Driving Asian food security amid Covid, climate change and conflict

WE HAVE grown accustomed to Asia being a global leader in a host of categories, including innovative technologies and digital transformation. Sadly, our region also has the dire distinction of leading the world in another area entirely: being home to the most hungry people.

According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 (Sofi) report issued earlier this year by the United Nations (UN), the number of people in Asia affected by hunger rose last year to 425 million, up from 418 million, making the region top of this most disconcerting category. This has been a rising trend, up from 398 million in 2020 and 340 million in 2019.

In Asia and around the world, we’re simply not making progress on reducing hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. In many instances, we’re actually losing ground. According to the Sofi report, 8 per cent of the world’s population – or 670 million people – will be facing hunger at the end of the decade. That’s the same number of people that were facing hunger in 2015, the year the UN first introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a road map to ending extreme poverty and hunger.