ASIA AND THE PACIFIC Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2022: Statistics and Trends

This is the fifth annual report jointly written by United Nations agencies on the Asia and the Pacific region’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (in particular SDG 2 – Zero Hunger) and the World Health Assembly (WHA) 2030 targets on food security and nutrition in the region. Unfortunately, the findings of this report are not encouraging. But there is hope.

In each of these flagship reports, we highlight the region’s progress towards these key indicators. In recent years, we reported that progress was stalling, then regressing and then pushing us further off track. This reverse was evident even before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020. But as the pandemic continued, albeit in a milder form in most parts of the region in 2022, the 5F crisis – lack of food, feed, fuel, fertilizer and finance – emerged. Aggravated by the war in Ukraine, we have witnessed during the past year unprecedented food and energy price rises that have hit households and livelihoods hard and pushed additional millions more into hunger and poverty. Many of those numbers, including the impact on women and children, will be most likely captured in the 2023 edition of this report.

In March 2022, the FAO Food Price Index (FPI) capped a steady rise through the previous two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and rose to the highest level since its inception. Since then the FPI has fallen somewhat but remains significantly higher by 28 percent over 2020. High agricultural input prices, concerns about the weather and climate, and increased market uncertainties stemming from the continuing war in Ukraine, are leading to a tightening of food markets. Food import bills are likely to touch a new record of USD 1.94 trillion this year, according to FAO’s latest Food Outlook published in November. Without doubt, this will exacerbate hunger and poverty in the Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most populous region.

The first four chapters in this report describe the statistics and indicators for the Asia and the Pacific region. The numbers are a call for urgent action. In 2021, 396 million people in the region were undernourished and an estimated 1.05 billion people in Asia and the Pacific suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity. Nearly 75 million children under five years of age are stunted, amounting to half of the world’s total, while almost paradoxically, the overall percentage of child obesity continues to rise. The share of the region under five years of age affected by wasting in Asia and the Pacific was nearly 10 percent in 2020.

Among older children and adults, obesity continues to rise in every country of this region. The Pacific Island Countries have the highest prevalence of overweight and obesity in the World. Obesity is a risk factor for many non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) and it has a major impact on national economies by reducing productivity and life expectancy and increasing disability and health care costs. No country in Asia and the Pacific is on track to meet the WHA target of no increase in adult obesity. Making the situation worse is the cost of attaining a healthy diet. A healthy diet is unaffordable in most countries of Asia and the Pacific for nearly two billion inhabitants (1.9 billion persons, which is 44.5 percent of the region’s population). The combined impacts of the pandemic and ongoing inflation have pushed up the average cost of a healthy diet to nearly USD 4 per day (USD 3.98 per person, per day).

Chapters 5–9 of the report focus on urban food security and nutrition. Asia’s cities, in particular, are growing at a fast pace and nearly 55 percent of the population is expected to reside in urban areas by 2030. That rapid rate of migration into cities has enormous consequences for food security and nutrition. See the full report, available at https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3843en

Increasingly, food security and nutrition in the urban context will determine progress (or increasing lack thereof) towards SDG 2 and WHA nutrition targets.

The convergence of an increase in low-income settlements, the rising costs of food and the need for developing an urban food agenda that takes into account infrastructure, transport, clean water and waste management are posing new challenges to planners and national policymakers. This report captures the challenges and system-level determinants of unhealthy diets in urban areas, both with regard to undernutrition and overweight and obesity. It profiles various urban environments, interventions, experiences and the opportunities to innovate at multiple levels to transform urban areas into sustainable cities. We trust that this part of the report will inform urban food policies and governance and stimulate further development programming.

During the year, as the 5F crisis intensified, our agencies took the initiative to join hands at regional and country level to deliver coordinated technical support to countries and actions. We called upon all country representatives and directors to synergize their efforts to address the short-term effects as well as the medium- to long-term impacts, the crisis will have on the economies, households and individuals, particularly on women and children in the region. At the same time, the crisis is an opportunity to build on the momentum of the UN Food Systems Summit of 2021 and we are intensifying efforts with countries to reshape and reimagine food systems across the region to make them more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, leaving no one behind.

Governments, civil society, the private sectors, funding agencies and development agencies will need to continue to demonstrate leadership and partnership. Only then, would this region be able to bring about transformative change in agrifood systems and show improved figures in this flagship report in the years to come.

Jong-Jin Kim
Assistant Director General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Debora Comini
Regional Director for East Asia and the Pacific
United Nations Children’s Fund

George Laryea-Adjei
Regional Director for South Asia
United Nations Children’s Fund

John Aylieff
Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific
World Food Programme

Zsuzsanna Jakab
Deputy Director-General and Officer-in-Charge of the Western Pacific Region
World Health Organization

Poonam Khetrapal Singh
Regional Director for South East Asia
World Health Organization