To tackle malnutrition in order to fulfil the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to attain Sustainable Development Goal 2 to end hunger, the European Parliament calls for genuinely coordinated and accelerated action from the international community, at all levels.
The resolution on global goals and EU commitments on nutrition and food security in the world that was adopted in Strasbourg last week (450 votes to 213, with 13 abstentions), is a plea for the international community, the EU and developing countries to tackle the root causes of hunger and malnutrition. It calls on all to turn away from designing nutrition strategies based on calorie intake alone and prescription of medical remedies.
“Reinvestment in local food production, focused in particular on small-scale food producers and agro-ecological practices, is a key condition for the success of nutrition strategies”, the Parliament states. MEPs are keen to break with the ways of the past when the promotion of export-led agriculture operated at the expense of family farms producing food crops for local consumption.
They note with concern that one third of the food produced worldwide – some 1.3 billion tonnes – is wasted. In the EU alone, 88 million tonnes of food is wasted every year while, worldwide, 842 million people – 12 % of the world’s population – go hungry, they state, urging efforts to tackle this food waste. They are highly critical of the land grabbing carried out by foreign investors, which hits local small-scale farmers and contributes to local, regional and national food insecurity and poverty, and call on the Commission to propose an action plan to address this situation.
The Parliament calls on the European Commission and member states to ensure that development policies are consistent, which, it says, also requires an end to public incentives for biofuels that compete with food production. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)