Shocking statistic of the week: Consumers in rich countries dispose of 220 million metric tons of food waste every year, equal to the entire food output of sub-Saharan Africa. Director General of The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) takes issue with global trends of countries becoming increasingly reliant on processed foods and the astonishing facts about collective food waste, saying
We cannot limit sustainability to food production, we need to also look at our food consumption.
Over at The Guardian development blog Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, draws attention to the structural links of food, famine and human failure as he gets noticed as the most read article of the week with this brilliant piece on Famine isn’t an extreme event, it’s the predictable result of a broken system.
Bill Gates writes his third annual letter from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focusing on aid generosity.
In the lead up to 2015 – the date when most of the Millennium Development Goals are due to expire – Duncan Green continues the debate initiated by Alex Evans on establishing ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or SDGs over at his From Poverty to Power blog. Kick started by the Columbian government and everyone from Canada to Botswana weighed in on them, the US and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have yet to step up and take notice.
Lastly, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and others look back on 10 years of the Global Fund: