Zero hunger achievable with finance

Today, as G20 ministers gather in Rio de Janeiro, we launch the 2024 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

The report contains two important messages.

The first is that hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition remain a global crisis.

Sustainable Development Goal 2 — the world’s target of zero hunger — is off track.

This report projects that 582 million people will be chronically undernourished by 2030, more than half of them in Africa alone.

The report’s second message is that we can solve this crisis. And finance is the key. This echoes the clear outcome of the 2021 Food Systems Summit and last year’s Stocktake meeting.

Finance is just one piece of the puzzle in transforming food systems. But it is an essential piece, critical to helping countries build and upgrade food systems at the pace and scale required.

Yet — as this report shows — only about one-third of all low- and middle-income countries have adequate financing options for food and nutrition. All low- and middle-income countries are also vulnerable to economic shocks, conflicts and extreme weather events.

That’s why we need justice. Justice to help hard-hit countries invest in resilient, innovative and sustainable food systems that can reach all people with affordable food. Justice to ensure access to short and long-term concessional finance, investments, budget support and debt relief. And justice to reform the global financial architecture so developing countries are better represented and can access adequate financing to achieve their goals.

September’s Summit of the Future and next year’s Financing for Development Conference will be important moments to carry these priorities forward. And I welcome the Hunger and Poverty Alliance being launched by President Lula.

Hunger has no place in the 21st century. The world of zero hunger envisioned by SDG 2 is not only necessary — with action on finance, it is achievable.

Together, let’s consign hunger to the history books.

Let’s build the strong, resilient and sustainable food and nutrition systems all people need and deserve.

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Nine years ago, world leaders met in Addis Ababa and agreed on a transformative agenda committing public and private actors to align investment and policies with sustainable development. Yet despite progress, we must face facts. Many commitments remain unfulfilled. Meanwhile, the world is facing seismic shocks that make financing challenges harder to solve — and geo-political divisions that undermine collective action.

Faced with sky-high debt burdens and costs of capital, developing countries have limited prospects of financing the Sustainable Development Goals. The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development provides a unique opportunity to tackle these challenges head on. It opens the door for world leaders to adopt ambitious reforms to deliver affordable long-term financing at scale — and deliver the SDG Stimulus.

And it presents a unique opportunity to reform an international financial system that is outdated, dysfunctional and unfair — from the tax and debt architecture, to the system of public development banks, to trade and investment rules, to the financial safety net and global governance.

Your process has a unique mandate to look at all these pieces of the puzzle in a holistic manner, and through the prism of the 2030 Agenda.

We will need the best ideas to inform discussions, and maximum political will to act. And so I welcome the initiative of the Government of Spain to convene a high-level Commission of Experts on Financing for Development.

I count on all of you to move forward with a determination to rescue the 2030 Agenda. And, together, we can deliver not only a financial system — but a world — that is more just, equitable and sustainable.

Texts of the Secretary-General’s video messages to the First Meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development on 22 July 2024, and the Launch of the 2024 State of Food Security & Nutrition in the World: Financing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity & Malnutrition in All Its Forms, on 24 July 2024.