater, forests, and coastline with the aim of rapidly extracting value from them (e.g. through water-intensive cash cropping).

Governments are increasingly urged to deregulate their land markets and adopt pro-investor policies. In Africa and Asia, large swathes of land are being appropriated through ‘special economic zones’ and ‘growth corridors’, in the context of expanding bilateral trade and investment agreements. A key dimension of Land grabbing 2.0 is the increasing role of ‘South-South’ land deals and investments. China, Brazil, India, and other emerging economies are becoming increasingly prominent in foreign direct investment flows. Agri-food trade, and development cooperation, with South-South trade is now accounting for a quarter of total agricultural trade flows. Land is increasingly being turned into a financial asset, with powerful actors entering financialized land markets. Agricultural investment funds rose ten-fold from 2005 to 2018, and now regularly include farmland as a stand-alone asset class, with US investors doubling their stakes in farmland since the pandemic. By 2023, there were some 960 active funds specialised in food and agricultural assets, managing over $150 billion. The IPES-Food experts highlight that there is also a major push to digitize land registers underway in the Global South. Although intended to strengthen land tenure, these processes could end up feeding financial markets with data and exacerbating land grabs.

The second driver of the current land squeeze identified by the report are green grabs. Since land is an important carbon sink, the enshrinement of environmental goals in international agreements meant a fast rise in the interest in land-based conservation, carbon removal and offsetting. This unleashed a new wave of ‘green grabs’, which now account for around 20% of large-scale land deals. Governments have pledged to allocate land areas equivalent to total global cropland – almost 1.2 billion hectares of land – for ‘carbon removal’ initiatives alone. “The rush for dubious carbon projects, tree planting schemes, clean fuels, and speculative buying is displacing small-scale farmers and Indigenous Peoples,” says Susan Chomba. “In Africa, powerful governments, polluting fossil fuel companies, and big conservation groups are elbowing their way onto our land under the veneer of green goals, directly threatening the very communities bearing the brunt of climate change,” she adds. The authors criticise that carbon and biodiversity offset markets are facilitating huge land transactions and bringing farmland and forests under the control of major polluters. In addition, land and resources are also being appropriated for biofuels and green energy production, including water-intensive ‘green hydrogen’ projects, and the conversion of farmland to solar parks that pose risks to local food production.

Thirdly, land is being taken out of agriculture and repurposed for extractive industries and mega-developments. For example, urbanization and mega-infrastructure developments in Asia and Africa are claiming prime farmland. In particular, a global mining boom is increasing pressures on farmland. Mining projects accounted for 14% of recorded large-scale land deals over the past ten years, eating up some 7.7 million hectares of farmland. Demand for sand and gravel is growing rapidly with urbanization, phosphates are required in growing quantities for fertilizer production, and demand for ‘transition minerals’ – cobalt, copper, lithium, and zinc among others, also referred to as ‘critical minerals’, for solar photovoltaic plants, wind farms, hydrogen energy storage, and batteries in electric vehicles – is also on the rise. Companies based in China account for the majority of mining operations for transition minerals, both in China and on the African continent. Mining projects and the related land conversions threaten food producers and communities, leading to displacement, conflicts, and environmental degradation. Instead of protecting communities, dubious investment laws protect the polluters. The report cites Colombia as an example where several transnational companies successfully sued the government for attempting to halt a large-scale mining project.

The fourth driver has to do with industrial agriculture: Agri-food sector consolidation, the ongoing spread of industrial agriculture and input-intensive feed crop monocultures and factory farms, as well as dietary shifts are rapidly degrading land and eroding farmers’ and communities’ control over their land and how it is used. “High input costs, spiralling land prices, and boom-bust cycles are endemic in corporate-controlled industrial food systems. These dynamics are creating systematic economic precarity for farmers – effectively forcing them to ‘get big or get out’,” says IPES-Food. The concentration and control of land is advancing through various approaches that integrate smallholders into corporate value chains. One such business model is contract farming, which is allowing agri-food companies to gain effective control over farmland and impose production choices and conditions – often locking farmers into unsustainable land use and precarious livelihoods. “Studies continue to demonstrate that contract farming schemes reduce farmers’ autonomy over what to grow, placing de facto control of farmland in the hands of the contracting corporation, and transforming farmers into wage labourers on their own land,” the report finds.

To sum up: All these current trends lead to an unprecedented land squeeze, resulting in widespread land degradation and loss, land fragmentation, land concentration, a surge in land inequality, rural poverty, and food insecurity – and potentially a tipping point for smallholder agriculture. The global picture of land degradation is already alarming, the authors write: More than 70% of the Earth’s land area has been altered from its natural state by human activity and up to 40% of the world’s land is degrading. Some 80% of global arable lands are now affected by land degradation, with more than 1.3 billion food producers depending on unproductive land. Another problem for many farmers is the declining size of their farmland. Some 84% of the world’s farmers cultivate plots of under 2 hectares, with average farm size remaining below 2 hectares in Africa and Asia. In some places – including in Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal, and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as across Asia – producers are being confined to shrinking plots of land as a result of demographic growth, sub-divisions, and land grabs. Land fragmentation, the reliance on small, often dispersed plots, can be a result of difficulties accessing larger or more proximate plots of land. It is sometimes a legacy of historical and present-day land grabs.

