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Earth’s Sustainable Development Goals
On September 24-25, 2019 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit will be held as High-Level Political Forum under the United Nations 74th Session of the General Assembly with the aim of speeding-up the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Philippines is signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) drafted in September 2015 as the United Nation’s global development agenda, encompassing 17 areas of action with the vision of “transforming our world and to improve people’s lives and prosperity on a healthy planet through partnerships and peace.”
Four years after the drafting and just eleven years away from its term end, it’s imperative for the UN to report and assess the progress of participating nations. In review, the goals include:
- No Poverty,
- Zero Hunger,
- Good Health and Well-Being,
- Quality Education,
- Gender Equality,
- Clean Water and Sanitation,
- Affordable and Clean Energy,
- Decent Work and Economic Growth,
- Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure,
- Reduced Inequalities,
- Responsible Consumption and Production,
- Climate Action,
- Life Below Water,
- Life on Land,
- Peace, Justice And Strong Institutions, and
- Partnerships For The Goals
How Many Filipinos Go Hungry
Around the world, a staggering number of 10,000 children die of hunger everyday. Sustainable Development Goal number 2: Zero Hunger envisions to end all forms of hunger-especially among children- by giving people access to sufficient and nutritious food all year round (UNDP Philippines).
In the Philippines, the poverty incidence in the 1st semester of 2018 registered at 21 percent among persons and at 16.1 percent among families, representing around twenty one million eight hundred forty thousand (21,840,000) people living below the poverty line. A family of 5 needs an income of 7,337 pesos on a monthly average to meet basic food needs. The poverty threshold: no less than 10,481 pesos needed by the family to meet both food and non-food needs (Philippine Statistics Authority).
Around thirteen million eight hundred thousand (13,800,000) persons, mostly children and women, were considered undernourished from 2014 to 2016 (Rise Against Hunger Philippines). Two million three hundred thousand families (2,300,000) or 9.9% of the population suffer from hunger during the 1st quarter of 2018, according to the Social Weather Station data on Self-Rated Hunger.
Poverty spells out how many go hungry and how much hunger is experienced by individuals and families. Downward trends in poverty incidence and self-rated hunger are cited and that the country’s hunger incidence is at its lowest point within the last 15 years (2003-2018). Still, millions of people going hungry put everyone in a place of reckoning. Marked hunger incidence is shown mostly in urbanized metropolitan Manila specifically among informal settlers and in the island of Mindanao where a formidable number of internally displaced people and communities are in a state of perennial suffering.
To be site-specific, the ten poorest provinces in the country which mostly rely on agriculture for food production and livelihood include Lanao del Sur (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), Eastern Samar (Eastern Visayas), Apayao (Cordillera Administrative Region), Maguindanao (BARMM), Zamboanga del Norte (Zamboanga region), Sarangani (South Cotabato-Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat-SARangani-GENeral Santos City), North Cotabato, Negros Occidental, Northern Samar and Western Samar.
Why Filipinos Suffer From Hunger
Natural Gifts and Default Can Feed Entire Population
The Philippines sits on one of the most naturally endowed parts of the planet. It is one of the 17 mega diverse countries containing 2/3 of earth’s biodiversity and 70% of the planet’s plants and animal species because of its geographical isolation, diverse habitats and high level of endemism. Out of 30 million hectares of land, almost half is alienable and disposable and maybe privately owned; the other half is classified as public forest land (Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics Philippines 1993, National Academic Press).
Thus, the regular diet of Filipinos may include those sourced from the land’s rich flora like rice, corn, root crops, vegetable crops, fruit and nut crops, beverage crops coconut, coffee and cacao. Fauna items are abundant such as pigs, chicken, water buffalos (carabaos), deer, ducks, geese. Fish with over 21 thousand species and other seafood such as dilis, anchovies, sardines, dalagang bukid, shrimps, and crabs abound as well.
Unfortunately and forebodingly, the richness of the country’s natural resources is not enjoyed by everyone as should be the absolute case and its natural state has and is suffering from unstoppable degradation and loss.
Hunger Caused By Man-Made Settings and Programming
Humps in and Impediments to Public Welfare Policy making
In A Theoretical Review on Philippine Policy Making: The Weak State-Elitist Framework and the Pluralist Perspective ( Phil Quarterly of Culture & Society, Vol 39 No 1, March 2011, University of San Carlos), the weak state is described with incapacity of producing beneficial public policies due to enduring control of powerful homogenous political elites over the government’s policy-making mechanism. It covers the characteristic of a foreign-dominated state’s vulnerability of making policy decisions because of external influences or interferences, thus beneficial public policy making is compromised. How far this framework applies to the Philippines goes into further observation and analysis through decades of national experience.
Unresolved Issues in Program Implementation
On land, in spite of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) enacted as early as 1988 and its extension under the present administration, the aim to distribute all agricultural lands to landless farmers and farm workers has not been realized. Farmers are still voicing out hunger for not being able to find jobs and participate in the tilling of the soil. Poverty incidence remains and is particularly high among landless agricultural workers and farmers cultivating small plots of lands in areas where land ownership is concentrated to the affluent and politically influential minority (Food Security in the Philippines, Focus on the Global South-Philippines 2014).
