A famine is a widespread scarcity of food caused by several possible factors, including, but not limited to war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every inhabited continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. During the 19th and 20th century, Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, suffered the greatest number of fatalities. Deaths caused by famine declined sharply beginning in the 1970s, with numbers falling further since 2000. Since 2010, Africa has been the most affected continent in the world by famine.
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender or religion is another element of food security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food-secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
Lutheran World Relief (LWR) is an international non-governmental organization that focuses on sustainable development projects and disaster relief and recovery. The organization was founded in 1945 to collect and send aid to people living in post-World War II Europe. Today, LWR helps communities living in extreme poverty adapt to the challenges that threaten their livelihoods and well-being, and responds to emergencies with a long-term view. It is a member of the Corus International family of faith-based international development organizations, which include IMA World Health, CGA Technologies, Ground Up Investing, and LWR Farmers Market Coffee.
Famine scales are metrics of food security going from entire populations with adequate food to full-scale famine. The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition. For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War. This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions. As different levels of food insecurity demand different types of response, there have been various methods of famine measurement proposed to help agencies determine the appropriate response.
Malawi is one of the world's undeveloped countries and is ranked 170 out of 187 countries according to the 2010 Human Development Index. It has about 16 million people, 53% of whom live under the national poverty line and 90% of whom live on less than $2 per day.
Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union Space Programme, managed by the European Commission and implemented in partnership with the EU Member States, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), Frontex, SatCen and Mercator Océan.
In different administrative and organizational forms, the Food for Peace program of the United States has provided food assistance around the world for more than 60 years. Approximately 3 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the U.S. Government's largest provider of overseas food assistance. The food assistance programming is funded primarily through the Food for Peace Act. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance also receives International Disaster Assistance Funds through the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) that can be used in emergency settings.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), also known as IPC scale, is a tool for improving food security analysis and decision-making. It is a standardised scale that integrates food security, nutrition and livelihood information into a statement about the nature and severity of a crisis and implications for strategic response.
The Weather Info for All (WIFA) Initiative is a public-private partnership that works to reinforce the capacities and the capabilities of national meteorological services with the goal of supporting local communities worst impacted by climate change through the improvement of weather monitoring. "By bringing together the expertise and resources of different public and private actors, this project may help to save lives and improve the livelihoods of communities in Africa living on the frontlines of climate change." Kofi Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum. The Forum, together with Ericsson, the World Meteorological Organization, National Meteorological Services (NMSs), the Earth Institute at Columbia University, as well as Zain and other mobile phone operators aim to deploy up to 5,000 automatic weather stations (AWSs) at wireless network sites across Africa, where less than 300 are reporting today.
Occurring between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis.
Climate change in Africa is an increasingly serious threat as Africa is among the most vulnerable continents to the effects of climate change. Some sources even classify Africa as "the most vulnerable continent on Earth". Climate change and climate variability will likely reduce agricultural production, food security and water security. As a result, there will be negative consequences on people's lives and sustainable development in Africa.
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices affect producers and consumers of food. Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing and food distribution. Fluctuation in food prices is determined by a number of compounding factors. Geopolitical events, global demand, exchange rates, government policy, diseases and crop yield, energy costs, availability of natural resources for agriculture, food speculation, changes in the use of soil and weather events directly affect food prices. To a certain extent, adverse price trends can be counteracted by food politics.
In the early months of 2017, parts of South Sudan experienced a famine following several years of instability in the country's food supply caused by war and drought. The famine, largely focused in the northern part of the country, affected an estimated five million people. In May 2017, the famine was officially declared to have weakened to a state of severe food insecurity.
Food insecurity in Niger is a growing concern, with more than 1.5 million people affected in the year 2017.
In Iraq, climate change has led to environmental impacts such as increasing temperatures, decreasing precipitation, land degradation, and water scarcity. Climate change poses numerous risks to human health, livelihoods, political stability, and the sustainable development of the nation. The combination of ecological factors, conflict, weak governance, and an impeded capacity to mitigate climate change, has made Iraq uniquely at risk to the negative effects of climate change, with the UN ranking them the 5th most vulnerable country to climate change. Rising temperatures, intensified droughts, declining precipitation, desertification, salinization, and the increasing prevalence of dust storms are challenges Iraq faces due in to the negative impacts of climate change. National and regional political instability and conflict have made it difficult to mitigate the effects of climate change, address transnational water management, and develop sustainably. Climate change has negatively impacted Iraq's population through loss of economic opportunity, food insecurity, water scarcity, and displacement.
The 2018–2021 Southern Africa drought was a period of drought that took place in Southern Africa. The drought began in late October 2018, and negatively affected food security in the region. In mid-August 2019, the drought was classified as a level 2 Red-Class event by the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. The alert level was reduced to the Orange-1.7 by 12 December 2019, as the new wet season had started. In September 2020, the drought was classified as a level 2 Red-Class event. The drought continued into early 2021. Beginning in October 2021, South Africa experienced above average rainfall and reservoirs refilled by early 2022.
The state of food security is a heavily scrutinized issue in the United Republic of Tanzania. Agriculture accounts for almost one-third of the nation's GDP. It is an aspect of Tanzania that although obstructed by many internal and external factors, is continually worked on by outside forces and the nation itself.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity intensified in many places. In the second quarter of 2020, there were multiple warnings of famine later in the year. In an early report, the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Oxfam-International talks about "economic devastation" while the lead-author of the UNU-WIDER report compared COVID-19 to a "poverty tsunami". Others talk about "complete destitution", "unprecedented crisis", "natural disaster", "threat of catastrophic global famine". The decision of the WHO on 11 March 2020, to qualify COVID as a pandemic, that is "an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people" also contributed to building this global-scale disaster narrative.
North Korea is highly vulnerable to climate change to the effects of climate change due to its weak food security, which in the past has led to widespread famine. The North Korean Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection estimates that North Korea's average temperature rose by 1.9 °C between 1918 and 2000. In the 2013 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, North Korea was judged to be the seventh hardest hit by climate-related extreme weather events of 179 nations during the period 1992–2011.
Climate change in Africa is reducing its food security. Climate change at the global, continental, and sub-continental levels has been observed to include an increase in air and ocean temperatures, sea-level rise, a decrease in snow and ice extent, an increase and decrease in precipitation, changes in terrestrial and marine biological systems, and ocean acidification. The agricultural industry is responsible for more than 60% of full time employment in Africa, millions of people in Africa depend on the agricultural industry for their economic well-being and means of subsistence. A variety of climate change-related factors such as worsening pests and diseases that damage agriculture and livestock, altered rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, droughts, and floods are having a negative impact on the agricultural industry in Africa. Many African populations access to food is being impacted by these climate effects on the agricultural industry, which result in a trend of decreasing crop yields, animal losses, and rising food prices.