And then there is the rapidly advancing concentration of farmland in all regions. According to a recent study, 1% of the world’s largest farms now operate 70% of the global farmland. The concentration is particularly acute in North America, Europe, and Latin America – with the top 1% controlling 80% of Colombian farmland, and 0.3% of Brazilian holdings accounting for 25% of all farmland. Land price inflation is a major problem. Between 2008 and 2022, land prices nearly doubled globally and tripled in Central-Eastern Europe. In the UK, an influx of investment from pension funds and private wealth caused a doubling of farmland prices from 2010 to 2015. In Brazil, the states with the greatest investor speculation on farmland saw an average 200% increase in land prices from 2008 to 2017, with prices soaring by 451% in Maranhão. “Imagine trying to start a farm when 70% of farmland is already controlled by just 1% of the largest farms – and when land prices have risen for 20 years in a row, like in North America. That’s the stark reality young farmers face today,” said IPES-Food expert Nettie Wiebe. “Farmland is increasingly owned not by farmers but by speculators, pension funds, and big agribusinesses looking to cash in. Land prices have skyrocketed so high it’s becoming impossible to make a living from farming. This is reaching a tipping point – small and medium scale farming are simply being squeezed out.”

But what can be done in order to stop these developments? “To halt the land squeeze, restore equitable access to land, and rebuild smallholder livelihoods, it is necessary to stem the emerging land grabs and green grabs, and to undertake bold social and agrarian reforms, building on the innovative and powerful steps farmers and communities are already taking to defend their land, assert their rights, and forge new collective forms of ownership and financing,” the authors write. They identified three broad leverage points and 11 specific recommendations. The first leverage point is to build integrated land, environmental, and food systems governance to halt green grabs, recentre communities, and ensure a just transition. IPES-Food stresses that this must put community-based approaches at the heart of climate and biodiversity action, including helping communities to map and defend their own land. The expert panel says that community-managed land systems are the best example of how to reconcile ecosystem protection and food production, and these approaches – currently peripheral in the Global Biodiversity Framework – should become a central tool for meeting global biodiversity goals. Leverage point 2 is to get speculative capital out of land markets, and get land into the hands of farmers. Measures include capping land acquisitions, giving farmers first right of refusal, and cracking down on abusive land-based carbon offsets. But the authors also recommend promoting alternative forms of land ownership and access for small and medium farmers – including innovative group ownership and financing models. Thirdly, IPES-Food calls for a new social contract: “A new deal for farmers and rural communities is needed to break the vicious cycle of rural poverty, livelihood insecurity and land inequality. Access to land and secure tenure must be combined with systemic, structural support for small-scale food production, pensions, insurance, and debt relief for farmers, investment in rural infrastructures, and an end to harmful trade liberalization. To achieve these goals, it may be necessary to undertake comprehensive land and agrarian reform processes, and bold steps to redistribute land.” (ab)

The global organic farming area increased by over 20 million hectares or 26.6 % between 2021 and 2022 and grew more than ever before. Around 96 million hectares of land were farmed organically in 2022, according to a new report published by FiBL and IFOAM – Organics International. The number of organic farmers also rose significantly, surpassing 4.5 million, and the sales of organic food reached nearly 135 billion euros in 2022. The 25th edition of the statistical yearbook “The World of Organic Agriculture” was presented on February 13th at BIOFACH, the world's leading trade fair for organic food in Nuremberg. It offers a comprehensive review of recent developments in global organic agriculture and includes detailed statistics on organic farming activities in 188 countries. According to the publishers, it also highlights the role of organic agriculture in overarching sustainability strategies such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the European Union's Farm to Fork Strategy: “Considering that organic agriculture significantly contributes to all of these goals and strategies, this book not only presents data on land area, the number of producers, and market figures but also shows organic agriculture's relevance in addressing climate change, ensuring food and nutrition security, halting biodiversity loss, and promoting sustainable consumption,” Dr. Jürn Sanders, Chairman of the Management Board of FiBL Switzerland and IFOAM President Karen Mapusua write in the foreword to the report. “Thus, it underscores its contribution to the transformation of food systems as a whole (…) and to a sustainable future.”

