World Food Prize Symposium 2003
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Speaker:  Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

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Progress Toward Eradicating World Hunger
Introduction of Jonathan Taylor
by Ambassador Kenneth Quinn

             Part of our symposium is to introduce to you members of our Council of Advisors, so it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the gentleman who is going to be the chair for the next session and a member of our Council of Advisors, Jonathan Taylor.

            Jonathan is the chairman of the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. He was also chairman of Booker, a major international agri-business operations. He’s retired from that but now remains as the chair of the Booker Prize, which, as we all know has just announced its winner this week.

            He’s chair of the Marshall Commission, which brings students on international scholarships to promote international understanding between the United States and Europe. He’s contributed to Harvard Business School studies, he’s been an advisor to the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the UK Overseas Development Administration, but most importantly to us, he serves as a member of our Council of Advisors.

            Jonathan, let me turn the program over to you.

Session Chair:
Jonathan Taylor
Chairman of Governors
School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London
Chairman, Booker Prize

            Good morning. We’re talking about defeating hunger and famine and aspirations which I think we all share, which are very brave..., and hugely important. But Peter has already mentioned this morning the importance of measurement. We need measurements which are relevant and real, tangible and specific. We need to know how we are doing and where we are.

            And this morning in this session from two different directions we’re going to come down to earth and hear perhaps some good news, certainly some less good news, and we can see the challenges.

            We’ve got two speakers who will have somewhat different perspectives but will, I think, be quite complementary to what we’ve already heard. I think we’re going to deal with it as two sessions, with our first speaker speaking for a certain time where I think for the first time at one of these conferences, we’re slightly ahead of schedule. This is unique, and maybe we’ll make up some of it now.

            So we’ll have questions after Sakiko’s session, and then questions after Per’s session.

            First of all, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr. Sakiko is director and lead author of the Human Development Report this year, 2003. She’s going to be signing copies later, I think. And she’s also lead author and director of the previous seven reports. She, to my mind, very importantly has a lot of what one might call frontline experience, and she’s been in the trenches in Africa, in North Africa, West Africa, Burundi, as well as in upper parts of the world. And I look forward very much to hearing from her. And I think I look forward – I don’t know if we’ll get to that perspective, but I noted with great pleasure the emphasis we are now putting on Africa. I was born in Uganda many, many years ago. I think three, four, five years ago Africa was in danger of falling off the map, but it is now back in the center of priorities. But anyway, that is a slight diversion.

            Sakiko, please come and talk to us.

The Human Development Report 2003 
Dr. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
Director, Human Development Office
United Nations Development Programme

            Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Ambassador Quinn, Mr. Ruan, Dr. Borlaug – many distinguished participants are here. I am extremely honored and find it a great privilege to have been invited to launch the 2003 Human Development Report here at this conference.

            It gives us a tremendous opportunity from the United Nations to in fact come to Des Moines. We have the frequent opportunities to visit many other capitals of the world, from Paris to Rome to Makuto to Dakar, etc., but rarely do we have the opportunity, in fact, to come to the heartland of the United States.

            And also to remind everybody that the real work of the United Nations is not just in Iraq, but it is about the battle for freedom from want and not just the battle for freedom from fear.

            Let me just say a few words about the Human Development Report. The Human Development Report started in 1990, and it is an annual report that tracks progress in development, but the important thing about our report is that it considers development to be something that is about people and improving people’s lives.

            So it is something that needs to be measured and tracked, not only by looking at GDP per capita. Although GDP per capita measures how much you produce, it measures certainly how much food you produce but also how much weapons and polluting waste and so forth that you produce as well. And in fact it doesn’t measure any of the many, many valuable things in life that are important.

            The Human Development Report, therefore, goes beyond looking at incomes and looking at human well-being, and very important aspects of human well-being, of course, have to do with survival – not being hungry, being healthy, but also enjoying political freedoms and being able to express yourself, being able to participate.

            So this is a way that we are looking at development, and in each annual report, we focus on a particular theme. And this year’s Human Development Report, therefore, is on the Millennium Development Goals. And this is perhaps the most comprehensive report that has been produced this year on the Millennium Development Goals, because it takes a survey, globally, of the prospects for achieving these goals, what it will take and where the obstacles are.

            Now, let me say a few words about the MDGs.

            The Millennium Development Goals come from the Millennium Declaration, and it’s really quite a unique, unprecedented declaration that was adopted at the Millennium Summit of 2000 where nearly a 160 heads of state gathered and promised to do their utmost, and they defined a vision for the 21st century.

