Asia s looming hunger catastrophe Global Eyes

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When families get less, women and girls  within families get significantly less.  As early as 2014, we already saw a big  U-turn in undernourishment levels globally.  In South Asia, we've had the hottest April ever  already and we God knows what will happen in May.  That is the challenge. How  do we feed this many people   and while taking care of the planet? This is Global Eyes,   where we take a new look at security  policy and break it down for you so   you understand how it affects your life. And today we are asking the question.  

A hunger catastrophe. How close are  we to one or are we already in one?  I am Isha Bhatia Sanan. I'm  senir editor here at DW.  I'm William Glucroft, a security reporter at DW. And when you go to supermarkets, you realize that   they are getting bigger and bigger no matter  what, weather it is it's summer or winter,   no matter where you are, you'll get your fresh  fruits and vegetables all year round. But in   contrast to that, 45% of people in Asia, they do  not get a single nutritious meal. That's about  

2 billion people. India, that is hosting the G20  this year has made food security an agenda in G20.  And there are plenty of good reasons for that.  The war in Ukraine has thrown food supply into   chaos. Of course, the rising cost of living  in all kinds of sectors. We're still suffering  

from supply chain issues from the pandemic.  There are so many reasons. And of course,   lingering in the background is climate change.  All of this has a massive impact on the food   we eat, how we get it and how we grow it. So to understand that, we'll have our first   guest will be Jayati Ghosh. She is chairperson of  the Center for Economic Studies and Planning at   the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. And later in the show from Singapore,  

we're going to have Jose Montesclaros. He's a  research fellow at the Center for Non-traditional   Security Studies. Global Eyesby DW.  So Jayathi, thank you so much for joining us all  the way from the US state of Massachusetts at   UMass Amherst. You know, we're going from  winter to summer now in many parts of the world,   especially parts of the world that we're  talking about, Southern Asia. And, you know,  

the last few summers we've seen massive floods,  we've seen droughts, we've seen, you know,   soaring temperatures. All of this, scientists  say, is a result or at least partially a result   of climate change. I guess my first question to  you is, you know, how close are we or what's what   needs to happen or what could happen before  we're just, you know, a few steps away from   a real massive catastrophe that can lead to  massive hunger, massive starvation for for   potentially billions of people, a part of the  world where where so much of humanity lives.  Very, very close. In fact, I would say it's not  even a few steps away. The trouble is that somehow   people are just not taking seriously this very,  very major crisis that is already engulfing us.  

It's not just the impact on agricultural supply,  which of course, you've mentioned, but the fact   that extreme heat conditions are absolutely  killing people, making it harder to work,   making it harder for them to earn livelihoods  from where they can buy money. And so, yes,   climate change has already been very severe in  South Asia. We've had the hottest April ever   already. And we God knows what will happen  in May. And all of this happens yet people   are not taking adequate precautions, nor are  we doing the right adaptation measures either   for cultivation or for basic production or  for all of the work manual work That remains   still a very major part of people's existence. Can you tell us a bit more because of course,   climate change is a massive topic on its own.  It has impacts in so many different parts of   our life and our societies, but specifically with  food security and food production, How is climate   change in India impacting the ability to grow  and deliver and provide food for enough people   for almost, you know, for 1.4 billion people? Every year we are seeing this impact, for example,  

with the wheat harvest. And when it gets very,  very hot in March, it affects the standing crop   and it affects the ability to harvest before the  crop is fully ripe. So this happened last year.   It's happening right now as we speak once again.  So last year we got about 12% less wheat output   than anticipated. This year we don't know what  will happen. We are finding that the changes in   rainfall patterns, especially during the monsoon,  the greater interspel variation as it's called,   and the fact that it doesn't come regularly, it  comes in big spurts of huge amounts of rain and   then no rain for several days. That in turn  is impacting the sowing for the next season.   The Kharif season in which rice and a bunch of  other major grains and other crops are produced.  

So we're already seeing this impact on  agricultural production. Then of course,   there are the new pests that are coming about  because of climate change in northern Africa,   in the Arab region. These pests then travel and  they have already travelled not grasshoppers   were never a big issue in terms of the impact  on crops. A whole range of other pests are   emerging which are impacting harvests. Jayati 2023 is being celebrated as the   Year of Millets. Now, the Indian Prime Minister,  Narendra Modi has been pushing for it for quite   some time. And the idea behind it is that they  use less water, they can feed more people and  

so millets should be used and they are having  a comeback now. But I would like to understand,   is that really sustainable and is  it as easy done as it is being said?  Well, it's really a question of changing the  approach of people to consumption, because   many people now see millets as an inferior grain.  Wheat and rice were seen as the preferred grains,   the grains of better off people. And so even  though this was traditionally consumed, and  

especially the rural poor and the farmers consumed  it in large parts of central and southern India,   it was not seen as a desirable food for many  decades. So shifting that orientation is going   to take some time. But also these are relatively  lower productivity. Once again, because we didn't   put emphasis on this, they didn't have the kind  of high yielding variety type of technological   changes that we have seen in some of the other  crops. And they are not they are more resistant   by their own nature to different kinds of climate  and particularly more drought resistant and rely   on less rainfall. But they are not as shall  we say, immune to climate change as everyone   likes to think. So it will be a longer process and  it's not something that will solve this problem. 

You've mentioned a couple of times that the right  decisions haven't been made, that in terms of   climate response, there's not the right tools  in place, the right methods in place to really   try to keep up with how quickly the climate is  changing, to maintain food security, to maintain   food production. So what are the policies,  especially of the Modi government? I mean,   when something like 70% of of Indians can't get  a nutritious meal, according to some statistics,   isn't that a is that a political problem? You  would think that there would be, you know,   a massive unrest or dissatisfaction with  the policies and the politics. So what's   the sort of the policy response in that regard? Yes. You know, this is the FAO statistic. 72%   of Indians cannot afford the FAO's basic  nutritious diet, which is tailored to the   South Asian conditions. And that's appalling.  Right. And that if you compare that with the  

claims on income poverty, it really shows you  that there is some basic problem with the way   in which we are using our metrics or even creating  metrics for GDP and poverty and things like that.   The issue, however, is not just about supply.  The big issue in India today, the reason why   so many people are hungry is really because of  affordability and because incomes have come down.   So one of the big things that is not adequately  realized across the world is that we suffered   very badly during the pandemic. The population as  a whole, because of pandemic, because of lockdown,   because of inadequate social protection, that the  recovery thereafter has been incredibly k-shaped.   So the upper part of the K has gone off the map  in terms of extreme prosperity of very few people,   10% of the population at most, and the rest  of the population has really been much more   vulnerable and worse off. Real wages  are lower than they were pre-pandemic.  

Casual workers are earning less  and having less days of employment.   Self-employed incomes have come down, so people  in money wages are lower. In real wages, they're   significantly lower. They really can't afford food  anymore. There are so many micro surveys that have   found that people are eating less, that children  are getting a less varied diet, that they're not   being given milk or eggs or things that families  could afford otherwise, that families are moving   from three meals to two, in some cases from 2  to 1 and a half or even one that school meals,   which were one of the major sources for child  nutrition, those were stopped during the pandemic   and, you know, haven't been sufficiently revived  thereafter. So there are many other reasons. It's,   I would say, the real nutrition problem in India  today. It's not just the overall supply issue,   which is a concern, but, you know, it could still  be managed. It is an issue of distribution and  

livelihoods not being sufficient to pay for  food. And that is something which requires   a much broader type of intervention. It requires  significant expansion of the employment guarantee   program, the rural employment guarantee, which  would provide incomes, and it requires efforts   to make sure farmers are viable. Farmers have  been protesting, as you know, for years and   have been demanding many things. The only thing  they succeeded in doing was to prevent some very   bad laws from being passed. But they haven't  got the progressive changes that they wanted.  You've just talked about children.  When it comes to statistics,  

we've seen that food security impacts women  much more than it impacts men. Why is that so?  This is a very significant issue in large parts  of the world, but especially in South Asia,   where gender relations, as you know, are very  unequal. And what has been now widely documented   for decades is that when families get less, women  and girls within families get significantly less.   And it's not just because, you know, the  patriarchs say that you have to eat less,   it's because there's self-denial there. Women tend  to deny themselves nutrition and they tend to give   less to girl children. And this has been a survey  after survey finds this. So there is of course,   there are many aspects of this. It's also  the fact that poverty is much greater in  

women headed households. So even when women  are making decisions for the entire family,   they are at lower levels of income. Women,  as you know, in in India, in particular,   in India and Pakistan, we have very, very low  rates of employment for women. That is paid work,   even though they're all doing huge amounts  of unpaid work within homes and communities,   and the general lack of empowerment of women and  the low status of women, a lack of political voice   and the lack of social voice within their families  and communities has meant that they are much worse   affected by the inadequate livelihoods  and the inadequate access to food grain   within and basic food. You know, I'm interested.   You know, so far we've talked a lot about and for  very good reason, the bottom end of the scale,   people who are too poor or too malnourished to get  the food that they need. I want to talk also about  

