Food and Water, the Inseparable Twins

“We do want global goals and there is a strong advantage with that to communicate and rally behind it and advocate,” said the UN’s Joakim Harlin. “But the problem with global goals is we aggregate and it masks a lot of disparities and the goals might not then be relevant for all countries.” 

This remark might sound like a critique of the midpoint progress of the UN SDGs, which aim for a 2030 completion. However, Harlin gave this statement in an interview in 2012. 

At the time, he was a senior water resources advisor for UNDP and was speaking with UN-Water, an interagency that coordinates international work on water and sanitation, about the sector’s important role in the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, better known as Rio+20. In 2012, hopes were high for the conference’s two main themes: building a green economy and improving international coordination. 

“The water issues are super important,” Harlin had said. “But if we look specifically what’s lagging behind now in terms of reaching goals and the links to hygiene and health, sanitation is one of those areas that is lagging most behind.” 

Those words might apply to 2012, but they are also eerily prescient in 2023 and the state of all the SDGs linked to water. 

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus 

No one is really ranking the importance of one SDG above another, but one thing is clear to anyone with even a passing interest in the global goals: you cannot build a sustainable future for all without adequate food and water. 

No two sectors are quite as linked as SDG 2 – Zero Hunger and SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation. You cannot end hunger and achieve food security without also ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation systems, and the energy to power them. These interlinked areas are often referred to as the Water-Energy- Food Nexus, where any progress (or regress) in one area will have an effect on the other. 

With seven years remaining to achieve SDG 2, the world is moving in the wrong direction and the goal is becoming increasingly out of reach. Projections from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) state that nearly 670 million people will still be facing hunger in 2030 – that’s 8 percent of the world population, which is the same as in 2015 when the 2030 Agenda was launched. 

Progress towards SDG 6 is not much better. According to the UN Sustainable Development Goal Report 2022, at the current rates, 1.6 billion people will lack safely managed drinking water, 2.8 billion will be without safely managed sanitation and 1.9 billion won’t have basic hand hygiene facilities. 

Despite hopes that the world would emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and food security would begin to improve, world hunger rose further in 2021. Conflict, the climate crisis and the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by the war in Ukraine and the subsequently soaring fertilizer prices, are combining to create a food crisis of unparalleled proportions. In 2021, around 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely insecure, with 11.7 percent of the global population facing food insecurity at severe levels. 

“We are facing an unprecedented global food crisis and all signs suggest we have not yet seen the worst,” stressed World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley in October 2022. 

Hunger hotspots 

FAO and WFP warn that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 19 countries or situations – called hunger hotspots – during the outlook period from October 2022 to January 2023. Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen remain at the highest alert level, meaning they have populations facing starvation either now or in the near future. 

“Hotspots of very high concern” are the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Pakistan, the Sahel region, Sudan and Syria, as they have a large number of people facing critically acute food insecurity, coupled with worsening trends that are expected to further intensify life-threating conditions in the coming months. 

“Hotspots of high concern” include Guatemala, Honduras, Madagascar, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, in which acute food insecurity is likely to deepen further. 

Sanitation – the forgotten little brother 

“Sanitation has always been given the separate treatment,” said Shyama V. Ramani, UNU-MERIT Professorial Fellow and Founder-Director of the Friend In Need India Trust, an NGO that deals with sanitation issues. 

SDG 6 may nominally be about water, but the sanitation component is just as important, as it relates to other SDGs such as health and the conservation of ecosystems. 

One of the many issues of eliminating open defecation, one of the SDG 6 targets, is not so much building a toilet, but maintaining it too. Additionally, not all toilets are created equal. 

“Many governments are now admitting that pit latrines are dangerous and not a solution,” Ramani added. Though pit latrines do take a step away from open defecation, flooding and seepage into groundwater can lead to far worse problems. 

According to the UN SDG progress report, most of Africa and West, Central and South Asia are acutely impacted by poor sanitation services and have shown little progress towards developing safe sanitation systems. 

“I don’t think it’s on track at all,” she said of realizing SDG 6’s target of universal access to safely managed sanitation services, adding that 2040, not 2030, might be a more realistic target. 

The gender angle 

Global gender inequalities remain pervasive. Women are more likely than men to experience food insecurity, and the gender gap is growing. The gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men – a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared with 3 percentage points in 2020. 

Globally, one in three women experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2021 and nearly one in three women aged 15 to 49 years (571 million) were affected by anemia, with no progress since 2012. 

