World Hunger and Poverty - Essay Example

?Cover Letter When I started working on this paper I was not sure how to approach it. It took me a while to get started. A technique I used to get ideas was performing a brainstorming session. During the research phase of the assignment I was able to find good information relatively easy. The difficult part was connecting the ideas and synthesizing the information I read in order to determine what to include on the paper. One of the best things that I enjoyed about the assignment was getting educated in such an important social problem. I was not aware that so many children are living in poverty across the world. I decided to write about this topic because I knew that the poverty and hunger across the world was on the rise since many countries have not recovered yet from the recession of 2008. I am not discussing the topic currently in any other class. It is a topic that would be good for discussion for a variety of courses including business, social sciences, economics, and international relations. I would like to let you know that at the end of the essay I tried to find potential solutions to the problem of world hunger and poverty. The earth has a population of 6.98 billion inhabitants (Census). There are lots of countries and parts of the world in which people enjoy many benefits of the progress mankind has made throughout history. One of those countries is the United States with a gross domestic product per capita of $46,300. Despite the wealth of that exists in the developed countries there are many parts of the world in which people live in poverty and often suffer from hunger and malnutrition due to a lack of food. There are approximately 156 emerging economies in the world. An emerging economy is a country that has a gross domestic product per capita below $9,000. The majority of the poverty in the world is located in these nations. It is estimated that over 3 billion people across the world are living on $2.50 or less a day of income (Globalissues). Extreme poverty is directly correlated with hunger. When people lack the economic resources or income necessary to cover for living expenses families often suffer from hunger. Hunger can be defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food; craving appetite (Worldhunger). A related health problem associated with hunger is malnutrition. Malnutrition refers to a lack of the proper diet in which the person does not receive the nutrients necessary for human health. In 2010 there were 925 million people that suffered from hunger. The majority of those people were located in Asia & Pacific and in the Sub-Sahara African region. The increase in world hunger is due to three factors: 1. Neglect of agriculture relevant in areas where very poor people live by government and international agencies 2. The current worldwide economic crisis which started in 2008 3. Food price inflation (Worldhunger). The rise in food prices is a major problem that is hurting the quality of life of poor people in America and billions of humans living in poverty in the world. The total inflation in the United States since 2000 is 31.5% (Usinflationcalculator). Inflation lowers the purchasing power of a person. Inflation has a greater detrimental effect in people that have very low income since it lowers their purchasing power. The amount of hungry people in the world represents over 13% of the world’s population. The problem cannot be ignored any longer and solutions must be found soon. The innocent victims of poverty and hunger are the children. There are over one billion children living in poverty in the world. Children due to their weaker immune system are not able to survive with insufficient food as many days as adults. “Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year” (Worldhunger). Many of these children simply cannot survive these inhumane conditions and as a consequence millions of kids are dying every year. Over 5 million children died last year of malnutrition. There are non-profit organizations such as Feed The Children that are helping in the battle against world hunger. More organizations have to get involved including the private sector. World hunger and poverty is a problem that cannot continue to be ignored as if it did not exist. It has been established that one of the causes of hunger is a lack of proper agriculture in many areas where poor people exists. The G8 and the United Nations have to become more active in this battle. Technology transfers must occur to help many poor countries develop any arable land that is available that is currently not been used to produce food. Some regions of the world have bigger problems that make it even more difficult to implement solutions. In the Sub-Saharan dessert a lack of water and arable land makes it hard to the people to produce food. Africa is also suffering from the explosion of the aids epidemic. In the Sub-Saharan dessert region there are 22.5 million people living with HIV/Aids (Avert). Aids treatments and drugs are extremely expensive, thus the majority of people in Africa go untreated. In order to find alternative solutions to the problem one of the first steps is to educate the global population about the problem. A lot of people in America are not aware of the extent of the problem. The department of education has to develop a national campaign to educate the general population about the problem of world poverty and hunger. This could ignite more donations to go towards non-profit organizations that are currently at the forefront in the battle against poverty. The UN should send a mandate so that other developed countries to bring awareness to the problem. The UN should also formulate a special committee of experts to discuss the problem in close meetings to recommend viable solutions to deal with the problem. The governments of the 54 develop countries also have to part a key role as contributors to help alleviate the problem. The UN should impose a special tax of 0.50% of the gross domestic product of all develop countries to be place in a fund to provide direct assistance to billions of people suffering of poverty. The other group that must get involved in this problem is the private sector. Multinational corporations have more wealth that the combined resources of the 210 governments of the globe. Corporate social responsibility has become a strategy used by a lot of companies around the world. The UN should send a special message to the corporations around the world to become more active in their roles towards helping social causes such as poverty and world hunger. We are living in a world in which there is a poor distribution of resources and a lack of cooperation among the people in power towards taking serious strides towards reducing world poverty and hunger. The recent economic recession has made it harder for poor people. “Cutbacks in health, education and other vital social services around the world have resulted from structural adjustment policies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as conditions for loans and repayment” (Globalissues). The world has to united forces and contributions from individuals, non-profit organizations, governments, and the private sector are needed to make serious strides in the effort to eradicate world poverty and hunger. Work Cited Page Avert.org. 2011. “HIV and Aids in Africa.” 6 December 2011. Census.gov. 6 December 2011. “U.S. and World Population Clock.” U.S. Census Bureau. 6 December 2011. Globalissues.org. 2011. “Causes of Poverty.” 6 December 2011. < http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty> Usiinflationcalculator.com. 2011. “US Inflation Calculator.” 6 December 2011. Worldhunger.org. 2011. “2011 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics.” 6 December 2011. Read More