the other side of the scale, the flip side of this  coin. You know, as incomes do rise, at least for a   certain segment of the population, as people have  more expendable income to buy things. And this   applies much more not only to food, it applies  to leisure, to housing, to cars, etcetera, but   specifically with food, you do see food and eating  habits changing and more demands on meat, on   dairy, on fish. I'm wondering, you know, from your  perspective, from the Indian perspective as well,  

how does that look? Do you see a change in demands  of food production and on the food supply system   as people some people, at least in society, do  have more money to spend on food and what might be   considered nicer food or more luxurious food that  before they might not have been able to afford.  Well, yes, there is definitely an  increase, especially as I said,   in the top 10% of a much more varied and as you  put it, luxurious diet, more meat, more fish,   more eggs, more dairy products and so on. But  it's not very large relative to what could   have been if you actually had greater wealth and  expansion of the what is called the middle class   in a significant way. Instead, what you really  do see is a big increase in processed foods.   And that's quite interesting because it has very  bad health implications. So instead of, you know,   home produced wheat products, people buy biscuits.  And that's not just the rich day laborers,  

casual workers find it easier to just, you  know, have biscuits and give kids processed   foods quickly before they head off to school  because there's no time, because they also have   to travel long distances to get to work or have to  work long hours and so on. So there's a very big   increase in processed foods and that has already  had very large health implications as India is   one of the countries with the largest, most  rapid increase in diabetes and cholesterol.   Because we are getting into diets that, you  know, our bodies are not really prepared for.   And and there's a range of other nutrition related  malnutrition from the wrong side, as you put it,   related diseases that are emerging. So it is  really the much greater significance of processed   foods among a wide swathe of the population,  not just the rich. That has been a major change. 

Right. And I'd like to come back to millets over  there because you mentioned that they are more   nutritious. And then there was this one phase  where they were frowned upon and people thought   that this is the food that only poor eat. And  now all of a sudden it has becom hthis Superfood,   and at least the elite really wants to have it.  nd from there it comes down to the middle class  

who think, okay, this is the new in thing.  So what really happened? I would really like   to understand that. How was it that Millets went  away from India and why are they really making a   comeback now? Is it just one of those phases where  you have those, you know, some new trend comes in,   stays for a few months and it's going to go away,  or is that really going to stay? Do you see this   is going to have an impact both on nutrition  and on climate change in any positive manner?  Well, I really hope it does. I think it's  important, essential, really, to have much greater  

consumption of millets. I mean, our traditional  food basket contained a lot of ragi, Jowar, bajra,   etcetera. You know, the millets that were  more suited to large parts of the semi-arid   regions as well. And there was very significant  consumption of those. Now the thing about those  

is that they are as grains, they are lower  productivity and as I said, there hasn't   really been much technological progress in  terms of increasing yields on those crops,   but they are also heavier. They are they tend to  fill you up more, which is a good thing. Okay.   They also contain more fiber. All that is fine,  but therefore they're not seen as more easy to   digest or more, you know, just more fun to eat  in many ways that so there's the demand side,   but there is also the production side that  while they are more resistant to major changes   in climate and weather and so on, they are lower  productivity right now. So farmers don't feel very  

impelled to get into those. Also, they have been  not beneficiaries of procurement prices before,   only in some states now they are introducing  procurement prices for farmers to protect the   bottom line in terms of the costs and minimum  viable returns on cultivating these so farmers   are also less interested. It's true that there is  a very small segment of the population that is now   seeing it as a luxury good. You will find them in  five star hotels. You'll find them advertised by   film stars. I have been for several decades now  actually asking for significant public awareness   about millets. And I've been saying, you know, get  film stars, get sports stars, get other people to   talk about the advantages of millets because  they really were seen as inferior grains. I  

remember in Andhra Pradesh when we suggested that  this should be introduced in the school meals,   the mothers of poor children protested,  saying, You want to give our children bad food.   So it's really there's a lot of work to  be done there. But I would say that it's   an essential move. We really have to  move to millets for multiple reasons,  

for supply reasons, but also for health reasons. Well, film stars are starting to promote millets.   I guess you're maybe your dreams come  true or it's coming true, I suppose.  Are you're saying that there has not been  much technological. Proagress because   the markets were not making enough  profit out of them, is that right?  Well, in India the in agricultural technology  have really been through public labs   that started and the public labs also tended  to ignore these millets. They also tended   to ignore a lot of pests until it was too  late and so on. The private companies have  