            And one of the important aspects of this declaration was the fight against poverty. They said that, “We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty, therefore, to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and particularly the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.”

            And these goals that came out of this declaration are particularly important because they were not just expressions of general idealism. You know, they were not sort of blah-blah goals. There was a real timetable, and there were real indicators of progress that were to be used. They set, therefore, a global commitment and a standard of what had to be really accomplished in the first decade and a half of the century.

            And the other thing that is very important about these goals is that they cover the gamut of the different dimensions of poverty. It isn’t just about economic growth, it is not just about GDP per capita, it is about all of these different dimensions of human well-being that are part of our conception of what human development should be all about.

            The other very important part of this is – look at goal number eight: Goal eight is about developing a global partnership. So not only did the MDGs say that poverty was important, it said poverty was multi-dimensional, poverty was something that affected the whole world and not just a few people in a few countries. And it said that all people of the world have to engage in a global partnership to tackle global poverty.

            So in terms of a piece of international relations, it is a very significant milestone that was achieved when these goals were adopted. These goals are important, therefore, taken as a package, not only because of all these things, hunger, but also health, longevity, environment, are important for the quality of the life that people can lead, but also because we know from all of the academic studies that they are interrelated.

            Study after study has shown that education improves productivity, it improves health. Each year of even primary school, particularly of women, actually directly contributes to increasing prospects for survival of their children, increasing prospects for education of the children. And all of that together actually adds up to improving productivity; productivity improves nutrition, and so on.

            So there is this virtuous circle of human development that sets in place. And we all know, of course, that hunger is not a problem of food production. There is plenty of food in the world. It is essentially a problem of the poor people who do not have access to it, who do not have income to buy  it, who do not have the know-how, technology, resources to be more productive. So all of these things constitute a virtuous circle, and of course it can turn into a vicious circle.

            Now let me then go on to talk about how we are doing, in fact, in reaching these goals by 2015. I think that we all have to start by acknowledging that progress in our fight against world poverty and progress in promoting freedom from want actually has been tremendously successful. There has been tremendous progress in development over the decades, and I think that’s something we should never, never forget.

            This is a chart that shows life expectancy on the vertical access and GDP per capita on the horizontal. And this just sort of summarizes that, in fact, all countries have been improving progressively. All of these bubbles represent a country, and the size of the bubble shows the population of the country. And yellows are Asia, dark blues are Africa, and greens are the OECD countries.

            And what you see from this is actually that there has been this terrible phenomenon of the 1990s where for the first time over the last decades you have had a decline. Basically, what you had was that since the 1960s you have this progressive improvement in life expectancy and health. You don’t see any countries, really, going backwards until the 1990s where there’s this dramatic change.      

            And I think this is the thing that we really need to start worrying about. There is a huge debate out there about whether global income inequality is getting worse or better, whether poor countries are getting better or not. And, in fact, you know, people take positions, but both positions are right in a sense that the world is actually doing much better in reducing poverty and also in progress in income health and other aspects of human well-being.

            But actually if you start disaggregating and focusing on the differences between regions, differences between countries, what you find is that in the 1990s there is a group of countries that have stagnated and that have gone backwards, even though there is a number of other countries that have moved ahead very fast.

            So this is the differentiated picture that we have to focus on. And if we are going to do anything to really make a difference on world poverty and world hunger, we have to focus on those countries and those regions of countries that are doing very badly.

            And I want also to emphasize the fact that the 1990s actually has accentuated this divide between the successful countries and the stagnating countries and that the stagnating countries in some years have gone even backwards.

            And I think this is a cause for real concern. And just contrast here that, you know, all of these middle countries have actually moved ahead quite a lot, and they’ve gone closer to the rich countries. So dividing the world between the developed and the underdeveloped or the developed and developing or the first and the third world, actually doesn’t really work anymore.

            If you look at the spread of these countries, it represents a continuum. And these countries – this is China, this is India – these countries are as far away from the Congo, from Zambia, as they are from the United States up here. So let’s really focus on these countries that are doing badly.

            Now, when you look at this development crisis, we have found that, for the first time, 21 countries had a decline in our measure of development, the Human Development Index. And these are the countries, and if you focus on these, you notice that most of them are in Africa or in Eastern Europe. They are not always only the very poorest countries. Some of these countries with higher incomes have also gone backwards.

