African Environmental and Human Security in the 21st Century By ...

below the poverty line tripled. While incomes have been rising in China and India and contributing, therefore, to a more positive aggregate picture of poverty reduction, this has masked the deep inequalities that exist across regions.³³ Such chronic poverty corresponds to human misery, as Jeffrey Sachs noted earlier. When faced with such a situation, people look for relief, whether through migration, rampant urbanization, or other nonstate actors. These patterns and social dislocations stemming from economic insecurities may affect social, political, and economic development not only within a particular state but also within the larger region.

Food Insecurities

While recent estimates claim that about 1 billion people are undernourished, including over 800 million in the developing world, most projections indicate that by 2050, world population will approach 9 to 10 billion.³⁴ It is not a coincidence that the first MDG lists the eradication of both hunger and poverty, as they are intricately related. This relationship is increasingly apparent in developing countries, rural areas, and growing urban centers.³⁵ Food security is at the heart of every aspect of human life. Many cultures, notably in the developing world, are centered around food-getting strategies. Though Thomas Malthus in the late eighteenth century warned of the consequences of an unchecked, exponentially growing population and a linear increase in food supplies, there may be other factors that require study that were not evident, or at least not considered, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.³⁶ For example, food shortages may also be caused by prevailing societal, political, and economic structural sources that artificially and adversely affect food supplies.³⁷ Henrique Cavalcanti describes three pillars of food security: availability, access, and stability. He defines food security as the