Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in What do we really know? Metrics for food insecurity and undernutritionAbstract. In this article, we critically review the three most common approaches of assessing chronic food insecurity and undernutrition: (i) the FAO indicator of undernourishment, (ii) household food consumption surveys, and (iii) childhood anthropometrics. There is a striking and worrying degree of inconsistency when one compares available estimates, which is due to methodological and empirical problems associated with all three approaches. Hence, the true extent of food insecurity and undernutrition is unknown. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of each approach and make concrete suggestions for improvement, which also requires additional research. A key component will be the planning and implementation of more comprehensive, standardized, and timely household surveys that cover food consumption and anthropometry, in addition to other socioeconomic and health variables.Such combined survey data will allow much better assessment of the problems' magnitude, as well as of trends, driving forces, and appropriate policy responses.

A large and growing share of the world's poor lives under conditions in which high hazard risk coincides with high vulnerability. In the last decade, natural disasters claimed 79,000 lives each year and affected more than 200 million people, with damages amounting to almost US $ 70 billion annually. Experts predict that disasters will become even more frequent and their impact more severe, expecting a five-fold global cost increase over the next fifty years, mainly due to climate change and a further concentration of the world's population in vulnerable habitats.The paper argues that in order to mitigate disaster impact on poor population groups, development policy and disaster management need to become mutually supportive. Focusing on challenges disasters pose to food security, it proposes that in disaster-prone locations measures to improve disaster resilience should be an integral part of food security policies and strategies. It expands the twin-track approach to hunger reduction to a "triple track approach", giving due attention to cross-cutting disaster risk management measures. Practical areas requiring more attention include risk information and analysis; land use planning; upgrading physical infrastructures; diversification and risk transfer mechanisms.Investments in reducing disaster risk will be most needed where both hazard risk and vulnerability are high. As agriculture is particularly vulnerable to disaster risk, measures to reduce this vulnerability, i. e. protecting agricultural lands, water and other assets, should get greater weight in development strategies and food security policies. Investing in disaster resilience involves trade-offs. Identifying the costs, benefits and trade -offs involved will be a prominent task of agricultural economists."Reducing disaster vulnerability in developing countries may very well be the most critical challenge facing development in the new millennium." (Wolfensohn and Cherpitel 2002)

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Fundamental changes in the world food economy pose new challenges for all participants in the food system, particularly in developing countries. This article focuses on the implications of these changes for international co-operation in food and agriculture. Concentrating especially on the FAO, it reviews the responses in monitoring, advocacy, resource mobilisation, regulation and technical and policy assistance activities. It is argued that the emerging food policy agenda, while addressing new challenges, must nevertheless keep at its centre the fight against hunger and malnutrition. However, shifts in the location and nature of hunger require that new approaches be developed to address this persistent and unacceptable global problem. The changing world food economy and the fight against hungerThe world food economy is changing, these changes will continue over the next few decades -and they have implications for FAO. How does FAO ensure that new issues do not distract attention from the fundamental objective of reducing undernourishment and poverty? And are there opportunities for FAO to develop innovative ways of thinking about and responding to food insecurity?The scale of the changes is not in doubt. They are extensively reviewed in the articles in this volume, and are summarised in Box 1. From an agricultural perspective, key features are the increasing commercialisation of farming, the increasing reliance on technical change as the main source of growth, the growing importance of oilseeds and livestock products in global output, and the growing agricultural trade deficits of developing countries (FAO, 2002a). These changes are both driven by and interact with rapid urbanisation and rapid industrialisation of the food industry. The traditional view of agriculture in developing countries has been of small-scale producers serving largely local markets. There is an increasing need to focus on largely urban markets that are