“Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again.”

28th Oct 2024

 

Perhaps the most important song lyric of our generation and certainly one that will be played regularly as we approach the festive period.

At the same time, Bill Gates is back on the campaign trail, as co-chair of the Gates Foundation he is pressing for a global effort to tackle child malnutrition. In their latest report, they suggest that without immediate action climate change will condemn an additional 40 million children to stunting and 28 million more to wasting between 2024 and 2050.

In 2023, the World Health Organisation estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, where they do not develop mentally or physically, all because of chronic or acute malnutrition. According to the World Bank, undernutrition costs $3 trillion a year in lost productivity, in some low-income countries it can account for up to 16 per cent of GDP.

The Gates Foundation want action around improving agricultural productivity, to enhancing the nutritional value of staple foods, to vitamin supplements. But how much would it cost to ‘feed the world’?

According to the UN World Food Programme, there are 828 million people classed as ‘hungry’, with 345 million of those experiencing the most severe forms of hunger, including starvation. Their Executive Director, in 2021 calculated it would cost $320 billion to end hunger by 2030. Let me repeat that, $320 billion or £250 billion to ‘feed the world’.

So where is he going with this, I hear you ask.

UK government figures suggest that 14 per cent of UK carbon emissions are from heating homes, that’s 14 per cent of the 1 per cent of global emissions the UK is responsible for. Now we all accept the need to reduce emissions but the pathway favoured by many, the full electrification of heat, comes with an estimated bill of £500 billion.

I make no judgement; give no opinion; take no sides in the debate over the relative merits of spending these large sums. I will leave that to the reader and perhaps for politicians to ponder over.