GEOG10001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Global Acute Malnutrition, Sub-Saharan Africa, Poverty Reduction
16 May 2018
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Department
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Professor
LECTURE 23: TIM COSTELLO AID
• Scarcity seen as a result of politicisation, that suits power players – markets + elites
o Deliberate exclusion, gender choices
• Ethnic conflict: common throughout Middle East, chaos more man made than natural
o Challenge to international order
• Syrian migration: changed geopolitics of Europe, 12 out of 20 million displaced
• Difficulties working with people suffering extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition
• 22 million people in need of food assistance
o 3.5 million children suffering acute malnutrition
• Poverty: driven by politics, climate change
• Stupid Poverty – dying from issues we already have solutions
• Australia commitment to Aid: reduced in the last budget
o Promise: 0.7%, currently 0.21% - lowest in Australia’s history
Climate Change
• El Nino exacerbated food security issues
• Drought affected food production systems
• Livestock death – drought, reduces livelihood + income
• 40% children in Sub-Saharan Africa grew up stunted due to acute malnutrition – lack of ability for brain development
• Justice issue: west have caused most of the problem, east contributed least, yet affected first + most dramatically
LECTURE 24: CONCLUSIONS
KEY CONCEPTS
• All famine is underpinned by poverty and underdevelopment
• How do we define famine, food insecurity, undernourishment?
o Data – how to use it cautiously, and be aware of alternate data
o Thresholds
o Famines, are crises/institutional/humanitarian failure, caused by man-made factors, not natural factors – as globally we
currently have enough food
Key Theories
• Food availability + population – Malthus + Neo-Malthusians
o Environmental degradation – soil as a template, human degradation of ecosystems/resources, yet equally we can do
things to aid productivity – agrochemicals, tech fixes
o Were the neo-Malthusians right? and China
▪ Neo: biocapacity, limits to growth, GR = environmental externalities
• Food access and distribution – Sen
o Social structures limit access to food, localised scale (compared to Malthusian global/national scale)
o Failure to access food is due to lack of entitlements
• Accountability + response
o Failures in international humanitarian interventions + development – ODA + private transfers
▪ Aid – climate smart agriculture, example of World Bank aid
o Globalised risk factors
▪ Markets – rising food process, commodity markets – fluctuations affect income/livelihood of farmers
▪ Trade – trade protectionism, negative terms of trade
o Political regimes + conflict
o Commission + omission – crises insecurity to do with water + food can be deliberate to gain political advantage, or
massive institutional failure
▪ Steven Devereux – theorist
Mitigating Factors
• Technological innovation
• Agricultural intensification
• Green Revolution – crop variety, yet only done in areas with biggest gains, other places only catching up now with cropping
o More focus on interbreeding to get crops right in specific areas, rather than global equality – spatial disparity
Variation in food availability spatially + temporally
• Hunger maps
• Climate variation in food production – spatial + temporal
• Climate change, IPCC – we have inference to have grounding to comment on climate change
Factors
• Some factors are triggers
o Drought, climate change, war, policy failure
• Some factors are fundamental
o Who dies is a matter of access to food
o Who accesses food is a matter of marginalisation + structural inequality – matters of poverty
Response
• interventions/solutions depend on the argument you think is most important
• Seen in practice, where theory is seen through responses in real life
• Abundance argument:
o Control population growth
o Increase food production
• Distribution argument:
o Poverty reduction
o More equitable + accountable social, economic + political systems at all scales
Document Summary
Scarcity seen as a result of politicisation, that suits power players markets + elites: deliberate exclusion, gender choices. Ethnic conflict: common throughout middle east, chaos more man made than natural: challenge to international order. Syrian migration: changed geopolitics of europe, 12 out of 20 million displaced. Difficulties working with people suffering extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition. 22 million people in need of food assistance. Stupid poverty dying from issues we already have solutions. Australia commitment to aid: reduced in the last budget. Promise: 0. 7%, currently 0. 21% - lowest in australia"s history. Livestock death drought, reduces livelihood + income. 40% children in sub-saharan africa grew up stunted due to acute malnutrition lack of ability for brain development. Justice issue: west have caused most of the problem, east contributed least, yet affected first + most dramatically. All famine is underpinned by poverty and underdevelopment.
