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On global issues, the international community must walk and chew gum at the same time. It needs to learn to deal with simultaneous crises that play off each other, says UN Foundation President Elizabeth Cousens.
That's why we dropped the ball on hunger.
Now the needs are huge and growing. We haven't seen a lot of images of starvation yet, but they are coming, Cousens tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
"We have to be able to rise to this challenge, and see it as something that's in both our interest," she says, adding that “we have done heroic things before on the humanitarian front — it's not like we're not collectively capable."
Global development has been going backwards since even before the pandemic, and there's no end in sight.
Extreme poverty is now rising again, and fraught politics at every level is making it harder to fight inequality around the world.
But it's not an irreversible trend, UN Foundation President Elizabeth Cousens tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
“The challenge of our times," she says, is "to re-galvanize that spirit of 'we're in it together' — [that] we have more in common than we have that divides us.“
It's almost the first anniversary of Russia's war in Ukraine. On March 11, it'll be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record since ... 1880.
We are still dealing with the fallout from all three events. But not equally.
Since 2020, the richest 1% of people has accumulated nearly two-thirds of all the new wealth created in the world. Just 10% of the population owns three-quarters of global wealth — and account for nearly half of carbon emissions.
Almost three years after COVID, we're still grappling with the geopolitical convulsions that the pandemic unleashed or worsened. They're all wiping out decades of progress on fighting global inequality.
What's more, the world has become more unequal at a time when global cooperation is often an afterthought. So, what can we do about it?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens, who thinks it's the perfect time for institutions backed by the 1 percent to step up even more.
Foundations have traditionally resisted going big on fixing the world's problems because they're in it for the long run. But now the stakes are so high and the crises so urgent that Cousens sees a "window" of opportunity for philanthropy to play a bigger role in global development.
The are real problems, she says, that money can solve immediately.
The Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, are the UN's 2015 blueprint for making the world a better place.
But now this agenda is on life support. Thanks to the pandemic, the world is way off-track to meeting the 17 SDGs by the 2030 deadline.
In one fell swoop, COVID undid two decades of progress on education. The same goes for eradicating poverty, ending hunger, fighting climate change, or realizing global peace, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has a message for world leaders converging in New York for the annual UN General Assembly: We need to rescue the SDGs.
The mood surrounding the annual UN General Assembly kickoff this week has been grim. Russia is pounding Ukraine and climate-related disasters are devastating places as far-flung as Pakistan,Portugal, and Puerto Rico.
In 2022, with total war returned to Europe and the global pandemic having scrambled supply chains, the food crisis is where the conversation is at.
But it’s not an issue of scarcity. This year’s global food crisis was initially (mostly) due to Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports in southern Ukraine, which prevented millions of tons of grain from reaching countries that rely on Europe’s breadbasket to feed their populations. Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat, corn, and edible oils, accounting for more than 40% of sunflower oil supply globally before the war. (Dinner party fact: the yellow band on the Ukrainian flag represents the country’s vast golden fields of sunflowers.)
The scarcity issue has begun to stabilize since the UN and Turkey brokered a deal between Moscow and Kyiv in July, allowing exports to resume. But the problem is far from resolved.
Surging prices → hunger pains. Amid the war in Ukraine, global food prices rose in July by 13% year on year and could continue to rise another 8.5% over the next five years, according to the UN. There are several reasons for this.
The food crisis has been exacerbated by the surging price of fertilizer ingredients that are crucial to crop nutrition. Crucially, many fertilizer ingredients – like ammonia, nitrate, and potash – come from Russia and Belarus, both of which are unable (or unwilling) to meet global demand due to Western sanctions. Meanwhile, the situation has been exacerbated by Chinese curbs on some fertilizer ingredient exports.
Though the EU insists that its sanctions “have minimal impact on the agriculture sector,” Russian and Belarusian entities have been cut off from the SWIFT global payment network, and shipping companies face extremely high insurance premiums to transport Russian goods. Russia, for its part, says that Western sanctions make it difficult to export its stockpiles.