            One of the factors... And it is not just in life expectancy or income that some countries have gone backwards. Economic growth, of course, actually has been extremely disastrous in the 1990s for many of the poorest countries – 54 countries had a negative economic growth; 37 countries out of 67 with time trend data have had an increase in poverty rates, measured by income; 21 countries had an increase in hunger rates; 14 countries had an increase in child mortality rates; and in 12 countries primary schooling rates actually declined.

            And as was mentioned, our Human Development Index declined in the 1990s in 21 countries, which is unprecedented, because this index actually uses data on indicators like life expectancy, which actually is something that does not usually decline so easily, like balance of payments.

            But you can see how this is happening when you look at, indeed, life expectancy and GDP per capita and you consider Botswana. From the 1960s Botswana made huge efforts in health, and life expectancy improved and caught up with Costa Rica. But then what happened in the 1990s was a catastrophic decline. And its life expectancy is actually lower than what it was in 1960. So this is 40 years of development just lost. And I think that this, once again, demonstrates the fact that the 1990s is a decade with a new problem with new challenges of development that we need to really look at reversing.

            Now, I don’t want to just give you a story of doom and gloom, because, in fact, the whole point about this analysis is to show you, as I said, this differentiation between countries. And the countries are not only, you know, you don’t just say, well, the poorest countries are just getting poorer. No. There are many poor countries that are doing well and, in fact, our analysis also shows that there is a lot that can be done in a generation.

            Now, coming from where I come from, which is East Asia, my own country, Japan, of course, did this in sort of an earlier period. You know, we’re very used to the notion of, you know, we will catch up with the West, we will make these generational leaps in progress. And so if the Millennium Development Goals were set in the 1970s, all of these countries would have achieved them. You can actually make huge progress in a generation, 15 years. Setting a target for 15 years is not an unrealistic thing to be doing. And in many cases you see – look at Iran – you don’t even need that huge amount of economic growth to achieve these improvements.

            In the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil, what it took to help the proportion of people without sanitation or water, was a change in the way the budgeting decisions were made. When there was a more participatory citizens’ audit kind of an exercise on the way that municipal budgets were being used, they decided to allocate more money for poor people. And then there was a huge improvement in the sanitation infrastructure for the slums.

            And even in earlier decades in a country like Srilanka in the 1950s, with the sort of technology in the 1950s, with the thought of technology they had back then, with the sort of income that they had back then, there was an improvement in life expectancy of 12 years in just 6 years. So, I mean, these generational leaps of progress are the history. It is the real history of the world.

            Let me then go to the question of – What do we do? This is obviously the most important question.

            Here is some of the data, by the way, on hunger. You can see that in many countries, in fact, there has been a huge improvement over the 1990s in reducing hunger rates. It’s just that this is not generalized, and there are also other countries where hunger has actually increased in the 1990s.

            So this is really, once again, telling you the story of this differentiation between success and stagnation and reversal, and that if we could only get all countries on the successful paths, these goals can be achieved.

            Now, we looked at where these goals were going badly and said that, well, we do need to focus on the countries with the biggest challenges and where current trends are very slow. And we came up with this notion of these top-priority and high-priority countries where progress was either slow or both slow and starting from a very low level.

            And most people would say, well, you know, countries are going badly – they’re probably the war-torn countries of Africa. Well, actually, this is not true. Only 13 of these 59 priority countries have experienced violent conflict.

            But there are certain other characteristics that are, I think, quite noteworthy. Many of them are actually very small countries. They also have an economic structure that is very, very handicapped, if you like, in terms of taking the best out of the global economy. And so 21 of them, in fact, 21 out of 26 with data are primary commodity exporters; 32 are landlocked; 31 are heavily indebted.

            So these are poor countries with these sort of structural obstacles that they can’t really deal with, tackle on their own. They cannot just do away with a geographical disadvantage of being far from markets. And they do have a heavy stock of a debt burden that they have to tackle, yes; but they can’t do it overnight.

            So all of this requires more of an understanding, I think, from the international community about what is possible and what are some of the basic fundamental constraints that have to be overcome.

            In the 1990s development policy debates have really focused on two or perhaps three issues. One has been this sort of theory that, well, it’s all about macro-economic policy, so structured adjustment, you know, getting economic policies right – that was sort of the thrust of the argument. Well, I am not really arguing against that; all of these things actually are important. Inflation is very bad for poor people.

            And then the second point was that, well, it’s governance that matters, you know, it’s corruption, it’s the judiciary that doesn’t work, it’s the rule of law that is not in place, you know, property contracts that are not, commercial contracts that are not in force – so institution matters, governance matters. People like us have said – and this is the third school of thought, that, you know, it’s all about people being empowered to participate and have a democratic voice in the kinds of policies that are put in place.