Australia remains the country with the largest area of organic agriculture at 53 million hectares but it is estimated that 97 % of the farmland is extensive grazing areas. Australia’s organic farming area saw a tremendous increase of 17.3 million hectares. India ranks second with 4.7 million and Argentina third with 4 million hectares, followed by China with 2.9 million hectares. France is in fifth place (2.88m hectares). Due to the large area of organic farmland in Australia, more than half of the global organic area lies in Oceania (55.2 %). Europe had the second largest area (18.4 million hectares or 19.1 %), followed by Latin America (9.5 million hectares or 9.9 %), Asia (8.8m hectares or 9.2 %), and Africa (2.7m hectares or 2.8 %). Currently, only 2 % of the world’s agricultural land is farmed organically, but many countries have far higher shares. In 22 countries, 10% or more of all agricultural land was under organic management in 2022, up from 20 countries in 2021. The top five countries with the largest share of organic land were Liechtenstein (43 %), Austria (27.5 %) and Estonia (23.4 %). Many island states have high shares of agricultural land under organic management, such as São Tomé and Príncipe (21.2 %) and Dominica (11.6 %). In the European Union, the organic share of the total agricultural land was 10.4 % while in the other regions, the share is less than 1 %. According to the report, there were 4.5 million organic farmers worldwide in 2022 and their number increased by 26 % compared to the year before, primarily thanks to a significant increase in India. However, the authors point out that calculating precise figures is difficult here because some countries only report the number of companies, projects or growers’ groups which may each comprise many individual producers, hence the total number might even be higher. The largest share of the world’s organic producers (60.6%) lives in Asia, while Africa is home to 21.6 % and Europe to 10.6 % of organic farmers. The country with the highest absolute numbers is India with 2.5 million farmers, followed by Uganda (404,246), as well as Thailand and Ethiopia with 121.500 producers respectively.

The global market for organic food and consumer demand across the globe continued to grow. Global retail sales of organic food and drink reached around 135 billion euros in 2022 and experienced a total increase of 4 billion euros (+3 %) from the previous year. In 2022, the United States continued to be the leading market with 56.6 billion euros, followed by Germany (15.3bn euros), China (12.4bn euros) and France (12.1bn euros). While several countries in Europe experienced a decline, retail sales in Canada rose by 9.7 %, followed by Japan where sales were up 8.4 %. When the shares the organic market has of the total market are considered, the leader remained Denmark with 12%, followed by Austria (11.5 %) and Switzerland (11.2 %). Swiss consumers spent the most on organic food with an average of 437 euros per person, followed by Denmark where the average consumer spent 365 euros, followed by Austria and Luxembourg with 274 euros and 259 euros respectively. In a special chapter on the global market for organic food and drink, Amarjit Sahota of Ecovia Intelligence puts the bare figures in perspective: “The organic products market has been adversely affected by global geopolitical conflicts and uncertain economic conditions. Revenue growth continued in 2022; however, this has been partly because of rising organic food prices,” he writes in the report. “Some countries, including Germany and France, reported declines in monetary sales and volumes. In the USA and other countries, revenue growth has been at a comparatively low rate.” He says that the organic food industry is not immune to geopolitical conflict that is causing disruption in global supply chains of agricultural products. However, he expects healthy growth to resume as economic conditions improve. (ab)

On December 13th, after two weeks of lengthy negotiations, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) came to a close with an agreement. COP28 President Dr. Sultan Al Jaber praised the “historic achievement” of the conference, exhausted delegates and observers issued their first statements before heading back home and journalists weighed up the strengths and weaknesses of the outcome document. In the days that followed, many organisations and experts published their in-depth analyses of COP28 or shared their second thoughts. The final agreement’s call on state parties to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems to reach net zero by 2050 was celebrated by many as a first step while others decried the failure of the conference to agree on phasing out fossil fuels despite many countries advocating for the stronger term. Although food and farming systems are responsible for at least a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, they were largely neglected at previous climate talks. The final COP agreements remained silent on the contribution of food and agriculture to climate change as well as the crucial role the sector can play in limiting it. This year, food and farming featured quite prominently, with the event even being dubbed as the “Food Cop” and attracting a large presence of representatives of the meat and dairy industry who joined the growing ranks of fossil fuel lobbyists. The conference opened with a declaration on sustainable farming, dedicated a whole day and many pavilions and side events to food, agriculture and water, saw the launch of a global roadmap aimed at eliminating hunger and all forms of malnutrition without exceeding the 1.5°C threshold and closed with an outcome document that mentioned sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems.

Some said the glass is half-empty due to the non-binding nature of these declarations of intent. “This was supposed to be the Food COP, but the conclusions were not good neither for the future of the food systems nor for limiting the effects of climate change”, commented Edward Mukiibi, president of Slow Food, a global movement that promotes good, clean and fair food for all. He denounced the lack of concrete and binding targets, the influence of major emitters in the agriculture sector at the conference and the postponement of the discussions to transform the food systems to the next meetings. Danielle Nierenberg, president of the US-based non-profit organisation Food Tank, had also hoped for a stronger wording in the final document but she underlined that the glass was still half full: “It’s really exciting that food is finally on the table. Now we have this ability to talk about food systems as a solution to the climate crisis in a way that we haven’t ever had the chance to before,” she told The Guardian. Or as she reflected in an interview with Brent Loken, Global Food Lead Scientist at WWF, this COP was not perfect but tangible gains were made in terms of recognising the power of food systems on an international scale: “Finally, we have a floor to stand on – and to build on.”

