Save the Children’s suggested post-2015 development framework champions universal and equitable development, with human rights as its guiding principle and evidence as a foundation for its approaches. And, unlike with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), these principles must be visible in the targets established. Save the Children argues that it is possible to set zero targets for absolute poverty, hunger, and preventable child and maternal deaths, as well as 100% access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Five lessons can be learnt from the MDGs, according to the report. 1. The MDGs do not consistently confront inequality, whether it is because of age, gender, caste, disability, geography or income. 2. A robust, effective accountability mechanism is missing from the MDG framework. 3. The MDGs do not pay attention to synergies and interaction of systems, like poverty, health and education. 4. The MDGs focus inputs and not outcomes, which might result in greater access but this does not automatically mean that the aims of that service are being realised. 5. Since 2000 little has been achieved in improving the long-term sustainability of the natural resource base.
Poverty and health
Faced with increasingly unpredictable rains and rising agricultural input costs, many of Swaziland's smallholder farmers are no longer able to make a living relying on traditional methods to grow maize, the staple crop, according to IRIN News. Externally funded schemes to subsidise the cost of seed and fertiliser have dried up and a Ministry of Agriculture service to provide affordable tractor hire has been a casualty of the government's cash flow problems. Distribution schemes to the needy are failing because of a lack of technical assistance to ensure that recipients use the inputs correctly for maximum benefit. Their reach was also small, with experts estimating that only about a tenth of Swaziland's 260,000 farming households benefited. As the cost of both inputs and food has risen significantly over the past year, many subsistence farmers have had to prioritise food over fertiliser in the context of declining maize production during the 2011-12 season.
In this paper, the author considers alternative scenarios for reducing by one billion the number of people living below $1.25 a day. The low-case, "pessimistic," path to that goal would see low income countries outside China returning to the slower pace of growth and poverty reduction of the 1980s and 1990s, though with China maintaining its progress. This path is projected to would take 50 years or more to lift one billion people out of poverty. The author asserts that a more optimistic path would maintain the rate of progress in reducing poverty since 2000, reaching the target by around 2025-30, although this assumes inequality-neutral growth.
In this report, the High-Level Expert Committee argues in favour of innovative financing for agriculture, food security and nutrition to achieve food security and nutrition objectives. Although they are progressing, budgets for food security, including agriculture and nutrition components, in low income countries are severely constrained. Proposed mechanisms for funding include: national taxes, such as a tax on financial transactions; voluntary contributions from consumers, firms and employees and food- and nutrition-correlated industries; allocation of funds generated by the carbon emissions allowances auctions in the European Union Emissions Trading System; and migrants’ remittances, which already represent considerable financial flows from industrialised to developing countries. To maximise their contribution to food security objectives, these innovative financing mechanisms should, as much as possible, be targeted at food production and supply, as well as family farming with the specific intention to make agriculture work for nutrition.
Malawi has gone from bountiful maize crops to food insecurity in the past seven years. Thanks to increased farm subsidies for small-holder farmers in 2004, Malawi harvested a bumper crop the following year. But the author reports that subsidies fell thereafter and Malawi became a net importer of maize, with domonishing agricultural outputs. What can be learned from Malawi’s story? With a population of more than a billion, will Africa produce enough food for its people? The author argues it is possible, but under several conditions. First, an essential ingredient for success in agriculture is strong political will at the highest level. Second, while foreign funds help to feed the hungry and revive agriculture in Africa, food security is argued to be too important to be left to the generosity of external partners. It also requires the same importance and resources as national security. Africa needs a strong food policy backed by resources from African Union (AU) members, to be invested in institutions that promote agriculture. One tangible AU response has been the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which requires countries that sign up to it to spend at least 10% of their national budgets on agriculture.