            So macro-economic policy, institutions that make markets work, democratic governance that empowers the poor – all of these things are important. But I think in all of these debates of the 1990s, some of these basic fundamentals were not really adequately addressed, such as the fact that you need to invest in roads to get infrastructure going or that you have to change the nature of your export patterns.

            And here you see, I mean, when you look more closely at this issue of location, you do find that, in fact, countries with inland populations did so much less well in terms of economic growth than countries with coastal populations. You also find that it’s the primary commodity exporters that did badly, and it’s the manufacturing product exporters that did very much better in the 1990s in terms of economic growth. And as our earlier speakers have noted, economic growth does matter. It is when you have incomes of three or four hundred dollars per capita and stagnating and in fact you’re actually going backwards, that it is very hard to get development going.

            Now let me, since I don’t have very much more time, let me just say a few words about Goal 8 partnership and what it takes. I think that the international issues, the international responsibilities that rich countries have, we have to remember, have been commitments. When there was a breakdown at Cancun, none of the newspaper articles that I read talked about the fact that expanding markets to developing country products, or reducing subsidies, or increasing aid..., were in fact commitments made by world leaders at the global summit, at Monterey, at the Johannesburg summit conference on development and indeed DOHA.

            Time and time again it has been recognized that more can be done by rich countries, by giving our aid, and the back of the envelope sort of calculation of how much more aid is needed is more or less doubling of ODA between from $50-100 billion a year, and that is far less than the commitments that have been made, promises that have been made by heads of state and others to do their utmost to reduce poverty. The commitment is 0.7% of GDP. That would bring the total aid bill to well over a hundred billion. The $50 billion is something like 0.22, I think, and the hundred million would be about 0.44. So 0.7 would actually bring you to $160 billion or so.

            So, now once again market access for developing countries. The DOHA declaration said that making development, using trade for development will be at the heart of the work program of trade negotiations. Once again, we do know, of course, what has happened since 2001, the DOHA declaration. And enough has already been said about agricultural subsidies, but I think a point about the agricultural subsidies, I’d like to emphasize two things.

            First, the incredible contrast in the amounts that are involved. I mean, when we are fighting in the development aid community over every dollar, over increasing global aid from $50 billion to $51 billion to $52 billion, then we see in fact that agricultural subsidies paid by the richest countries in fact come to five or six times that; they come to well over $300 billion a year worldwide. And that in fact certainly many studies show that there is an incredible concentration of these subsidies in terms of the beneficiaries, that is to say I think that 65% of subsidies go to the top 10% of farmers in the United States, and that has been increasing. And I think the fact that it has been increasing is a point of concern.

            And all of this does truly have direct bearing on reducing poverty and hunger. Let us remember that, Bukina-Faso, for example, one of the poorest countries in Africa, depends on cotton for its export earnings; 30% of the export earnings of the West African cotton-producing countries come from cotton. And they have actually undertaken a lot of reforms to make their cotton sector productive. And they, I think as a group they constitute about 15% of world export markets for cotton. And yet they find it very difficult to compete against farmers who receive subsidies. And without increasing their exports, they cannot pay back their debts; and if they cannot pay back their debts and if they are not able to increase their government revenues, they are unable in fact to invest in education, health, agriculture research, agriculture development, agriculture extension services, increasing food productivity, decreasing hunger. So these are the basic links between trade and poverty and hunger.

            So I just want to close by saying that there is really a lot more that the rich world can do. And I think that if we are going to set targets in the Millennium Development Goals for hunger with these quantitative targets, I think it is also important for the rich countries to actually set concrete goals. Goal 8 actually just says, you know, develop a global partnership; it is very vague and unspecific.

            And, finally, let me just say that many of you, I am sure, feel that the United Nations goals are just pie in the sky, they’re just statements of ideal. And in some respects you are right. There are many goals that have been set in the United Nations, like “Health for All by 2000,” that have not made a difference. But quite contrary to popular perception, United Nations goals have really made a difference. And I can quote many, many: eradication of smallpox, reduction in guinea worm, and the most spectacular one is the immunization goal where in about 70 countries immunization went from 10-20% to 80% in the 1980s as a result of the immunization goal.

            And the lesson from all of this is that when these goals actually are accompanied by real action, then they can be reached – because these goals raise ambition and spur action. So I think this is what this is all about. This is the logo of the Swedish Millennium Development Goal campaign, that means it’s the last chance for the world.