So what exactly was agreed on in Dubai and how do food experts and NGOs think about it? The final outcome document of COP28 is the Global Stocktake (GST). The Global Stocktake process was agreed on in the 2015 Paris Agreement and is an assessment of the progress on climate action that takes place every five year. The COP28 agreement was the “First global stocktake” to be released and governments now have two years to update their climate plans and submit their adapted “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) to the UN. The global stocktake is a compromise and the lowest common denominator all 196 countries could agree on. It “recognises the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change”. It “encourages the implementation of integrated, multi-sectoral solutions, such as land-use management, sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems, nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches”. State parties are urged to increase ambition and enhance adaptation action in order to attain “climate-resilient food and agricultural production and supply and distribution of food, as well as increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all”.

Slowfood described the GST as “largely void, with just one mention of food systems under the Adaptation section but excluded from the Mitigation section.” Yvette Cabrera, a food waste expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, also mentioned this point to the Guardian. She stressed that adaptation is “very important, because we absolutely need to figure out what our future food system looks like, and be ready for that”, Cabrera said, but “We also need to take steps to mitigate the emissions that are happening now as well.” Others spoke out more frankly. “Omitting food system action in the final COP28 text is a stark betrayal of urgency,” Emile Frison, an expert of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “Ignoring the one-third of greenhouse gas emissions from food systems is a dangerous oversight. We cannot afford another lost year for food and climate action,” he added. Brent Loken rather sees the GST as a win. “The final text, adopted this week, does indeed recognize food systems for the first-ever time in a UNFCCC document of this variety. Granted, most references to food systems are related to adaptation, not mitigation; most of the food-related references in the mitigation section are around sustainable production and consumption, rather than systems-level analysis,” he told Nierenberg, admitting that global leaders still have a ways to recognize the power of food systems as a key climate solution. “But the food movement has been successful in raising the profile of food in just a few short years.”

But let’s go back to the beginning of the climate talks. The COP28 presidency kicked off the event announcing that 134 world leaders had endorsed the “Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action”. „COP28 Presidency puts food systems transformation on global climate agenda”, the press release was headlined. It pointed out that the 134 signatory countries are home to over 5.7 billion people and almost 500 million farmers, produce 70% of the food we eat, and are responsible for 76% all emissions from global food systems or 25% of total emissions globally. In the meantime, the number of signatories increased to 159 states. The non-binding declaration recognises the profound potential of agriculture and food systems to drive powerful responses to climate change and the signatories voice their intentions to integrate food and agriculture into their climate plans. The countries declared their “intent to work in order to achieve the” objective of “scaling-up adaptation and resilience activities and responses in order to reduce the vulnerability of all farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers to the impacts of climate change, including through financial and technical support for solutions, capacity building, infrastructure, and innovations, including early warning systems, that promote sustainable food security, production and nutrition, while conserving, protecting and restoring nature.” Another aim is to promote “food security and nutrition by increasing efforts to support vulnerable people through approaches such as social protection systems and safety nets, school feeding and public procurement programs, among others. Moreover, workers in agriculture and food systems should be supported and “the integrated management of water in agriculture and food systems” be strengthened. States also intend to “maximize the climate and environmental benefits - while containing and reducing harmful impacts - associated with agriculture and food systems by conserving, protecting and restoring land and natural ecosystems, enhancing soil health, and biodiversity, and shifting from higher greenhouse gas-emitting practices to more sustainable production and consumption approaches, including by reducing food loss and waste.” These objectives are complemented with the promise of states to strengthen their “respective and shared efforts to pursue broad, transparent, and inclusive engagement, as appropriate within” their “national contexts, to integrate agriculture and food systems into National Adaptation Plans” and to “revisit or orient policies and public support related to agriculture and food systems to achieve the objectives of the declaration”. States also agreed to scale-up and enhance access to all forms of finance from the public, philanthropic and private sector in order to adapt and transform agriculture and food systems to respond to climate change. As the quoted text shows, the document is loosely worded and many fear that the unspecific terminology gives the agriculture and food industry the chance to greenwash their participation in climate mitigation.