Despite policies protecting forest use, massive and fast-occurring forest denudation is at its peak. Out of the country’s 15 million hectares of forest, only 6 million hectares remain with forest cover. The state of forest cover reached its critical stage from 10.5 million in 1968 to 6.1 million in 1991 and the downspiral is still to be minimized and prevented. Illegal logging still persists in spite of enacted policies prohibiting the practice. Common observations cite that implementation and enforcement of laws protecting the forests and the public welfare are sacrificed since decisions for action are still in the hands and favor of the powerful social, economic and political elite.
Over seas, the Philippine win in the South China Sea Arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2014 has invalidated China’s claim over the Spratlys and Paracel islands and Scarborough Shoal and gave their exclusive territorial exploration and use to the Philippines. However, reports on recent events of Filipino fishermen being treated with hostility and alarm by foreign (Chinese) vessels prevent the local fisherfolks from full exploration and use of these areas as part of the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
The armed struggle for independence in Mindanao since 1969 was finally appeased with the passage of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (RA 11054) on July 26, 2018 which created the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). Yet In March 2019, an estimated 50,000 people in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Bukidnon were displaced due to armed clashes between the government and rebels, leaving the displaced people in evacuation centers and relying on aid for their subsistence.
At any given time, population growth, unemployment and inflation will effect a shock on hunger incidence (Nutrition Council of the Philippines). Factors such as the unregulated urban expansion due to the absence or lack of a relevant land use program, unchecked increase in population among the poor and limitations to the social and economic access among the needy intermingle in creating a complex problem cycle that needs a comprehensive and rational set of solutions.
Hunger Caused By A Distressed Nature: Natural Disasters?
Worldwide, hunger is mostly caused by disasters as they affect food security. In counties prone to natural hazards live the world’s 80 percent of food insecure people (World Food Programme).
Since 1990, the Philippines experienced 565 natural events which claimed 70 thousand lives and caused damage worth 23 billion dollars, affecting 70% of the population. As food security still lies in agricultural production in the rural areas, damage to agriculture and infrastructure lead to minimal or at times no access to food to be produced or purchased, as farms and fishing areas are depleted and commodity prices upsurge, making hunger and malnutrition highly probable among affected population.
Climate change is causing longer episodes of drought (El Niño) which is causing production losses in the agricultural sector. Just in April 2019, the amount of losses due to the drought reached 7.97 billion pesos, affecting 247,618 farmers and fisherfolk (Department of Agriculture).
Global warming and climate change are natural hazards that have turned into disasters by human activities. Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning power plants for electricity production, carbon dioxide emissions from burning gasoline for transportation, methane emissions from animals (livestock raising), from agricultural rice paddies that undergo oxygen-starved decomposition, and from the crystal structure of ice in the Arctic seabed (Planetsave 2009) all cause the atmosphere to heat up to abnormally high temperatures that would inevitably bring harm and catastrophe to all living things on earth.
Hungry For More Action
The length of time the CARP and its extension has taken and is taking to redistribute land has already effected significant drawbacks in the agricultural sector, affecting all aspects of food security. The land reform experiences at the international level has seen that In order to be successful, it is essential to implement reform in the shortest time possible. There is a theoretical proposition that reducing rural poverty through access to jobs is more plausible than land ownership (A Theoretical Review on Philippine Policy Making: The Weak State-Elitist Framework and the Pluralist Perspective, 2011).
The limited exploration and use of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the West Philippine Sea must be checked and geared towards full exploration rights to help increase fisherfolk’s capacity to produce food for themselves and food to sell to the public.
The programmes lined up for the new region of BARMM in hunger alleviation and poverty reduction need to be supported by government as much as by the people themselves; advocacy for peace is a must since armed conflict still sporadically persists.
Passage of the Zero Hunger Bill (House Bill 1532) or the Right to Adequate Food Framework Act (filed and refiled by Representative Jericho Nograles of the Pwersa ng Bayang Atleta party-list) envisions to eradicate hunger and address the malnutrition problem through public nutrition supplement and regular school feeding programs. The National Food Coalition (a gathering of over 50 organizations and federations of peasants, fisherfolks, informal settlers, women, elderly and indigenous peoples and youth) expresses support to and advocates the immediate passage of the bill.
In April 2019, President Rodrigo Duterte approved the creation of a Zero Hunger Interagency Task Force and the finalization of the Executive Order necessary for its implementation.
Aiming at Zero Hunger in 2030 for the Philippines needs more nourishment; its progress affected and effected by the fluid and erratic waves in the social, political and economic arenas.
The steps forward to be undertaken by government and civil society must ideally be within the framework of building local and national capacities through full access to land and sea livelihood zones and their protection from all forms of hazards for general economic growth.