“While the information fog of war dictates caution, it’s pretty clear the invasion is the primary cause of food disruption. The Russian track record also indicates they are not above weaponizing food,” says Gerald Butts, vice chairman of Eurasia Group.
Connecting the dots. Fertilizer production is extremely energy-intensive, particularly for nitrogen fertilizer, which needs a lot of natural gas. Europe, for its part, is grappling with an energy crunch as it limits its reliance on Russian natural gas, which has driven up prices for European fertilizer producers that are then passed along to consumers.
What’s more, as Europe has become a net importer of fertilizer, many states have turned to alternative sources – like Morocco – for key fertilizer ingredients. However, upscaling takes time and has led to bidding wars for limited supplies that put emerging market economies at a disadvantage.
“In 2022, we have enough food that is not well distributed,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told GZERO Media in a recent interview. “But in 2023, if we don't normalize the fertilizer market we simply won’t have enough food worldwide,” he says, adding that “fertilizer is extremely important not only for the present situation but for next year.”
African agriculture reels. The impacts of the food crisis are being acutely felt across Africa, long vulnerable to climate change, drought, and food insecurity. Heavily dependent on imported fertilizers, many African farmers either can’t afford the ingredients or can’t find them on the market. The African Development Bank, for its part, says the continent is short of at least two million metric tons of fertilizer, which could exacerbate hunger crises in countries already on the brink of famine, like Somalia.
In some African states, including the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, fertilizer prices have increased by 50% since Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting some agriculture workers to slash fertilizer usage, further threatening food production. In other countries, farmers have sought fertilizer substitutes: Some Ugandan farmers are replacing nitrate with … maggots, whose digestive systems transform food waste into fertilizer. And while a few international fertilizer producers are donating fertilizer to African farmers, many say it’s “too little too late.”
When leaders huddle at the UN this week, the deepening hunger crisis – including how climate change is exacerbating food insecurity – will be high on the agenda.
But what can the UN actually do to mitigate the worsening food disaster?
“Wealthy economies have limited capacities to directly tackle the issue of price inflation in the short run,” says David Laborde, a senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute. However, they “could prioritize fertilizer production when dealing with natural gas rationing, make sure that global trade remains fluid and … avoid new waves of export restrictions,” Laborde says, pointing to concerns over India’s recent decision to limit some rice exports.
“It’s really a ‘money issue,’” Laborde adds, noting that “UN agencies need 30 more billion this year to tackle the hunger and malnutrition crisis.”
Overlapping factors make the current global food crisis extremely hard to address. But one thing is clear: maggots are not the only answer.
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The war in Ukraine has been dominating headlines since Russia’s unprovoked invasion on February 24. Of all the implications of the conflict, the most important is also one of the least well-covered: its impact on global food systems.
Three months in, the war has jolted agricultural markets, leading to soaring food prices and growing global hunger. The FAO’s Cereal Price Index was up 21% between January and April, while the Vegetable Oils Index was up 28% in the same period. Before the war started, there were nearly 1.2 billion people globally facing food insecurity, of which 780 million lived in extreme poverty and almost 39 million were at risk of famine. Fast forward to today, and the ranks of people facing food-related distress have swelled to 1.6 billion, 1.1 billion, and 49 million, respectively.
Number of people facing food-related distressGro Intelligence
This is a humanitarian disaster much larger than anything the world has experienced in modern times. And with no end in sight to the war in Ukraine, the crisis isn’t going away. In fact, it’s going to get worse.
According to a recent study conducted by Eurasia Group and DevryBV Sustainable Strategies, food insecurity will affect up to 1.9 billion people (nearly one-quarter of the world population) by November 2022. The report, titled Food Security and the Coming Storm,estimates that over the next five months the war will plunge more than 280 million people into food insecurity, 200 million into extreme poverty, and 7 million to the edge of famine.
