ABSTRACT
Growing differentiation among developing countries, declining capital flows and remittances, uncertain external aid, weakening global architecture, and rising China are reviewed. In 2021, developed countries, led by the United States, had begun a recovery. Considerable progress was achieved in developing countries prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in reducing poverty;infant and child mortality, stunting, wasting, anemia;increasing food security and nutrition;and improving gender empowerment. Impacts of the pandemic on the poverty-food security-nutrition-health nexus and implications for action are described. Agricultural total factor productivity growth across regions and countries shows huge differences in aggregate productivity growth performance. Countries with low growth also lagged in structural transformation. Premature deindustrialization in developing countries peaks at earlier levels of per capita GDP than for industrialized countries. All farm sizes can achieve productivity growth and success, but smallholders require the functioning of factor and product markets, with strong public policy. Productivity growth measures have not included changes in the quality or quantity of natural resources, but that is changing. Overall, the issue of low financial flows to developing countries needs to be addressed, and available resources need to be used strategically to leverage greater public and private investments to food and agriculture. Substantial investments are needed in human and institutional capital and physical infrastructure for new technologies. The G20's contribution to the global architecture for food and agriculture has not met its potential relative to a promising early start. For 54 industrial and emerging countries monitored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, changes in their agricultural policies offer scope for improvement in the overall policy environment and investment climate at the global level, including release of valuable resources for building better. © Uma Lele, Manmohan Agarwal, Brian C. Baldwin, and Sambuddha Goswami 2021.
ABSTRACT
Through collective action, global governance helps identify, understand, and address problems that spill over national boundaries. Those problems include maintaining peace and security;developing and implementing rules with regard to trade in commodities and services, capital flows, and migration;containing transboundary pests and diseases;slowing global warming;and providing aid for needy countries and peoples. Specific international organizations (five discussed in Chapter 6) address these issues). The difference between global and national governance is that there is no global government. Global governance, through various international bodies and institutions, complements regional, national, and local governance in an important way and is the sum total of the informal and formal ideas, values, rules, norms, procedures, practices, policies, and institutions that govern all actors—states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and the general public. The number of actors on the global governance scene has proliferated, as has the sheer number of international initiatives that have been started to mobilize incremental international funding in support of food security and nutrition since the 2007 food crisis. Many of the initiatives are reviewed in this chapter, showing that the amount of incremental funding in support of food security and nutrition, beyond traditional sources raised, was insignificant compared to the number of international consultations held. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was a notable exception, as well as the Agricultural Market Information System. This situation appears to have changed for the better since the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter examines the relationship between global, regional, national, and local governance. © Uma Lele, Manmohan Agarwal, Brian C. Baldwin, and Sambuddha Goswami 2021.
ABSTRACT
This book critically examines the roles played by developing countries, in partnership with major multilateral agencies and their bilateral counterparts, in addressing agricultural and rural development as a way to achieve economic transformation and food for all. The book explores the questions of what member nations of the United Nations, working with international organizations, have been able to achieve thus far in food and agriculture and in economic transformation;how they have responded to the rapidly changing external environment and factors internal to the organizations;and how well equipped they are to address future challenges of poverty, food security and nutrition, inequality, climate change, degradation of natural resources, and conflict, in the face of rapidly deteriorating natural resources and advancing science. Discovering the answers to these questions makes this discussion all the more urgent. Most importantly, we explore the roles of the traditional international organizations established in the post-Second World War period vis-à-vis new actors, philanthropists, and the private sector in contributing to growth and development. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the structural weaknesses among the mightiest economies of income inequalities, lack of universal access to health, and lack of trust in government. Smaller Asian Tigers-Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea-in addition to China, where the pandemic originated-had smarter responses, demonstrating their superior state capacity. What are the lessons of history for national, regional, and global governance?. © Uma Lele, Manmohan Agarwal, Brian C. Baldwin, and Sambuddha Goswami 2021.
ABSTRACT
This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, dietary transition, and now pandemics. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will the change in US leadership bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?. © Uma Lele, Manmohan Agarwal, Brian C. Baldwin, and Sambuddha Goswami 2021.
ABSTRACT
Can the "post-COVID-19 normal" emerge better for India's food supply and demand management, with a clear goal of zero hunger? Presently contributing one-third of the global undernutrition burden, a daunting challenge that the country must overcome now is of resuming broader based economic growth with a healthy labour force. Given this, India needs a data-driven exit and post-exit strategy from the COVID-19 lockdown that will not only mitigate the immediate food crisis faced by millions of poor households, but also reduce the long-term structural bottlenecks that limit poor households' access to food.