2024: A bleak year for hunger and poverty, with an unexpected ray of hope

The year 2024 will not be remembered as a good year for international development. Progress towards the eradication of poverty and hunger, the twin pillars of the U.N.’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has slowed. The Baku climate summit was an ecological car crash. Aid budgets are under pressure. Africa is in the grip of a new debt crisis. And much of the world is in the grip of “my country first” populist nationalism. To cap the dismal catalog, the human wrecking ball that is Donald Trump is preparing a new assault on the multilateral institutions the world needs to tackle our shared problems.

But where there is resistance, there is hope. One bright spot on the horizon shone in the unlikely setting of the Group of 20 (G20). Over the years the G20 has become synonymous with bureaucratic inertia, its meetings punctuated by lengthy, sleep-inducing communiqués, shopping lists of good intentions, and half-baked policy proposals that are swiftly sucked into the quicksand of G20 processes.

Under Brazil’s presidency, that picture has started to change.

In his first speech to the G20, President Lula da Silva made it clear the fight against hunger and poverty would be top of the agenda. Within weeks, Brazilian diplomats had outlined plans to create a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty (Global Alliance) to resuscitate the SDGs. Demonstrating a level of diplomatic skill and dogged determination, Brazilian officials navigated the proposal through the G20 — and the Alliance was launched at a summit in Rio de Janeiro last November.

As we write those words, we can feel your temptation to stop reading. Don’t we already suffer a U.N. system geared towards SDG handwringing, followed by despairingly vacuous calls to action? Does the world really need another coalition of good intentions?

“Yes” and “no” in that order — but the Global Alliance could be a global game-changer.

There are three reasons for our optimism. First, the initiative was launched with more than vague aspirations. It came with practical commitments embodied in a series of “2030 Sprints” designed to demonstrate the possibility of change.

The Sprints include some big numbers. The Alliance aims to support initiatives that will provide school meals to another 150 million children in countries where hunger is keeping children out of school, hampering learning, and destroying education opportunities. The World Bank has pledged to work with and through the Alliance as it pursues the target of extending social protection to 500 million people by 2030. That’s a game-changer. A recent study in 46 low- and middle-income countries by researchers from Spain, Mozambique and Brazil showed that social protection programs alone have prevented nearly a billion people from becoming undernourished over the past two decades.

Here’s the second reason why the Global Alliance should be taken seriously: it comes from Brazil. During his first term of office from 2003 President Lula’s “zero hunger” program used a mix of cash transfers to poor households, free school meals, and support for smallholder farmers to launch an assault on Brazil’s deeply entrenched poverty and inequality.

It worked. The campaign enabled 20 million Brazilians to climb out of poverty. By 2014, Brazil had been removed from the FAO’s World Hunger Map. Inequality declined as targeted cash transfers raised the incomes of the poor. Zero-hunger remains the most significant human development success story of the 21st Century — and the Global Alliance is taking that model to the world stage.

Of course, President Lula is not the first G20 leader to call for action on poverty and hunger. The former U.K. prime minister David Cameron was one of the architects of the SDGs, which include a resounding call to “leave no one behind.” He was at the time overseeing a fiscal assault on the poor in the U.K., implementing reforms that saw child poverty spiral. By contrast, Brazil’s backing for an attack on poverty starts at the top, and it’s grounded not in vague rhetoric but practical delivery and commitment to social justice.

Our third reason for optimism is the practicality of the Global Alliance’s approach. As highlighted in an ODI report, the international aid agenda is hopelessly fragmented and ineffective. There are (quite literally) hundreds of overlapping special initiatives, each of them coming complete with their own donor branding flags, their own reporting systems, and an absence of effective coordination.

The Alliance has provided a platform for donors to come together and work collectively in support of their shared SDG targets by national plans developed by southern governments.

None of this will be easy. The SDG patient is in intensive care — and the vital signs are weakening. On current trends, global hunger rates in 2030 will be the same as they were in 2015 when the SDGs were adopted. There will be 300 million more people living in extreme poverty than there would be if the 2030 ambition were achieved. Progress in cutting child mortality has slowed, and the world will miss the target for reducing stunting among under-5s by levels equivalent to 39.6 million children.

Behind these numbers are the real human lives, the diminished opportunities, and the obscene inequalities that have accompanied the international community’s failure to honor its SDG pledges.

Turning the tide in the battle for the SDGs will require action on many fronts. Debt reduction is imperative. It is unconscionable that Africa today is spending more repaying creditors than it is investing in health, education, and nutrition. The multilateral development banks — the World Bank and its regional counterparts — should be equipped to play a far more assertive role in combating climate change and supporting SDG recovery: an independent expert group has called for a $260 billion boost to spending.

International cooperation cannot substitute for effective national policies in the Global South. But failures in international cooperation can act as a brake on progress — and it’s time to release the brake.

During his speech launching the G20, President Lula provided a reminder of what global leadership looked like. “The international community,” he said, “seems resigned to navigating aimlessly […] swept along by a current that is pushing us towards tragedy.” His call to action offers a vision for a different future — and a roadmap for getting there.