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The report cautions that without “strong and urgent” actions, progress made toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could be seriously undermined.
On April 26, the World Bank released its
 Global Monitoring Report 2009, highlighting the “triple punch of the food, fuel, and financial crises” experienced by the global poor in recent years. Bearing the title “A Development Emergency”, the report looks at the implications of the current turmoil in world markets on development targets.
It estimates that an additional 50 million people will be living in poverty as a result of the financial crisis in 2009, most of them in developing countries. Concomitantly, it projects that the number of chronically hungry people will climb to over 1 billion this year, reversing as well recent gains in fighting malnutrition.
Still, the report argues that with immediate and concerted action the first MDG, of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, can be achieved. In order to deliver on this global imperative, it stresses the urgent need to invest in agriculture.
For more information, please refer to the World Bank’s  Global Monitoring Report 2009 page. |
