Deterioration of the environment Essay

The world hunger problem is characterized by an imbalance or inadequate distribution of people and food, and has both immediate and long-run features that threaten the welfare of millions. Instances of hunger and malnutrition occur when people are unable to obtain an adequate share of the world’s supply of food. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) estimates that as many as 500 million people suffer from hunger and the effects of malnutrition. The Overseas Development Council (ODC) estimates that in 1980, as many as 400 million people in developing nations lived in absolute poverty. The Hunger Project estimates that 13 to 18 million people die each year from hunger. For the most part, these conditions are chronic. They are a daily fact of life. All African countries in are considered as third world countries and that is very true that they encounter all the above problems that environmental degradation, political representation and poverty which to a larger extent are interrelated hence rendering the fact that one’s cause leads to another’s effect. Before we go further into this discussion it always important to know deeply the meanings of the key words being discussed. In a day man’s language environmental degradation is to disgrace or debase or reduce the value of the environment (in this case). It can be reducing its value for instance through soil erosion, air pollution by chemicals from industries, water pollution by direct sewerage linked to a nearby river and many more. For sure this happens in most third world countries not only in Africa. Literature review Poverty Poverty simply means a state of want or lacking means or inadequacy especially in terms of the basic needs. It is the inability of people to meet their basic needs in life. In developing countries people encounter both Primary poverty and secondary poverty. Primary poverty in this case is where families’ total incomes are insufficient to enable them purchase or maintain the minimum necessities of life. Secondary poverty is whereby individuals or families can earn adequate income but spend it on useless items and as a result lack the basic necessities of life for example by alcohol, poor budgeting. People in these three named countries mostly live under poverty line. Poverty line means the minimum level of income or standard of living in a society depending on the cost of availability of basic necessities. United Nations has defined poverty as â€Å"is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation† (UNICEF, 2005) Periodically, conditions worsen dramatically and people in famine-affected regions are thrown into a food crisis that subjects them to starvation and the increased threat of immediate death. These short-run crises are usually precipitated by political unrest, drought, or floods that create even greater disequilibrium between food supplies and people. Food crises are part of the anatomy of the world hunger problem, but while they are most often the outgrowth of chronic conditions made worse, they are not the essence of the long-term problem that confronts the less fortunate people of the world. That problem is typified by the insidious advance of malnutrition and hunger into the lives of millions of people, subjecting them to rampant disease, excessive infant mortality, limited life expectancy, and a truly substandard quality of life. Food shortages, inadequate food distribution, and other conditions that are often dramatized to focus on the world hunger problem are merely symptomatic expressions of more fundamental causes of world hunger, the principal one of which is poverty. People are chronically hungry and malnourished because they are poor. In Less Developed Countries, poverty first limits the ability of people to purchase food. (Poor people have little, if any, money to spend on food. ) At the same time, people in LDCs also lack the money and energy to invest in learning and applying production-increasing technology to produce food for their families. The hunger problem is thus a poverty-induced dilemma with two horns: too little money-backed demand (people need food but cannot buy enough) and too little supply. Combine aggregate poverty with unprogressive agriculture; soaring population growth; poor income distribution; and inadequate social, political, and economic systems and policies, and the result is a dilemma of staggering complexity. At its apex, however, is the inability of people to purchase and produce adequate amounts of food.