The world could face a ‘hunger pandemic’ in 2021, warns the director of the World Food Program

If you thought 2020 was bad, prepare for 2021: Experts say things are about to get worse, with an even deadlier pandemic about to hit.

COVID-19. Conflict. Collapsing economies. Drought. Now we face a new disaster: “famines of biblical proportions in 2021.”

That’s according to 2020 Nobel Peace Prize winner David Beasley, who heads the World Food Program and has added his voice to a growing cacophony of alarms, stating that “we are on the brink of a hunger pandemic.”

The world we live in is an immensely complex device. Everything is connected. Everything is balanced. Everything, be it global equity markets or supply chains, is part of a vast interconnected system.

That’s why the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of environmental disasters have thrown some serious keys in the works.

Australia’s royal commission on recent catastrophic wildfires warns of “aggravating disasters” affecting the “economy, critical infrastructure and essential services”.

Defense Force chief Angus Campbell warned that disasters are already “more extreme and more common.”

Now Beasley is using the Nobel Prize to highlight the warning signs seen by his 20,000 employees around the world.

The refugee camps are overflowing, their occupants have fled their camps. Farmers leave their land fallow due to lack of labor, seeds and feed. And many of the crops that have been planted are wilting due to drought or being washed away by storms.

“It’s getting worse out there … [and] our hardest work is yet to come, “he said.

Beasley says world leaders must be alerted to “this tragedy that we are facing – crises that will really be extraordinary in the next, who knows, 12 to 18 months.”

And that’s just one of the known unknowns facing the world in 2021.

Worse are the unknowns.

“Ultimately, the long-term consequences of this pandemic, like all previous pandemics, are simply unknown to those who must endure them,” says political science professor Andrew Latham.

HUNGER, DESTABILIZATION, MIGRATION

“2021 is going to be a very bad year,” says Beasley. “You are not going to have enough money to fund all the projects that you have historically funded. Right now, we really need to focus on icebergs, and icebergs are famine, starvation, destabilization and migration.”

International efforts to stimulate the global economy have only delayed the start, he says.

“We were able to avoid it in 2020 … because world leaders responded with money, stimulus packages, debt deferrals.”

But that money is evaporating. And Beasley believes that most governments don’t have enough reserves for a second chance.

By 2021, that will leave much of the world noticing a surge in food prices and empty shelves, and around 270 million people face crisis levels of hunger.

“There are about three dozen countries that could possibly go into famine conditions,” Beasley said.

The World Food Program believes that Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Burkina Faso have already fallen into famine. Afghanistan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somali, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe are not far behind.

Beasley says his “great hope” is that billionaires who have benefited from disrupted supply chains will step up with donations for programs like school lunches globally.

Your own wealth is at risk.

Covid-19 is still rampant. Climate disasters continue apace. Civil unrest is increasing.

Everything acts as a feedback loop on the global economy. And it’s not that this is unexpected. History clearly defines the spreading effect pests have on national security, food security, and civil unrest. Add in a natural disaster or two and you have a real crisis.

THE PARADOX OF THE PANDEMIC

History is full of pandemics. Its catastrophic economic and cultural symptoms are well defined.

We are not immune.

“People are beginning to understand that the small changes that COVID-19 has already introduced or accelerated (telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash, etc.) They have started to change their way of life, “says Professor Andrew Latham, a political science researcher.

Pandemics alter society’s view of the world. Pandemics put an end to fundamental economic systems. Pandemics influence the balance of power between nations.

The plague devastated the Roman Empire in its last days. From its ashes arose Christianity, feudalism and the concept of personal freedoms.

The Black Death of the Middle Ages created the concept of labor rights, a middle class, and an attitude that technology could solve a multitude of evils.

Covid-19, while not as fatal as these pandemics, could be just as devastating.

“Will the clumsy efforts of open societies in the West to confront the virus shatter the already wavering faith in liberal democracy, creating space for other ideologies to evolve and metastasize?” Latham asks.

“Covid-19 may be accelerating an already ongoing geopolitical shift in the balance of power between the United States and China … [and] Covid-19 appears to be accelerating the unraveling of long-established work patterns and practices, with repercussions that could affect the future of office towers, large cities, and public transportation, to name just a few. “

BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Australia’s Royal Commission on Natural Disaster Fixes warns: “We are likely to see more disasters aggravated on a national scale with far-reaching consequences.”

“Compound disasters can be caused by multiple disasters occurring simultaneously, or one after another. Some can involve multiple hazards – fires, floods, and storms. Some have cascading effects – threatening not only lives and homes, but also the economy. of the country, critical infrastructure and essential services, such as our electricity, telecommunications and water supply, and our roads, railways and airports, ”the report reads.

Professor Michael Oppenheimer, an international affairs analyst at Princeton University, agrees that we are entering an era of disaster. And he warns that we are not prepared for it.

“Each disaster could compound the damage of the next, with less and less time for people to recover,” he writes in Foreign Affairs.

Oppenheimer says that the Paris Climate Agreement is not proving to be the vaccine our climate systems need. And that means that aggravated and overlapping weather disasters are increasingly likely.

The impact of a hurricane or cyclone does much more than lift trees, flatten houses, and flood fields. The wheels of industry stop turning. Distribution networks are slowly coming to a halt. Supplies, whether industrial, medical or food, are out of stock. Insurance claims, loss of taxes, loss of consumption all have global repercussions.

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 caused $ 80 billion in damage. Two or three of those super storms will create a crisis.

Add one to pandemic, drought, and civil unrest and you get: “The interaction of extreme events creates risks of an entirely new type and magnitude,” Oppenheimer writes.

“The bottom line is that few, if any, countries are sufficiently prepared to deal with what lies ahead.”