Over 200 events at COP28 focused on food and agriculture and the first-ever UN-climate-COP Food, Agriculture and Water Day was celebrated on December 10th. On this occasion, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched its Global Roadmap for Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) without Breaching the 1.5°C Threshold. It outlines a strategy spanning the next three years that lists solutions across ten distinct domains of action: clean energy, crops, fisheries and aquaculture, food loss and waste, forests and wetlands, healthy diets, livestock, soil and water, and data and inclusive policies. With regard to emissions, the documents calls for a reduction of methane emissions from livestock by 25% by 2030 relative to 2020, wants to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, and transform food systems into a carbon sink by 2050, capturing 1.5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. Concerning food and nutrition, it sets a path to eliminate chronic undernourishment by 2030 and ensure access to healthy diets for all by 2050 and recommends to improve crop diversification. Another milestone to be achieved by 2030 is to reduce by 50% per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels. Yvette Cabrera hopes that the road map, although it is not binding, might give countries “a sense of how to move forward in integrating food systems into their climate goals”. Dr. Sophia Murphy, Executive Director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) said the roadmap “offers a welcome focus on the right to food in the cacophony of food interests that have descended on COP”, referring to the fact that three times as many meat and dairy lobbyists attended at COP28 compared to the previous conference and that lobbyists even formed part of national delegations. But Murphy was disappointed that “the report neglects to call on big agricultural companies to make real emissions reductions, especially in rich countries where cutting methane and nitrous oxide emissions from industrial animal operations is a low-hanging fruit with huge collateral benefits for biodiversity, rural economies and healthy diets”.

Another disappointment for many was the breakdown of talks of an initiative called the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on implementation on agriculture and food security (SSJW), a four-year process adopted at COP27. Negotiations concluded on December 5th with no agreements of substance and negotiations on how to implement commitments made at COP27 will only resume in June 2024, 18 months after SSJW was established. Brent Loken said this was “a far cry from the multi-year strategic plan we were hoping negotiators would produce during COP28 itself.” Joao Campari, Global Food Practice Leader at WWF, was also upset: “With Joint Work negotiations not resuming until June 2024, an opportunity to take a big step forward on climate action has already been wasted – negotiators can’t squander another by excluding food systems transformation from the Global Stocktake.” Kirubel Tadele, Communications Officer of AFSA, a broad alliance of different African civil society actors, also said that the postponement “signals a worrying delay in addressing the urgent climate challenges facing African agriculture, critically undermining the potential for meaningful climate action in a sector integral to Africa’s survival and resilience.”

Finally, with all the talk about sustainable agriculture and nature-based solutions, proponents of agroecology were deeply disappointed that agroecology did not make it into the relevant documents. “Most disappointingly, as expected, agroecology was sidelined and did not emerge in policy discussions as a key element, nor was it mentioned as the solution which will allow us to reverse the course and fight against climate change,” said Slow Food’s Edward Mukiibi. IATP also lamented that “despite the spotlight on food systems at COP28, the final decisions said little about the urgent need for transformative shifts toward agroecology to address the climate crisis”. Anika Schroeder from Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops' Organisation for Development Cooperation, also voiced her disappointment with regard to the outcome: “The so-called ‘Food COP’ has turned out to be a greenwashing event with many bold commitments towards more climate-friendly agriculture and food systems. Non-binding declarations and statements which do not even mention the big elephant in the room – the highly fossil fuel-based food system. They lack a clear vision towards agroecology which has proved to build up high resilience and low carbon.” Brent Loken, however, still remains optimistic. In his conversation with Danielle Nierenberg, he said that we don’t have time to be negative anymore. “We can be disappointed, but I think being disappointed and being negative are different things.” Nierenberg adds that “If we can imagine a better world – a world that’s not disappointing but actually empowering, sustainable, just – we can fight to make it a reality.” She agrees with him that after COP28, the food movement has a floor to stand on. “Now, we need to get building,” she concludes. (ab)

Global hunger remains too high, and progress in reducing hunger has largely stalled. The combined effects of several crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, economic stagnation, the impacts of climate change, and war and conflicts in many countries of the world, have led to a cost-of-living crisis and worsened the situation for many people. Around 735 million people are unable to exercise their right to adequate food. Young people are more likely to be affected by extreme poverty and food insecurity, with young women particularly affected. These are some of the main messages of the 2023 Global Hunger Index (GHI) published on October 12th by Concern Worldwide, Ireland's largest aid and humanitarian agency, and the German non-government organisation Welthungerhilfe. The multiple crises have aggravated inequalities between regions, countries, and groups, the report warns. While some countries have weathered them relatively well, others have experienced deepening hunger and nutrition problems. “The extent to which countries are able to recover from shocks depends largely on underlying factors, such as state fragility, inequality, poor governance, and chronic poverty,” the authors write in the report summary. “Given that the world is expected to be subject to increased shocks in future years, particularly as a result of climate change, the effectiveness of disaster preparedness and response is likely to become increasingly central to the outlook on food security.”

The report is published each year by the two organisations. For this year’s edition, data were assessed for 136 countries. The GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators: the share of undernourished people in the population (insufficient caloric intake), the share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition (stunting), the share of children under five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition (wasting) and child mortality in this age group. Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best and 100 being the worst score. The scale encompasses low, moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming hunger levels. There were sufficient data to calculate 2023 GHI scores for 125 countries. For 11 countries, individual scores could not be calculated and ranks could not be determined owing to lack of data. Where possible, these countries were provisionally designated by severity to the different categories.

