sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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Figure I.14
UNDERNUTRITION AND OVERWEIGHT IN CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS, <strong>20</strong>00 TO <strong>20</strong>09
(Percentages)
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security in Latin
America, <strong>20</strong>10, Santiago, Chile, <strong>20</strong>10.
Fortunately, notwithstanding the crisis, social spending held steady or even expanded and this
helped to soften the impact on the nutrition situation in the region. Conditional cash transfer programmes
have provided short-term assistance. Some Latin American countries have developed best practices in
implementing public policies to combat hunger. Those countries could lead the way in the transition
process in the region towards building stronger social protection networks and improving food and
nutrition security through South-South cooperation mechanisms. However, policies of a more structural
type are now needed in order to shift the burden from welfare to capacity-building within the population
and States afflicted by these social calamities.
Nutritional transition and increasing child obesity form a key emerging issue that countries will
have to address at the same time as redoubling their efforts to eradicate hunger. This effort will require
institutional innovations based on the human right to food and aimed at guaranteeing proper, healthy
nourishment and adequate information on industrialized foods. The crisis of <strong>20</strong>07-<strong>20</strong>09, weather
variability and climate change and the rise in international food prices in <strong>20</strong>10-<strong>20</strong>11 have returned food
security to the international agenda. Here the need arises, too, to reform governance of world food
markets and their links with the financial and energy markets. It is also necessary to attribute due value to
small-scale farming and enhance its role in food production, strengthen intraregional trade and, as noted
in a recent report by FAO (<strong>20</strong>11), close the gender gap in agriculture in order to win the fight against
hunger and extreme poverty once and for all.