By Tanya St George, Senior Advocacy Advisor, UNICEF New Zealand
It’s World Food Day and while we in New Zealand continue to debate the price of milk, spare a thought for our neighbours in the Pacific, where spiraling food prices are forcing some families to make major changes to their diets, and climate change now poses a major threat to food security.
According to a new Asian Development Bank report, climate change will increase hunger and malnutrition among the Pacific’s poorest people unless governments act soon. Coastal erosion, floods, drought, and storm surges are reducing crop production for both commercial and subsistence farmers.
Tell the 10.1 million or so people spread across the tiny islands and atolls of the Pacific something they don’t know.
Rising sea levels are already consuming the tiny islets of Kiribati, contaminating their gardens and poisoning their wells, while drought last week forced Tuvalu and Tokelau to a state of emergency and to ration drinking water. No water means no food crops, so food shortages are likely in the not too distant future.
At the Pacific Islands Forum in Auckland last month leaders agreed that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific. You know it’s serious when the Secretary-General of the United Nations makes climate change the focus of his first visit to the region.
Not having enough to eat – and having to pay too much for it – is already a reality for poorer families in some part of the Pacific. UNICEF monitoring of six Pacific Island countries[1] shows families are experiencing increased economic stress due to rising food prices. Market surveys confirm the cost of some staple food items is up by as much as 50-100% since 2009. The more remote and import-dependent Pacific Island economies of Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga are particularly exposed to higher global fuel and food prices.
More rural families are resorting to subsistence agriculture, gardening and fishing to supplement food and income, but that’s not an option for urban households who spend up to 40 percent of their budget on food. Many are resorting to eat fewer and less nutritious meals. In Fiji, fresh or frozen meat and fish are a luxury for some families. There’s not a lot of goodness in tinned fish, noodles, and turkey tails, which are fast becoming dietary staples.
While many Pacific families place enormous importance on education, some are literally having to choose between putting food on the table or paying to send their kids to school. In Vanuatu, one secondary school reported a 20% decrease in enrolment. Boarding schools are also reporting difficulties in ensuring their students get enough food.
How can it be that in a region of abundant natural resources people can still go hungry? What’s to be done?
Longer term our government and those of the region are focusing on sustainable economic development, capitalising on the potential of the Pacific’s productive sectors, particularly fisheries, tourism and agriculture. But that’s going to take time. There’s less than five years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Progress so far has been mixed to say the least. Each crisis – manmade or otherwise – sets us back from fulfilling even these most basic promises to the world’s children.
Meanwhile Pacific Islands governments, with the help of donor partners like New Zealand, need to consider providing or expanding social protection programmes such as targeted food and cash assistance for the urban poor. In rural areas, they can encourage local food production and subsidise fishing boats and fuel. School feeding programmes can ensure children get their minimum daily nutrition requirements, while abolishing school fees in all primary schools will help children stay in school.
Many Pacific Island countries have put in place some of these interventions. These efforts need to be expanded and reinforced. As a Pacific nation and as major aid donor to other Pacific Island countries, New Zealand has the means and the opportunity to make a difference to children and young people there. It’s time to step up.
Find out more about UNICEF’s advocacy work in the Pacific:
http://www.unicef.org.nz/Children-in-the-Pacific
Sunday 16 October is not only World Food Day, it’s also Blog Action Day when bloggers around the world blog about one important global topic on the same day. Past topics have included water, climate change and poverty.
[1] Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu
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Karen in Laos- Day One
After a day or so of acclimatising to the stifling heat and sampling the amazing food of Vientiane (Laos’ chilled out capital city), it was time to get started with the reason I came here – to get into the field with UNICEF and see what we really do to help save and improve children’s lives.
Every day as UNICEF’s Communications Manager I tell the story of what UNICEF does around the world, but to actually experience how UNICEF touches lives at a very local level is very exciting!
I’m mainly here to see the roll out of Laos’ biggest ever immunization campaign against measles. The Laos government wants to eliminate the disease by 2012. They have also decided to take this opportunity to vaccinate young people against rubella since this is becoming an increasingly prevalent disease – this is a first for Laos.
There are about 1700 cases of measles annually in the country – children can die from the measles infection (or its associated complications such as pneumonia and diarrhoea) so this is a really important campaign.
I start the day by meeting with Marc Vergara (Chief of Comms at UNICEF Laos) and Dr Ataur Rahman (Officer-in-charge of the Health and Nutrition Section) who explain more about the campaign. There is routine immunization in Laos, much like in New Zealand. The difference is that ideally children need two measles vaccines to build good immunity and there are all sorts of factors (such as limited health resources, remoteness of certain areas and language barriers) which make it difficult to reach every child once, let alone twice. Saying that, lots of progress has been made and the levels of children who have been immunized are increasing. Even so, there is a need to give this disease its marching orders once and for all.
So in essence this is a big deal – the campaign is being run by the Government in conjunction with partners like UNICEF and WHO. The aim to vaccinate every child from 9 months to 19 years of age – that’s 2.7m people or almost half the population of Laos! Kind of a big undertaking, but worth it to protect so many children from what can be a killer disease. Over the next few days I am going to see exactly how UNICEF is working to make this campaign happen.
So first of all we need to see where the vaccinations are kept. Now, normally I need a good strong flat white in the morning, but try getting into a -20 freezer before 9am – WOW! But hey, that’s where the measles vaccinations are kept so that’s where we are. Boxes and boxes of tiny vials line the shelves – each box representing around 450 Laos children vaccinated against measles.
The whole process of storing the vaccinations is water tight. And it has to be. If they are not kept at the right temperature then they are pretty much useless. Most can be taken from the cold stores and transported safely within a certain time frame and nothing is left to chance – each vial has what’s called a VVM (Vaccine Vial Monitor) on the top. Basically a white square that only goes dark if the vaccine has over-heated and therefore can’t be used.
The measles vaccines that we will see in action are leaving the storeroom for the journey by road to the provincial store in Paksan – about 650 km. We are making the same journey and it will take us around 7 hours (spread over two days), but the roads are awkward, dusty and pot-holed. The vials will take almost double the time we do to get to the storeroom, but as long as they reach their destination within 72 hours they will be in fine condition. As another precaution, each batch also carries a cold chain certificate to show whether they are safe to use.