The result of the assessment gives cause for concern: Hunger remains serious or alarming in 43 countries. Nine countries have alarming levels of hunger: Burundi, Somalia and South Sudan (provisional designation) as well as Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Niger, and Yemen. Central African Republic leads the ranking in this year’s report with a score of 42.3. The country’s 2020–2022 undernourishment rate of 48.7% means that almost half of the population is consistently unable to meet minimum dietary energy needs. One in 10 children dies before their 5th birthday and 40% of children are stunted. The country has suffered from conflict in recent years, which, along with population displacement, widespread poverty, and underemployment, is a major driver of hunger. In 37 countries, the index indicates moderate levels of hunger. The worrying fact is that in many places the situation has worsened in recent years. Since 2015, hunger has increased in 18 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2023 GHI scores. As the effects of crises multiply and intensify, more and more people are experiencing severe hunger and the situation is expected to worsen throughout the year according to the report.

Not all countries have seen worsening hunger levels but progress in most countries is too slow or has come to a halt. In 14 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2023 GHI scores, progress has largely stalled. These countries saw a decline of less than 5% in their hunger levels between their 2015 and 2023. The average score for the whole world is 18.3, considered moderate – this is less than one point below the world’s GHI score of 19.1 in 2015. Furthermore, since 2017 the prevalence of undernourishment, one of the indicators, has increased and the number of undernourished people has risen from 572 million to about 735 million. At the current pace, 58 countries will not achieve low hunger by 2030. „As the year 2030 looms and just seven years remain to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, nearly three-quarters of a billion people are unable to exercise their right to adequate food,” Mathias Mogge, Secretary General of the Welthungerhilfe, and David Regan, CEO of Concern Worldwide, write in the foreword to the report. “Hunger is not new, and neither are its drivers. What is new is that we now live in a time of what has been termed “polycrisis”: the compounding impacts of climate change, conflicts, economic shocks, the global pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war have exacerbated social and economic inequalities and slowed or reversed previous progress in reducing hunger in many countries,” they added. But there are also some good news. Seven countries whose 2000 GHI scores indicated extremely alarming hunger levels – Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Zambia – have all made progress since then. Also, seven countries have achieved reductions of five points or more between their 2015 and 2023 GHI scores: Bangladesh, Chad, Djibouti, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Nepal, and Timor-Leste.

The 2023 report includes a special focus on the future food needs of the world’s current young population. In their essay, commissioned for the report, the two young academics Wendy Gexa and Mendy Ndlovu from the University of KswZulu-Natal, South Africa, warn that young people are inheriting food systems that are failing on multiple fronts and are highly vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation: “We, as young people in our 20s, are keenly aware that our generation not only suffers from the failures of current food systems but will inherit these troubled food systems and their looming challenges. Those challenges threaten the realization of our right to food as well as other human rights, such as health, education, decent work, and livelihoods.” Currently 42% of the world’s people are under 25 years of age, and the global population of adolescents and young adults, at 1.2 billion, is the largest in history. The majority of young people live in low- and middle-income countries in south Asia, east Asia and Africa.

Many young people have little interest in farming because of a lack of support, innovation, and education and a perception that agriculture does not offer opportunities for prosperity or self-realization. Those involved directly or indirectly in food systems livelihoods are mostly living in rural areas. According to Gexa and Ndlovu, “addressing youth participation in food systems requires a holistic approach broadly focused on improving rural economies, social well-being, and service delivery. Efforts must be made to create a supportive environment for youth to pursue careers and interests in food systems.” This view is supported by David Regan: “Governments need to break down the barriers to their full participation in food systems and invest in training and education,” he said. “Agriculture and food systems must be promoted as viable and attractive livelihoods. Meaningful engagement of young people can unlock their potential as innovative agents of change and harness their energy and dynamism to transform food systems.” A major problem is that youth participation in making decisions that will affect their futures is still limited. The share of youth in formal decision-making forums is negligible, and the increased focus on youth participation in some policy dialogues has not necessarily translated into meaningful impact. „As heirs to current food systems, we deserve a stronger voice in transforming those food systems to meet our current and future needs,” Gexa and Ndlovu conclude. (ab)

Human activities have destabilized biophysical systems and processes that regulate the functioning of life support systems on Earth, pushing the planet beyond a “safe” zone, scientists have warned. According to a study, published on September 13th in the journal “Science Advances“, six of nine planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity have already been crossed. From global warming to biosphere integrity, from pollutants and plastic to nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, from freshwater to land system change: Unprecedented human disruption has thrown the Earth system out of balance. And the international team of 29 scientists warns that the pressure on all those boundary processes is increasing. “We can think of Earth as a human body, and the planetary boundaries as blood pressure,” explains lead author Katherine Richardson from the University of Copenhagen. “Over 120/80 does not indicate a certain heart attack but it does raise the risk and, therefore, we work to reduce blood pressure.” And the results of our planet’s health check don’t look good. „Science and the world at large are really concerned about the rising signs of dwindling planetary resilience, manifested by the transgression of planetary boundaries, which brings us closer to tipping points, and closes the window to have any chance of holding the 1.5°C planetary climate boundary,” said co-author Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