Even before the war, record numbers of people around the world were facing food distress on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted global supply chains and led to high food and energy prices as well as rising poverty and hunger, and extreme weather events linked to climate change, which increasingly threaten agricultural yields in large swathes of the world’s cultivated lands. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that these converging crises are unleashing a “hurricane of hunger.”
Scenarios for the war and food distress
Looking ahead, how bad the food crisis gets will depend on what happens in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Eurasia Group, the political risk firm I lead, predicts that over the next three months, the war in Ukraine will devolve into a drawn-out, unstable stalemate with a 70% probability. This scenario entails continued low-level fighting in the south and east of Ukraine, with Russia capturing most of the Donbas and holding onto the land bridge linking it to Crimea, Western sanctions remaining in place, and no prospect of a negotiated settlement or a ceasefire.
We put the odds that the conflict escalates further at 25%, in which case Russia would resume its attacks on northern and western Ukraine as well as Kyiv, prompting a step-change intensification in Western sanctions. Finally, we assign a 5% probability to the prospect of a climbdown, with most of the fighting ending and negotiations eventually leading to at least some sanctions relief.
Based on these scenarios and their likely effects on food prices, the report estimates that over the next five months, the Russia-Ukraine war is very likely (95% odds) to push 142-283 million people globally into food insecurity, 103-201 million into extreme poverty, and 3.5-6.9 million to the edge of famine.
Scenarios for the war and food distressEurasia Group, Gro Intelligence
The worst humanitarian outcome comes from Eurasia Group’s basecase scenario rather than from its worst-case scenario, as a stalemate would prolong the uncertainty and disruption for longer than a definite escalation.
In the unlikely scenario of a ceasefire in Ukraine, the number of people facing food insecurity would fall by only about 123 million, while those in extreme poverty and facing famine would drop by 95 million and 2.7 million, respectively. This is evidence of just how much food distress is already baked in due to pandemic-related disruptions, climate change, and other factors unrelated to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Transmission channels
There are several ways in which the Russia-Ukraine war disrupts global food security.
First, through reduced food exports from Russia and Ukraine, which before the war jointly contributed 30% of global wheat exports, 32% of barley exports, 17% of corn exports, and nearly 80% of sunflower oil exports. Together, these two countries alone supply 12% of the world’s traded calories.
Share of global Grains and Oilseed ExportsGlobal Grains Council
Fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine has severely damaged Ukraine’s agricultural production capacity, and the Russian navy’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports prevents the export of most of the foodstuffs Ukraine is able to produce, anyway. David Beasley, the head of the UN World Food Program, described Russia’s blockade as an open “declaration of war” on global food security. Meanwhile, Western sanctions and Russian countersanctions inhibit food and fertilizer exports from Russia and Belarus, and hoarding and preemptive protectionist measures such as export restrictions by some food producers (notably, India is curtailing wheat and sugar exports, and Indonesia has banned palm oil shipments) further exacerbate the supply crunch and put upward pressure on prices.
Second, through reduced fertilizer exports from Russia and Belarus, two of the world’s largest fertilizer exporters. Fertilizer is a key precursor for half of the food consumed in the world, especially for wheat, rice, and corn—the latter of which is also a critical input for dairy and meat production. Global fertilizer prices have risen by more than 230% since the pandemic started—in part because of record-high natural gas prices (a key input for some fertilizers), rising global demand, and Chinese export restrictions, and in part because of Western sanctions on Russian and Belarusian exports.
Third, through higher energy prices, which raise food (and fertilizer) production and transportation costs that are then passed onto consumers in the form of higher food prices. Russia is a major oil and gas exporter, especially to Europe which is still highly dependent on Russian energy imports. As European governments move to ban Russian oil imports and consider cutting off Russian gas and imposing secondary sanctions, energy as an input in the food supply chain in Europe and elsewhere will become even scarcer and more expensive in the medium term. Reduced energy availability and higher prices will also ripple out to food producers in other regions.