been moving in only when it's already  been seen to be viable and profitable.   And that is absolutely the case also with  millets globally and within South Asia.  Before we let you go, I'd like to ask one  last thing that we haven't touched upon at   all food wastage. Now a lot of food  that is produced in India that gets  

wasted in storage and transportation-  Is anything being done in that sector?  Once again, this is one of those things that  governments have known about, have talked about,   have been saying for I remember, at least 25  years governments come up with statements saying,   you know, we need more warehousing, we need more  cold storage. We're going to do the following   things. Very little seems to happen. And I cannot  understand why. It's clear it's a no brainer,   right, that you need much more decentralized  storage facilities and cold storage facilities,   not only to make sure that food is not wasted, but  to make sure that farmers can get decent returns   so that they can store for the off season. And  somehow we are not getting adequate development of   these things, even though, you know, government  after government has been talking about this   and clearly this needs there are some  states that have made much more active   efforts in this regard, some state governments,  but there isn't a national policy. And that  

is something that is absolutely essential. Jayati Ghosh, we know that you have to get   going so we want to thank you very much for your  time. We want to turn over to Jose Montesclaros,   who's been on the line listening in from  Massachusetts all the way around the world to   Singapore. Jose can give us maybe a step back and  give us more of a regional look at things. For as   big as India is, of course, it's just one country  in southern Asia. Jose, I want to first ask,   you know, a question I just asked a little bit  earlier about increasing diets, wealthier diets,   as more people move into the middle class in  many countries in the Asian region, how that   might be impacting demand for meat, for fish, for  for dairy, the and the climate impact on that. 

Okay. Thanks for that excellent question.  Indeed, it's I think it's a paradox indeed.   Like what's good for you is hardly  what you would like to have more of.   And this applies to many things.  It applies to food as well.   I agree with Jayati when she mentioned about  the urban disease of a poor consumer habits.   As societies urbanize. I see that. I see that. And  I also see that you mentioned this trend towards,   let's say, healthier eating. But whether they can  go from, let's say, the current markets for these  

healthier products, which are higher priced or as  you say, maybe most likely the more affluent ones,   how they can go from posh to mass will be  the biggest challenge for most of these   new green industries like sustainable proteins,  alternative proteins and more of these salads.   So that's just to quickly answer your your  question on the evolution of of habits.   And. Yes. And the sad thing about  food is as people's incomes increase,  

they really spend more a bigger share of  it on other products. You know, as many.  As many as 45% of people are said to not be able  to get nutritious, regularly get nutritious food.   So how do we feed billions of people and more  and more people as the world population goes up,   but and especially in Asia, how do we feed  billions of people without wrecking the planet?  Okay. I think that this requires a second green  revolution. The first Green Revolution happened   in the 1960sto 1980s, where there was an  increase in use of modern seed varieties,   more inputs like fertilizers, pesticides, chemical  pesticides. And. Right now. The problem is that   because of climate change, the productivity  of most of these products has been going down.   I mean, the growth rate for Rice, if you compare  1960 to 1990, to more recently, 1990 to 2020,   you can see that the annual growth rate  has slowed down. And population growth is  

not slowing down as fast. Given that you have a  mix of higher income and lower income countries.   So that is the challenge. How do we feed this  many people? And while taking care of the planet,   as he added. And I think on this end, what does a  second green revolution mean or what might it mean  

in the current context? And I think that this has  a lot to do with digitalization. Digitalizing the   way farming is done. This has several benefits.  When you have digitalization, you have better   traceability, meaning you can know where food  came from, what processes were used in these.   By having more traceability across the food supply  chain from inputs to the farm to the consumers,   you can better inform the consumers and consumers  themselves can make more informed choices   on where to purchase their toothpaste from,   where to purchase their their rice  from. Are the standards ethical?  

And I think that this is an interesting trend to  watch, especially in South and Southeast Asia.   Just recently I was interviewing. Jose accordJoseing to that trend,   you put the onus on the consumer because the  consumer has to track everything where things   are coming from. But we're talking about where  the production really starts. You mentioned   climate change. You mentioned rice. So talking  specifically about rice, now most ASEAN countries,   rice is staple. They produce a lot of rice, and  that is also sent out to other countries. That's   the major export. And we know that rice needs a  lot of water. We know that when rice is produced,  

then there's a lot of methane that is released,  which is a greenhouse gas so that leads to climate   change. So is there anything that the ASEAN  member states are doing to address this problem?  Well, I would talk more at the well,  at the ASEAN level. Of course, they've   they've expressed the need for digitalization,  digitalization. In fact, there is an Southeast  

Asian Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or  ASEAN, ASEAN India Working Group in agriculture,   and also the ASEAN India ministerial meetings  in agriculture, where they do look at these   important issues of sustainability, and they have  seen digitalization as a means to address it.   If I may tell the next the other half of the  digitalization story to address your point.  Yes, please. Hello. Thanks so. I was interviewing   this company in actually an India based company  and an Indonesia based company, and both of them   were providing these technologies to the farmers  themselves. They were getting the big companies   that sell the like the Nestlé of this world  and getting these companies to pay for to   allow the consumer, the farmers to access these  technologies. And they would also have field  

agents to help the farmers track their performance  and to provide them feedback on how to improve   their practices. Because actually, even from a  farmers perspective, overusing fertilizers is   not a good thing. I mean, it's an additional cost  that not all farmers can afford. So I think it's   it's also it would also be in farmers interest.  But the onus is based on the many interviews I've   done. It seems that the onus really is on the  demand side. If people were quite selective.  If people were more selective and if  governments gave a stronger push saying that   the kind of food or production methods that we  will accept moving forward will only be those   that meet the sustainable sustainability standards  as what the EU is doing. I think such an approach,  

if applied to more countries in Asia or to  regional bodies in Asia, it might make an impact.  I understand your point. But coming back to the  specific example of Rice, I'm really interested   in understanding that if producing rice is so  difficult or difficult in the sense that it is   problematic for the climate, then you can't really  ask people to stop eating rice altogether. It is   a staple there and you can't ask farmers that.  Okay, here's a QR code. If you scan it, you'll   realize that this product has this many gallons  of water and the other product you were not using   as much water. So maybe start producing this. It  can't be an individual choice. That is something  

that the policymakers have to decide. That is  something that the governments have to decide. So   just saying that eating this is bad for climate  change is for the consumers. That is what I meant   in the beginning. That the onus is mostly on  the consumers. You know, if I buy something,   I read it, there's a QR code, I scan it and I'm  like, Oh, okay. So if I eat this salmon, this is  

the carbon footprint and maybe I should not do  it and I should eat something that has a lesser   carbon footprint that's for the consumer. But what  are the policymakers really doing? Because these   things you can't just expect that farmers will  go on producing, but consumers will not consume.   The balance doesn't strike there. Obviously, you  rice is there because people need to consume it.  

So is there anything being done? Is there any  discussion or is this just a vicious circle? You   know that okay, Rice will continue and people  will continue eating it. Buying it. But at the   same time, we'll also continue talking about  climate change. Are there any specific steps?  Okay. So I guess your question is, are people  putting their money where their mouth is?  More than people, I´m asking about the  policymakers? I'm asking about the governments.  Yes, sorry and governments. I think it's this  is an interesting question. The recent FAO   report on the state of food insecurity actually  refers to how governments should repurpose their   support mechanisms for agriculture  towards more nutritious and more   sustainable consumption patterns. And  what I found interesting in this was.  

Historically, we never talked about like  the desirability of price support policies.   Ever since the WTO, we've always seen any policies  that distort how much one should produce as being   negative. And now we are looking at we are  looking at these support policies as a policy   option. And I think this is very close to what  you're suggesting, Isha, that. This government   has. Governments normally do have funding to  incentivize farmers and consumers to support them,  

to make it easier for them to adopt sustainable  production methods and patterns of production.   So it's not just the the consumers who should  pay the price for this. It is also the farmers.   I'm sorry, it's also the governments who should  question is whether they have the right approaches   to do it. And I can share more about some  examples, but for feedback from you first?  Uh, okay. Yeah. If you mean if you can give us. I mean,  

you're looking at a sort of an Asia, a regional  situation. We're looking at Indonesia, we're   looking at India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan. You  know, these are major, major countries with big   populations on the forefront of climate change.  And many of their people are either malnourished   or, as we're seeing increasingly, for example, in  China, we're seeing with the urbanization and with   wealthier, wealthier middle class, we're seeing  also the other side, we're seeing obesity rates   going up. So, yeah, if you have some examples  of know our governments responding to these  

