Halcyon Identifies

 

The global food price index got back to an all-time high – essentials like maize and sugar up over 70% in six months - with severe consequences for hundreds of millions of poor people worldwide.

 

As global population increases and people become wealthier, agricultural production will need to likewise increase, but food systems may become more stressed because of competition for water.

 

Vaccines have saved the lives of millions worldwide, yet still, in 2009, in low-income countries, two out of five deaths in children under five were due to pneumonia or diarrhoea.

 

Global poverty reduction needs broad support across civil society as much as grand goal-setting, via an international social norm that sees the persistence of extreme poverty in as morally unacceptable.

 

Biofortification may help make staple foods - which provide millions of poor people with calories but which do not always contain enough of the micronutrients required for good health - more nutritious.

 

The number of undernourished people globally is approaching 1bn, (vs. 832m in 1995, on UN estimates) and is still rising.

  

An estimated 776m adults (16% of all adults globally) are illiterate, which affects poverty, health, development etc.

 

More than 1 billion people live in slums around the world, a figure that the UN believes will double in the next 25 years.

 

Up to 1bn worldwide are on the brink of starvation, but a "wonder snack" is saving some children's lives

 

Climate change may lower grain yields, raise crop prices and lead to a 20% rise in child malnutrition, a new study finds.