The study is an update to the first and second Planetary Boundaries publications released in 2009 and 2015 in which the novel entities boundary, biosphere integrity and the boundary of atmospheric aerosol loading were not yet quantified. The recent study, for the first time, provides a complete check-up of all nine processes and systems that determine the stability and resilience of the planet. “This update on planetary boundaries clearly depicts a patient that is unwell, as pressure on the planet increases and vital boundaries are being transgressed,” said Rockström. “We don’t know how long we can keep breaching these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm.” An illustration that resembles an irregular pie chart shows the current state of the nine planetary boundaries. In the middle, there is a round green area – the safe operating space for humanity. The nine processes are shown as wedges. The boundary of atmospheric aerosol loading, e. g. through desert dust and soot from combustion or wildfires, remains in the green area and the boundary is not transgressed yet, even though regional transgressions do occur, e. g., in South Asia, where regional precipitation patterns are affected in monsoon regions. This could likely lead to significantly lower rainfall, ultimately affecting biosphere integrity. Anthropogenic ocean acidification is still in the green area but it lies at the margin of the safe operating space, and the trend is worsening since CO2 emissions continue to rise. The scientists give green light with regard to stratospheric ozone depletion which is now within the safe operating space. “The boundary for ozone depletion, for example, while not transgressed globally, was headed for increasing regional transgressions. Though it still is exceeded today over Antarctica, it is now slowly recovering – thanks to global initiatives, catalyzed by the Montreal Protocol,” highlights Richardson.

In the pie chart, the length of the wedges in the nine areas symbolizes what the current state of the corresponding process is, in relation to the distance from the planetary boundary (end of the green area) and the Holocene baseline (origin of the diagram). The wedges are coloured from yellow to red according to the risks associated with each. Purple indicates the high-risk zone. Some wedges may be long but may still not be purple or at a later stage because a transgression of the planetary boundary is not yet associated with very high risks for the planet while in other cases already a “small” overshoot (short wedge) results in a big risk. The boundary of “biosphere integrity” includes the largest wedge with purple ends when it comes to the planetary boundary for changes in genetic diversity. The planetary functioning of the biosphere ultimately rests on its genetic diversity but also on its functional role in regulating the state of Earth system. „Of an estimated 8 million plant and animal species, around 1 million are threatened with extinction and over 10% of genetic diversity of plants and animals may have been lost over the past 150 years. Thus, the genetic component of the biosphere integrity boundary is markedly exceeded,” the authors write. For the second component of biosphere integrity, the functional integrity, which has so far not been quantified, a control variable was introduced. The researchers found that this boundary had in fact been crossed since the late 19th century, a time of considerable acceleration in land use globally with strong impacts on species. “Next to climate change, integrity of the biosphere is the second pillar of stability for our planet. And as with climate, we are currently destabilising this pillar by taking out too much biomass, destroying too much habitat, deforesting too much land etc.,” explains co-author Wolfgang Lucht. “Our research shows that mitigating global warming and saving a functional biosphere for the future should go hand in hand.”

The first quantification of the novel entities boundary shows that it is transgressed. Novel entities include synthetic chemicals and substances (e.g., microplastics, endocrine disruptors, and organic pollutants); anthropogenically mobilized radioactive materials, including nuclear waste and nuclear weapons; and human modification of evolution, genetically modified organisms and other direct human interventions in evolutionary processes. The scientists write that the impacts of these novel entities on Earth system as a whole remain largely unstudied. They stress that the planetary boundaries framework is only concerned with the stability and resilience of Earth system, i.e., not human or ecosystem health. For this reason, “it remains a scientific challenge to assess how much loading of novel entities Earth system tolerates before irreversibly shifting into a potentially less habitable state”. The authors write that hundreds of thousands of synthetic chemicals are now produced and released to the environment. For many substances, the potentially large and persistent effects on Earth system processes of their introduction, particularly on functional biosphere integrity, are not well known, and their use is not well regulated. They point to the fact that humanity has repeatedly been surprised by unintended consequences of this release, for example in the case of the release of insecticides such as DDT and the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on the ozone layer. “For this class of novel entities, then, the only truly safe operating space that can ensure maintained Holocene-like conditions is one where these entities are absent unless their potential impacts with respect to Earth system have been thoroughly evaluated,” the scientists conclude.