And fourth, through higher transportation costs, on the back of global shipping conditions already strained by the pandemic and now further complicated by the Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports, a shortage of shipping crews, and safety issues in the Black Sea region due to Ukrainian and Russian underwater mines. While Western sanctions technically exempt food trade, most logistics and shipping companies either are charging exorbitant rates to carry Russian food products (passing through high freight insurance premiums) or are “self-sanctioning” to avoid Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian cargoes altogether.
Implications
In Eurasia Group’s basecase of an unstable stalemate, continued fighting will degrade Ukrainian infrastructure and prevent planting and harvesting in southern and eastern Ukraine, Russia will keep blockading Black Sea shipping routes, Western sanctions will continue to block Russian and Belarusian fertilizer exports (lowering agricultural yields), energy prices will remain elevated, and food prices will rise further as “markets suffer the cascading effects of prolonged uncertainty, logistical and supply constraints.”
Global grain and soybean index pricesInternational Grains Council
The resulting crisis will leave no country unscathed. Not surprisingly, it is the poorest and most vulnerable countries that will be hardest hit—especially those that are net food importers, have large populations of urban poor, and are already saddled with high debt burdens. That includes much of the Middle East and North Africa, which in recent years received about half of Ukraine’s total wheat exports, as well as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Central America, and the Dominican Republic.
Beyond the humanitarian fallout of the global food crunch and higher prices brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the political ramifications are also dire, with an elevated risk of social unrest, mass migration, and general instability. Low- and middle-income countries will face the most disruption. We’re already seeing this unfold in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Peru, where soaring food inflation has sparked violent protests and toppled governments.
The outsized impact of the global food crisis on the most vulnerable countries is one reason why I’ve been saying and writing that the war in Ukraine merits more attention than the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan—not because Ukrainian lives are worth more than Syrian, Yemeni, and Afghan lives, but because the collateral damage for the world’s poorest is orders of magnitude greater.
It also helps explain why there’s a growing divide between the West and developing countries on how to respond to Russia’s aggression. While Russia is morally responsible for the global food crisis—having invaded Ukraine without provocation—many in the developing world see Western sanctions as being equally (or more) to blame for their hunger pains. As Ertharin Cousin, former head of the UN World Food Programme, told me in an interview for GZERO World, this puts the international community in a bit of a bind: either sanction Russia at the expense of increased hunger in poor countries, or let Russia profit from selling food to the world even as it continues to attack Ukraine.
While the Eurasia Group report lays out a number of policies that could alleviate the crisis and minimize its human toll, most would require a degree of international cooperation that is hard to imagine in our G-Zero world. However devastating it is for its victims, a problem like hunger that affects mostly disenfranchised people in developing countries is not existential enough for the most powerful global actors to pay attention—or to put aside their differences to solve it. That’s why this is not a "goldilocks crisis" of the kind I describe in my latest book, The Power of Crisis.
Of course, the easiest way to end the global food crisis would be for Russia to stop its war of aggression against Ukraine. But that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. While there have been some negotiations about creating a humanitarian corridor allowing safe passage of ships carrying food through the Black Sea, Russia’s demand for sanctions relief in return makes a breakthrough unlikely.
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The world is on the brink of a crisis that could push more than a billion people towards starvation. A crisis that could upend governments, roil global markets, and rattle households around the world.
The pandemic has scrambled food supply chains, raising costs for everyone. Droughts and floods tied to climate change have hampered harvests around the world. And Russia’s war with Ukraine has made it all worse.
Today, the world faces the sharpest “hunger pains” since the end of World War 2.
GZERO Media’s special coverage of the ongoing food crisis takes you deeper into the story.
For some, the crisis will mean higher prices, empty shelves, or shuttered businesses. But for hundreds of millions of others, it will be a matter of life and death.
How can the world cope? What are governments doing to make things better, or worse? And how will it all affect YOU?
Number of people facing food-related distressGro Intelligence
Scenarios for the war and food distressEurasia Group, Gro Intelligence
Share of global Grains and Oilseed ExportsGlobal Grains Council
Global grain and soybean index pricesInternational Grains Council