Episode 269: The Link Between Food Insecurity and Conflict: A New Report from World Food Program USA

To better understand the complex dynamics of global hunger and the urgent need for more collective action to address this humanitarian crisis, Chase Sova, Senior Director of Public Policy and Research at World Food Program USA, and his colleagues recently launched a new report, "Dangerously Hungry." In today’s episode of New Security Broadcast, ECSP Program Coordinator and Communications Specialist, Abegail Anderson, speaks with Sova about the report's analysis on the current state of global hunger and its devastating impacts on vulnerable populations.

 

The report showcases how food insecurity, met with external motivators, creates a greater likelihood for food-related instability and conflict. Sova emphasizes the importance of investing in sustainable agriculture, empowering marginalized populations, and building resilience for the most vulnerable communities. The conversation serves as an important and timely reminder that food insecurity is not only a byproduct of conflict and global instability, but also a driver of it, calling for a cross-sectoral approach to address these challenges and ensure food security for all.

 

Select Quotes

"Temperature and precipitation changes, desertification—all these climate-related impacts tend to impact food systems first, and so a lot of the climate change and security literature runs through food systems, and we’ve tried to capture as much of that as we can in the Dangerously Hungry report. There is also an increase in peer reviewed work looking at the individual motivations for someone to join a rebel cause or an extremist organization, and a lot of that has to do with economic benefits and exploitations that happen when someone is not able to feed their family."

"Food insecurity alone is simply never a driver of instability in and of itself; it drives people to desperation, it helps amplify grievances in a country, and it does poke holes in the challenges of governance. It is not as if hungry people are always violent, and violent people are always hungry. It is important to note that usually it is some combination of drivers and individual motivators, [such as] climate change, economic shocks, and resource conflict. For that stew of food instability to occur, there have been those individual motivators."

"In the desperation space, typically we are referring to the opportunity cost thesis. This occurs where incomes are low, poverty is high, and the expected return from fighting outweighs the benefits of traditional economic activity. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the better examples of this, where Al-Shabab, Boko Haram, and Islamic State are tapping into people’s deep desperation, and that calculus of someone engaging in violent extremism or joining one of these groups becomes obvious through the opportunity cost thesis."

"Oftentimes, it is the government’s failure to respond to food insecurity that erodes trust between a government and people. It is this failure to intervene because of a lack of resources or a lack of political motivation that is exploited by extremist organizations. They will establish their own parallel social protection system as an alternative to the state, and they will offer their own forms of informal justice, which tend to happen in rural areas that are distant from the police arm of the state."

"Apart from urbanization, we need to figure out ways to marry international humanitarian assistance with longer-term agricultural development work. We have got to be investing more in those transitions in places that are recovering from conflict and in places we are trying to prevent from falling into conflict. There has to be a concerted effort in that space, and that is something we are going to spend more time thinking about going forward. As for areas for continued research: urbanization, conflict sensitivity programming, linking humanitarian and development assistance. And we need more on international human rights and humanitarian law in order to come up with specific sanctions to hold people accountable."

Sources: World Food Program USA

Photo Credit: Cover of the World Food Programme USA report, "Dangerously Hungry," courtesy of WFP USA.