Biogeochemical flows reflect anthropogenic perturbation of global element cycles and this boundary was also crossed and it has the largest purple wedge indicating a high risk. Currently, the framework considers nitrogen and phosphorus as these two elements constitute fundamental building blocks of life, and their global cycles have been markedly altered through agriculture and industry, the scientists write. Land systems change is currently coloured red: This boundary focuses on the three major forest biomes that globally play the largest role in driving biogeophysical processes, that means tropical, temperate, and boreal. On the basis of 2019 land-cover classification maps derived from satellite observations, the current state of the regional biomes is similar to that in 2015 although, for most regions, the amount of deforestation has increased since the last update of the study in 2015. Land-use conversion and fires are causing rapid change in forest area and deforestation of the Amazon tropical forest has increased such that it has now transgressed the planetary boundary, the study finds. With respect to water, the warning light shines in orange. The freshwater boundary now addresses both green water (held in soil and plants in farms, forests etc.) and blue water (rivers, lakes etc) - both boundaries are transgressed. Rockström described it as „a true breakthrough” that a safe space for humanity on Earth has now been scientifically quantified, „providing a guide for action and the first full picture of our planet’s capacity to buffer stress“. He said that having this knowledge at hand marks an important step for more systematic efforts to protect, recover and rebuild planetary resilience. This is echoed by the last sentence of the study: „Scientific insight into planetary boundaries does not limit, but stimulates, humankind to innovation toward a future in which Earth system stability is fundamentally preserved and safeguarded.” (ab)

We have already reached Earth Overshoot Day this year: August 2nd marks the date by which humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services has exceeded what Earth can regenerate in 2023. For the rest of the year, we will be living on resources borrowed from future generations. This is the sad message spread by the Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that calculates the date each year, using National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts data. This is done by contrasting the world’s demand on nature (ecological footprint), including demand for food, timber, fibres (cotton) and space for urban infrastructure with the planet’s ability to replenish resources and absorb waste, including carbon dioxide emissions. “The persistence of overshoot has led to land and soil degradation, fish stock depletion, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas accumulation. These symptoms are becoming more prominent every day across the planet, with unusual heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and floods, exacerbating the competition for food and energy,” the Global Footprint Network announces in a press release. “The biggest risk, apart from ecological overshoot itself, lies in complacency towards this crisis,” says Steven Tebbe, CEO of the organisation. “Entities that act now are not just safeguarding the environment but future-proofing their economy and the wellbeing of their residents,” he added.

Last year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28th. However, the apparent delay by five days compared to last year isn’t all good news, as genuine advancements amount to less than one day, the Network explained in a press release. The remaining four days are owed to integrating improved datasets into the new edition of the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts that are being maintained by York University’s Ecological Footprint Initiative. The datasets now track countries’ performance up to 2022, reducing reporting lag by three years. For each edition, the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity metrics are recalculated to maintain consistency with the latest data and science which means that the annual dates of Earth Overshoot Day change accordingly. Since 1971, the date has been creeping up the calendar every year, although at a slowing rate. The first overshoot day was on December 25, 1971. In the early 90s, it was in the second half of October and in 2018, the day fell on August 1st, the earliest date so far. In 2020, the date moved back to August 16th, reflecting the initial drop in resource use in the first half of the year due to pandemic-induced lockdowns. “For the last 5 years the trend has flattened. How much of this is driven by economic slow-down or deliberate decarbonization efforts is difficult to discern,” the Network writes. “Still, overshoot reduction is far too slow. To reach the UN’s IPCC target of reducing carbon emissions 43% worldwide by 2030 compared to 2010 would require moving Overshoot Day 19 days annually for the next seven years.

The Network highlights that solutions to reverse ecological overshoot and bolster biological regeneration are at our disposal. Its “Power of Possibility platform” shows how we can improve our resource security in five key areas (healthy planet, cities, energy, food, and population) and presents technologies, governmental strategies, public policies, and best practices from civic initiatives and academia. Food is an important area since half of Earth‘s biocapacity is used to feed us. “With a growing human population, and increasing demand for healthy food, the ecological pressure of food will mount, while the capacity for producing food is increasingly challenged due to greater resource stress and climate uncertainty,” the Network projects in a blog article. “But there is also great potential – a food system based on circular principles has the potential to reduce land use for food by up to 71% and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 29% per person.” A major problem is the resource inefficiency in food production. Animal calories are significantly more resource intensive than plant calories to produce and current agriculture is also fossil fuel intensive, the Network explains. For example, it takes 5 calories of fossil fuel in Belgium to provide one calorie of meat. If we reduced global meat consumption by 50% and replaced these calories through a vegetarian diet, we would move Overshoot Day 17 days (including 10 days from reduction of methane emissions), they calculate. Another problem is food waste: About one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption (1.3 billion tonnes each year) gets lost or wasted, with high and low-income countries dissipating roughly the same quantities of food, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. If we cut food waste in half worldwide, Overshoot Day would be moved by 13 days. Changes in farming can also make a contribution. Tree intercropping is an agricultural technique where trees are grown together with other crops on the same land. It is an important method not only for increasing the yields of cropland and preserving soil quality, but also for sequestering carbon in soils. Wide implementation of tree intercropping techniques would move Overshoot Day by 2.1 days by 2050. An additional 1.2 days could be saved with improved rice production methods that reduce methane emissions by not flooding rice fields constantly. “There is immense power of possibility in the many existing solutions that are ready to be deployed at scale. With them, we can make ourselves more resilient and #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day,” the Network expresses optimism. (ab).