IFAD picks next president to lead response to the global food crisis

 

Rome, 7 July 2022: The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) today appointed its top finance executive, Alvaro Lario, to be its next president, choosing a champion of private sector investments to lead the UN agency into battle against a global food security crisis triggered by war in Ukraine, climate change and the economic shock of COVID-19.

Lario, IFAD’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and an Associate Vice-President for financial operations since 2018, pledged to double IFAD’s impact on rural poor communities by 2030.

“We have the institutions to tackle poverty, we have the know-how to reduce inequality, what we need is to mobilise resources and join forces,” he told delegates from 177 member states attending the election held at IFAD’s Rome-based headquarters.

“We know that ODA (Official Development Assistance) and ODA of agriculture will not be enough. Due to the war in Ukraine small-scale producers globally are suffering the current disruptions of food systems. This is one additional shock on top of the climate disasters and unequal recovery from COVID-19, and poor communities are disproportionally affected,” he added.

Lario committed to scale-up investments in climate resilience and climate-smart agriculture. “Climate-smart agriculture and climate adaptation will become increasingly important to break the cycle of poverty, inequality, conflict and forced migration. IFAD needs to act urgently and partner with climate liked-minded institutions to support small scale producers and poor rural communities adapt to climate shocks,” said Lario.

Lario also stressed that “it will not be possible to reach the SDGs without harnessing the power of women and the energy of the youth.” He promised to prioritize programmes that put women at the centre.

As IFAD CFO, Lario has led IFAD’s charge to mobilize private sector engagement in its battle against hunger and poverty, and on behalf of the world’s poorest rural communities.

 

“As IFAD President, I will ensure that IFAD connects the huge amount of global savings from impact investors and pension funds to tackle poverty in rural poor communities. We need to make sure that we use our AA+ credit rating to mobilize more funds. This is a unique competitive advantage in the UN system,” said Lario.

Under his stewardship, IFAD became the first United Nations Fund and the only UN body and specialized agency other than the World Bank Group to enter the capital markets and obtain a credit rating, enabling the Fund to expand resources mobilization efforts to the private sector. Lario has 20 years of experience in the private sector, academia and international financial institutions, including developing local capital markets and investments in emerging markets at the International Financial Corporation of the World Bank group.

 

Lario will take up the IFAD helm amid mounting challenges in agriculture and notably for smallholders who are both key to global food security and extremely vulnerable to shocks. Rising global food, energy and fertilizer prices linked to the war in Ukraine now threaten to trigger a global food crisis and push millions more rural people into hunger and poverty.

IFAD’s role in building resilience among small-scale farmers who produce a third of the world’s food have made it a leader in the drive for global food security. Recently the Fund launched its Crisis Response Initiative to ensure that small-scale farmers can meet their immediate needs for fertilisers, seeds and technology and ensure the next harvests in 22 priority countries affected by commodity price hikes.

 

New figures published yesterday by five UN agencies including IFAD showed the world falling further behind in efforts to end hunger and poverty in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The State of Food Security and Nutrition report showed that hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lario will take office on 1 October and serve a four-year term. He succeeds Gilbert Houngbo who has led the organisation since 2017.

 

Reduced funding for Neglected Tropical Diseases could be devastating

Ochieng’ Ogodo

[NAIROBI] Reducing funding for the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in the wake of COVID could be devastating for people in low- and middle-income countries, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

These diseases that impact mostly the poor are often overlooked by policy makers, resulting in few resources being available to address them.

“For many of these diseases, there is no easy solution – diagnosis and treatment are difficult, expensive or not accessible for those in remote or underserved areas, or simply do not exist” says MSF.

According to the World Health Organisation, NTDs ─ also known as diseases of poverty ─ that encompass 17 bacterial, parasitic and viral diseases affect more than one billion people worldwide and an estimated 40 per cent of impacted people live in the WHO African region.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that NTDs  such as buruli ulcer, chagas disease, dengue fever, guinea worm disease, echinococcosis, human African trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis are found in several countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

NTDs often equal death or prolonged disability in the context of chronic poverty or humanitarian crises, such as population displacement, according to MSF. 

MSF is one of the few actors caring for people with NTDs in remote areas where resources are scarce and health systems are fragile.

“Over the last thirty years, MSF teams have treated hundreds of thousands of people with Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis, cutaneous leishmaniasis, and sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis) – all parasitic NTDs which affect impoverished people living in very remote and underserved areas,” says MSF.

