Approaches to Combat Hunger in Asia and the Pacific

Asia and the Pacific, despite visible signs of prosperity due to years of rapid economic growth, has made insufficient progress in freeing its population from hunger and malnutrition, the most basic marker of true development. Given the importance of reducing poverty and hunger as core development priorities, the international community has placed these as the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), adopted in the historic Millennium Declaration of September 2000. The MDGs envision halving the incidence of poverty and hunger by 2015 and call for major improvements in the provision of basic services, promising a better life to millions of poor across the globe. However, if progress in reducing poverty and hunger is not accelerated in the region, such hopes will remain unrealized. This paper aims to trace the progress of efforts to reduce hunger in Asia and the Pacific, to identify reasons for their successes and failures, and to suggest policy initiatives to help make tangible progress of the Millennium Development Goal targets from now until 2015.