HUNGER AND ABUNDANCE

First the team drew up some “facts about hunger“ with the help of the Internet.

1. Every day about 24000 people die from hunger or from reasons caused by hunger.

Their number has decreased in the previous years. Twenty years ago they were 41000 and ten years ago they were 35000. Three quarters of the starving people are children under 5 years of age.

2. Nowadays 10% of all children in the developing countries die before they have reached their fifth year. Fifty years ago they were still 28%.

3. Famines and wars only cause 10% of the dead from starvation although you learn most about those. The main reason is a chronic malnutrition. The families hust do not get enough to eat. This is the result of extreme poverty.

4. Malnutrition, however, does not only lead to death, but also problems with the eyes, apathy and growth inhibition and increases the risk of infection. Extremely undernourished people are not even able to perform the most elementary functions.

5. An estimated number of about 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, that is about a hundred times more than the number of those who die from it a year.

6. A lot of experts are of the opinion that hunger can at last only be reduced by education.

Well-educated people are most likely able to escape the vicious circle of poverty that causes hunger.

Besides some recent examples of famines the team drew up the “Reasons for the hunger in the world“ :

1. Poverty, heavy debts

2. Wars

3. Lacking possibilities of a say, lack of democracy

4. Bad education possibilities, discrimination of women

5. Water shortage, soil erosion, climatic variations ( droughts, floods, storms )

6. The production of meat. Worldwide about half of the cultivated cereals are used as animal food.

We particularly emphazized that the poverty of many countries is connected with the strongly growing world population.

To sum up : Hunger is caused by the exploitation of man and nature, that is by non-sustainable economizing.

Dear GLOBE-students within the project “The main thing is it tastes nice“,

in our country a lot of food is thrown away. Is this also the case in your country ?

Or is there rather hunger ?

According to your opinion, is the population explosion the cause or the consequence of poverty ?

Have you got any idea how the hunger in the world could at least be stemmed a little bit ?

Could gen-technology contribute to this ?

Is there child labour in your country ?

We, the students of the 6^th form at the Comprehensive School in Velbert, Germany

are looking forward to many interesting replies.