The international humanitarian medical non-governmental organisation of French origin not only helped identify new treatments and ways to diagnose people, but also played an active role in reducing the incidence of kala azar in Asia and sleeping sickness in Africa.

In recent years, MSF has also expanded care for people affected by snakebite envenoming, Noma and cutaneous leishmaniasis.  

It joined others today in today in signing the Kigali Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a high-level, political declaration which aims to ensure that these diseases are eradicated, eliminated or controlled by 2030. At the same time, MSF

“MSF strongly endorses the Kigali Declaration on NTDs and commits to continuing our response to these diseases, particularly for people affected by leishmaniasis, snakebite, noma and sleeping sickness, through diagnosis and treatment in the humanitarian settings where we work,” said Daniela Garone, MSF’s International Medical Coordinator.

Important progress achieved towards controlling NTDs over the last decade has recently stalled due to the COVID pandemic as well as substantial aid cuts. Gains made in controlling the spread of diseases like visceral leishmaniasis are further in danger of disappearing largely due to major funding cuts by the UK government which was previously a key financial supporter of NTD programmes.

The Kigali Declaration on NTDs, an important initiative for ramping up the global response to NTDs by prioritizing disease control and supporting the new ambitious WHO NTD Roadmap, needs a broad support, according MSF.

The MSF also calls for the development of new and more user-friendly medical tools that can simplify NTD care and better integrate it into countries’ health programmes.

“It is imperative that the world’s primarily profit-driven Research and Development (R&D) model is overhauled in order to make sure that desperately needed innovations for NTDs do not continue to be deprioritized because they aren’t lucrative for pharmaceutical corporations,” it says.

Starvation looms in East Africa after four failed rainy seasons

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

 

[NAIROBI] Hunger and starvation is looming large due to current widespread, and persistent multi-season drought affecting Somalia, the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya, and Ethiopia’s Belg-receiving and eastern and southern pastoral areas.

 

But the situation is projected to deteriorate more with below-average October-December (OND) season worsening the dire food security and malnutrition situation in 2023.

 

Four consecutive rainy seasons have failed ─ a climatic event not seen in at least 40 years ─ and the latest long-lead seasonal forecasts, supported by a broad consensus from meteorological experts, indicate that there is now a concrete risk that the October-December (OND) rainy season could also fail.

 

According to 30 May press release by Famine Early Warning Systems Network: “Should these forecasts materialise, the already severe humanitarian emergency in the region would further deepen.”

 

It is likely that the rainy season of 2022 March-May will be the driest on record, devastating livelihoods and driving sharp increases in food, water, and nutrition insecurity.

 

An estimated 3.6 million livestock have died in Kenya (1.5 million) and Ethiopia (2.1 million). In the worst-affected areas of Somalia, FEWS NET/FSNAU estimate that 1-out-of-3 livestock have perished since mid-2021. Over a million people have been displaced in Somalia and southern Ethiopia.

 

Prevailing water deficits have been worsened by very high air temperatures, which are forecast to continue into the June-September dry season. Rangeland conditions will deteriorate faster than usual, driving additional, widespread livestock deaths, as well as population displacements.

 

In cropping areas, harvests will again be well below average, causing a prolonged dependency on markets, where households will have limited food access due to high food prices.

 

The Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG) estimates that 16.7 million people currently face high acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+) and projects figures to increase to 20 million people by September.

 

In Somalia, April 2022 analyses found a Risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) and indicated that over 80,000 people were experiencing extreme hunger, indicative of Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) while in Kenya and Somalia, nearly 2.5 million people face Emergency (IPC Phase 4).

 

“Both Emergency and Catastrophe are associated with increased mortality. Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya have also recorded a significantly higher number of severely malnourished children admitted for treatment in the first quarter of 2022 compared to past years,” says the press release.

 

In addition to the drought, food insecurity and acute malnutrition have been exacerbated by other concurrent shocks, including conflict/insecurity, rising global fuel, food, and fertilizer prices due to the Ukraine crisis, macroeconomic challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Irrespective of rainfall between October and December, conditions will not recover quick enough to see food security improvements before mid-2023 and a rapid scaling up of actions is needed now to save lives and avert starvation and death.

 

The current appeals to respond to the drought remain well underfunded and the drought response needs to be increased immediately to prevent the already severe food emergency, including a Risk of Famine in Somalia, from deteriorating into an even more dire situation.