There are about 7.9 billion people on earth today. We know that the world produces enough food to feed all 7.9 billion people, yet one in nine people still go hungry every day. That’s a tragedy. “In a world of plenty, we have no excuse for billions of people to lack access to a healthy diet. This is unacceptable,” said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.
The UN chief said he is convening a global Food Systems Summit in September during the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly “to urgently make a change.” He said a pre-summit meeting in Rome at the end of this month will work out “how we must address hunger, the climate emergency, incredible inequality and conflict, by transforming our food systems.”
The United Nations said the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically worsened global hunger in 2020. The sharpest rise in hunger came in Africa, where 282 million people are starving. But the global hunger problem is not concentrated in Africa. In Asia, 418 million people are undernourished, and 60 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from starvation.
To save millions of people from starving, the UN last week urged rich countries to donate billions of dollars for food. Maximo Torero, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s chief economist, said $14 billion a year would save 100 million people from hunger. And to achieve the goal of zero hunger by 2030 “we are talking about $40 billion.”
Unfortunately, the richest people on Earth who can afford to help eliminate hunger have different priorities. The multibillionaires in the richest country in the world—Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and others—are too obsessed with making space more accessible when they could use their resources to help solve global hunger. For example, Jeff Bezos spent $5.5 billion to experience four minutes of weightlessness in outer space. That amount could have saved 39.5 million people from starving. Disgusted critics say these rich people are “deaf to issues on the ground.”
David Beasley, the head of the World Food Program, recently challenged the billionaires competing to fly in space to contribute the $6 billion needed to save 41 million people in 43 countries who are at risk of starving this year. That looks like a huge request, but for these billionaires it’s an amount that’s as good as pocket change. Bezos is worth approximately $205 billion, Musk is worth $160 billion, and Branson, $5 billion. Together, that’s $370 billion, which could prevent people from starving to death 60 times over, according to Beasley’s estimation.
The annual incomes of the world’s 100 richest people could end global poverty four times over, according to a report from Oxfam. Before the pandemic, Oxfam reported that 2,153 billionaires cornered more wealth than the poorest 4.6 billion people worldwide. This level of inequality both exacerbates the conditions of poverty and distorts economies by investing inordinate power in the hands of a small group of people, according to the United Nations.
The challenge of eliminating global hunger is formidable. FAO said “we have the tools and the knowledge to eliminate hunger by 2030.” But first, there’s a need to fix global inequality. “The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these,” Oxfam said.
May we suggest that the UN chief invite the world’s 100 richest people to attend the global Food Systems Summit in September? The UN can use its voice to tell these multibillionaires that the world needs their help—now…that humanity is facing the greatest crisis any of us have seen in our lifetimes. They need to open their checkbooks now. Tomorrow may be too late.