The United Nations reckons that 2 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty over the last 25 years. Even though the global population marked a 50 percent increase from 1990 to 2017, growing from 5 billion people to 7.5 billion people, the number of people counting as living in "low human development" plummeted, falling from 3 billion to 926 million, or from 60 percent of the world's population to a mere 12 percent. That is a development that should be applauded.
Despite those impressive gains, however, the number of people suffering from hunger has increased. According to the annual U.N. report "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World," food insecurity has risen for three years in a row and reached an "alarming" 10-year high last year. It is estimated that 821 million people suffers from chronic food shortages. That is an increase from 804 million people in 2016 and is roughly the same number of people who were hungry a decade ago. In other words, many of the gains of the last few decades have been erased as hunger spreads once again.
The report blames climate change for much of the reversal. Extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, heat and storms have doubled since the early 1990s. As the authors note, "climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes are threatening to erode and even reverse the gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition." The tally is revealing: 51 countries faced food crises in 2017, and 34 of them experienced climate shocks.