situations, which are of course very different  things, are they responding with what you would   see as correct policies or helpful policies? I think that the government's directions   nowadays what we are discussing  is a bit on the forward side.   The government in Asia, I think  are a bit split. While there are   some that are looking at the issues that  we're talking about, such as Singapore,   for the others, sustainability is there, but  they have more pressing concerns to deal with, in   particular producing enough food and also keeping  their agricultural sectors vibrant and attractive.   And so one example is, let's say in China, I'm not  sure if you're aware, but in 2023, the number one   or the latest number one central document in China  was which normally talks about food. Right. Saw   China becoming an agricultural power. This was  noted by one of my colleagues here at Nanyang   Technological University. Zhang Hongzhou. And  how why China is doing this is is partly because  

of the growing geopolitical tensions with the  US. Perhaps preparing for tougher times ahead.   But this project of increasing food, food security  in China has involved things like purchasing the   Syngenta company in 2017 because China realized  that if in order to feed its growing population   at that time, it needed to have a make over of  its food security, of its food sector. And so by   buying over the Swiss company Syngenta, China was  able to have access to a lot of IP and a lot of   new technologies, including digital technologies. Yeah. Now, before we wrap up, I'd like to ask   you the same question that we asked Jayati in  the beginning of the show. What is the future  

like? Are you positive or do you think we  are very close to a hunger catastrophe?  Oh, yes. I think that the hunger, the hunger  catastrophe has already started since 2014.   Nowadays, we look at war in Ukraine and COVID  and how they impacted the supply chains.   But actually the FAO, UN Food and Agriculture  Organization reported that as early as 2014,   we already saw a big U-turn in undernourishment  levels globally as well as in Southeast Asia,   in Southeast Asia. It used to see a constant  declining trend in undernourishment.   However, from 2013, it went up again  from 60 million to 63.6 million by 2016.   And and so I think it's already upon us. And the  problem is sometimes you will not always see this.  

I mean, if you go to the 2018 FAO report.  Yes. You will see the trends that I saw,   I mentioned. But if you go to the later  reports, because they regularly revise the   way they report on undernourishment, you will  not see these trends anymore. And in effect,   if you look at the 2020 version, it seems that  undernourishment has been constantly going down.   But the reality is 2014 was when it started  going backwards. And so I think that what  

we we need today is to stop hitting the snooze  button on the alarm clock on climate change. To   really call a spade a spade. And  call growing undernourishment.   I mean, to really call it as it is. And I think  that the later reports by the FAO, such as the   ones that you mentioned and JT mentioned as  well on these statistics, on undernourishment,   45%, the figure that you mentioned. I think  these these are a step forward. But the the   problem is in the continuity, like we've always  looked at things as in terms of undernourishment.  

Now you're there mentioning mentioning new  ways of measuring hunger, which I think   the the most important thing to do, to have a  sense of that urgency is to align our metrics.   Because otherwise we'll we won't know where we are   and we'll always think, oh, there's another,  we have more time when actually we're late.  As we know in the news business, we  should always be very careful with   the statistics because they can often say  any story that we want to read into them.  And stop putting the snooze button on  climate change. Very important message.  I want that on a T shirt Yes. Right. 

Thank you so much. Thank you for your time.  And thank you for your thoughts, Jose.  Okay. Thanks for having  me, both of you. Thank you.  Thanks so much Jayati Ghosh for her time. And JoseMontesclaros.   You just heard him say it. He thinks we are  already in the midst of a hunger catastrophe,  

at least in southern Asia. Now, he hopes that  technology might be one policy tool for getting   us out of it if governments make the right  decisions. But no matter what, we don't want   to hit the snooze button on the climate alarm. That was quite a strong statement and a s srong.  

message that I think all of us  should really remember Well,   Jayati was of a different opinion. She said that  we are very close to hunger catastrophe. Well,   we're not in the middle of one, but either way,  it's going to affect us. And as I said earlier,   I always have this feeling that the onus is  always on the consumers. It's the governments,  

it's the policy makers that should really do more  about these things. But at the end of the day,   it's all of us who are goin to be affected by it.  So even the consumers, they need to be aware of   what they're eating, what they are buying. Where  are those things coming from? And that's probably   the only way we can save the planet. And who you're voting for.  Exactly. So that's it. And if you are watching  us on YouTube, then do let us know. What do you   think? Leave a comment and tell us: Do you think  we are in the middle of a hunger catastrophe or   are we just going to face one? Do let us know. What do you  

think? This is Isha Bhatia Sanan. I'm William Glucroft signing off. Thank you.  Global Eyes: A new take on  security policy by D.W..

2023-05-19

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