The objective of this study was to assess the burden of anaemia and its determinants among pregnant and non-pregnant women in Ethiopia. Researchers used data from the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey of Ethiopia. A total of 5,960 women of child-bearing age were included in the analysis. The general prevalence of anaemia among women was 27.7%, while the prevalence of anaemia was 33% and 27.3% among pregnant and non-pregnant women respectively. Analysis revealed a significant negative association between prevalence of anaemia and women’s educational status, grouped altitude of residential places and household wealth index categories. The authors found that anaemia is a moderate public health problem among women in Ethiopia but there exist significant differences in magnitude by socio-economic status of women and their families and where they live. They call for interventions designed to address maternal anaemia that pay attention to both nutritional and non-nutritional intervention strategies, including environmental sanitation, de-worming, and provision and promotion of family planning methods.
In this article, the author, an environmental blogger, puts forward five reasons why urban farming is one of the major social movements in the world today. First, the urban farming movement has the potential to reinvigorate local commerce by encouraging local farmers to trade with one another. Second, urban farmers are usually better stewards of their land because they directly bear the ecological costs of their actions, whereas industrial agriculture usually manoeuvers to avoid paying for environmental costs. Rather than using chemicals that destroy soil biology, urban farming culture stresses sustainable organic techniques that enrich the topsoil. Third, urban farming makes it clearer and easier for people to be involved in local politics by bringing issues that directly affect communities to the fore. Fourth, urban agriculture can also bring about a revolution of health and nutrition because it supplies fresh, organic produce. And finally, urban farming is inherently an activity that helps build a sense of community. Growing food is, after all, a cooperative effort, as knowledge of how and what to grow is exchanged, seeds are swapped, labour is shared, and the harvest is traded. As urban farming grows, the author predicts a stronger interdependence within urban communities is likely to result as local food systems bring more community interaction into people’s daily lives.
This report raises that World Bank, USAID, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are pressuring African governments into harmonising seed laws relating to border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety release systems, certification standards and intellectual property rights, and indicate that this is to the detriment of African small-holder farmers and their seed systems. Harmonised intellectual property rights over seeds are based on the 1991 Act of the International Union of the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV) as developed by industrialised countries, and the authors argue that this Act is inappropriate for Africa where 80% of all seeds are still produced and disseminated by smallholder farmers. The authors report that seed harmonisation efforts have excluded farmer and civil society participation and that the current practices of small-scale African farmers and their contribution to seed breeding, genetic diversity and food security are not recognised.
In this cross-sectional study, researchers screened 131 adults with or without pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) for HIV, wasting and disease severity using the 13-item validated clinical TB score and 24-hour dietary intake recall. Of the 131 participants, 61 were males and 70 females. Overall men and women had similar age. In average 24-hour nutrient intake, the following were low among patients with severe TB: energy, protein, total fat, carbohydrate, calcium, vitamin A and folate. Patients with moderate-to-severe clinical TB score had lower average energy intake than patients with mild TB scores (6.11 vs. 9.27 megajoules [MJ], respectively). The average 24-hour nutrient intakes of wasted and non-wasted TB patients were comparable. Nutrient intake among men was higher when compared to women regardless of wasting and severity of TB. Among those with wasting, men had higher average energy intake than women (8.87 vs. 5.81 MJ, respectively). Among patients with mild disease, men had higher average energy intake than women with mild disease (12.83 vs. 7.49 kcal, respectively). These findings suggest that severity of pulmonary TB and female gender were associated with reduced nutrient intake. Early diagnosis and nutritional support may be important in management of patients.
Neoliberal sanitation experts visiting Durban, South Africa for the Toilet Summit in early December 2012 may argue that South Africa should embrace low-water toilets, yet community critics regularly report that Durban’s water-less ‘Ventilated Improved Pitlatrine’ (VIP) and ‘Urinary Diversion’ (UD) strategies are failing. The author argues that middle- and upper-class South Africans could easily cross-subsidise their low-income fellow residents by paying more for the privileges of filling swimming pools and bathtubs, watering gardens and running washing machines, and that government can at the same time adjust tariffs downwards for poor people. If such reforms were made to water and sanitation prices, then better health and gender equity would result, and more funds could be raised for installing decent toilets in South African cities, as well as to repair sewage pipes whose cracks infect rivers and harbours. The construction capability and subsidised funding for projects is available in South Africa so that 'toilet apartheid' is argued to relate more to political choices in how these resources are used.