According to the UN’s Gender Snapshot 2022, unclean water claims the lives of more than 800,000 women and girls each year. 

Can we still end hunger and thirst by 2030? 

Right now, as many as 828 million people are unsure of where their next meal is coming from. It is clear that concerted action is urgently needed to meet the targets of SDG 2 and 6 by 2030. 

Agrifood systems must be transformed in ways that ensure they deliver lower cost and safe nutritious foods that make healthy diets more affordable for all, sustainably and inclusively. Water and sanitation services similarly need to be modernized to reduce knock-on effects such as waterborne diseases. As a global community, we each have a role in bringing forward those left behind by making our agrifood and water and sanitation systems more inclusive and sustainable. Though the clock is ticking past the halfway point to 2030, time has already run out for many people in securing safe food and water. 

The OPEC Fund Food Security Action Plan 

Addressing global food insecurity and protecting the most vulnerable and affected populations has always been a priority for the OPEC Fund. Since its establishment in 1976, the Fund has committed US$2.6 billion to agriculture projects, representing more than 10 percent of its total operations. It has specifically targeted investments in rural infrastructure, development of production and storage facilities, trade in agricultural goods, as well as training, capacity and institution building. 

In June 2022, the OPEC Fund announced its US$1 billion Food Security Action Plan. Channeling public and private sector loans, as well as grants, the facility is helping developing countries that were hit by the fallout from the war in the Ukraine, which pushed up food and fertilizer prices worldwide. The three-year plan is providing immediate assistance to cover the import costs of basic commodities such as seeds, grains and fertilizers, while supporting medium- and long-term security of food supply in partner countries. It is by building up the resilience of agriculture sectors and strengthening regional food value chains – all to future-proof against global shocks. 

Smallholder Agriculture Cluster Project 

Zimbabwe, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, is one of the hunger hotspots of high concern. Persistent economic challenges, high food and fuel prices, and the impact of localized dry conditions on 2022 crop production are expected to worsen acute food insecurity conditions. During the peak lean season from January to March 2023, an estimated 3.8 million people are projected to face acute food insecurity – a deterioration of 29.8 percent from last year. With the value of the national currency in freefall combined with soaring global inflation, this figure is likely to rise even further. 

To help improve food security in the country, the OPEC Fund has approved a US$15 million loan in support of the Smallholder Agriculture Cluster Project (SACP) under its Food Security Action Plan. Co-financed with the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the private sector, the program will help transform the small-scale farming sector and increase farmers’ participation in market-oriented and climate-smart value chains. 

“In Zimbabwe, nearly 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture as a source of livelihood. In order to support food security, there is an urgent need for coordinated global partnerships among international development financiers,” says Bah Aly Bah, OPEC Fund Country Manager for Eastern and Southern Africa. “The country has some 1.3 million smallholder farmers and around 18,000 medium to large scale farmers. However, agricultural productivity remains low and malnutrition is a major problem. Through the financing of the SACP the OPEC Fund has significantly contributed to improving the productivity and sustainability of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe,” highlights Bah. 

The project will target urban and rural agricultural production and food-trading corridors in 5 provinces and benefit 78,000 small-scale farmers. Fifty percent of the beneficiaries will be women and at least 30 percent will be youth. 

Sierra Leone’s Freetown Wash And Aquatic Environment Revamping Project  

Although Sierra Leone is endowed with vast water resources, the country faces severe constraints on domestic and agricultural use. These resources are unevenly distributed and in the dry season there is not enough water available to meet the country’s needs. 

Demand for water in the country’s capital and largest city Freetown is higher than the current supply. Little water reaches the eastern edges of the city and, as the city’s population expands, the situation is worsening. Inadequate water supply in several areas has forced many residents to draw water from springs, streams and shallow groundwater resources. In many cases, this water is contaminated, increasing the risk of diarrheal diseases and cholera. 

In 2021, the OPEC Fund committed US$20 million in support of the Freetown WASH and Aquatic Environment Revamping Project. The project will provide the 1.4 million inhabitants of Freetown with a reliable and safe water supply, which is set to reduce waterborne illnesses and mortality by about 50 percent.   Low levels of development often affect women and children the hardest, something the Freetown project will work to mitigate. Specifically, it will reduce sexual harassment experienced by women while fetching water as approximately 60 percent of the project beneficiaries will be women. In several communities, where children trek long distances to fetch water, the project will help cut child labor and accidents.