Inside Brazil’s plan to cut world hunger by 2030

When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil pitched the Group of 20 largest economies a plan to drastically slash world hunger, he may have been speaking out of political ambition. But he was also speaking from personal experience. Lula, 78, was born to parents who had experienced famine as farmers in rural northeastern Brazil. And he centered his first presidency two decades ago around social welfare programs that helped reduce childhood malnourishment and mortality in his country by almost half. So he drew on that experience when he spoke in Rio de Janeiro in July before the finance chiefs of the G20, which Brazil chairs this year, and forcefully said that it is appalling for millions of people to go hungry while wealthy individuals travel to space. “No other issue is more important and challenging for humanity than this one today,” Lula said. “We cannot naturalize such disparities when hunger is the most degrading of human deprivations.” Lula is challenging the world to follow Brazil’s example by using its G20 presidency to build a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. His goal is to remove all countries from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s hunger map by 2030. A task force headed by Brazilian officials published foundational documents last month outlining the alliance’s criteria and mechanisms. There’s renewed urgency for it: Some 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, or almost 1 in 10 people on the entire planet, according to the United Nations’ latest annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, which was published July 24, the day of Lula’s speech. That’s about 152 million more than in 2019, which means the world is likely on track to not meet the 2030 deadline of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 of ending hunger. Brazilian officials are lobbying countries to join the alliance ahead of the G20 leaders’ summit on Nov. 18 and 19, when it will officially launch. They expect more than 100 initial member nations. So how will the alliance work? ‘A matchmaker’ The alliance isn’t designed to replace global financing for anti-hunger efforts but to instead mobilize the G20’s political capital to make it easier for the countries with the greatest need to access existing resources, according to Renato Godinho, a special adviser to Brazil’s Ministry of Social Development. He co-chairs the task force assigned to establish a basic framework for the alliance. In other words: It won’t be a new pot of money. It’ll be a neutral broker. “The alliance is there to try to create alignment among existing actors,” Godinho told Devex. “It’s not being another trust fund increasing complexity. It’s working as a matchmaker for partnerships that get those actors aligning and working together so we can find scale.” According to its documents, the alliance wants to bring together “public and private financial resources and knowledge, to enable large-scale country-owned and country-led implementation of evidence-based programs and policy instruments.” Potential funding sources are still evolving, but they’ll likely include multilateral banks, regional development banks, wealthy nations and philanthropies, Godinho said. According to the 60-page foundational documents, member countries will be able to submit public policies for alliance staff to consider including in a “Policy Basket.” Examples of policies include support for smallholder farmers, such as insurance or climate-resilient agriculture technologies; malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency prevention and treatment; emergency food or cash transfers in humanitarian or fragile contexts; school meals; or progressive tax and fiscal reforms. Staff members will follow these five criteria when vetting proposals: • The policy must be clearly defined. • Preference will be given to policies that have been implemented or shown to be implementable by national or local governments. • There must be evidence — such as academic research or monitoring and evaluation reports — that shows the policy is effective. • The policy should primarily benefit the lowest-income and most food-insecure populations. • The policy must contribute to reaching the U.N. SDGs, for example, by supporting access to basic services, addressing discrimination against women, or strengthening adaptation to climate change. Member countries will only be able to request support to implement individual policy instruments that are in the basket. Then alliance staff members will review their proposals and — with help from a board of supporters — match them to available funds and technical expertise. The alliance’s own operations are intended to be small and nimble. It will be managed by a full-time staff of as many as 10 people. They’ll get help from a board of senior representatives from the countries and institutions that will provide financial or technical support. The annual payroll budget is expected to be about $3 million. It will have its main office at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s headquarters in Rome, with a presence in a global south city, possibly Brasilia. The Brazilian government is pledging to foot half the bill for the duration of the alliance, which is scheduled to sunset in 2030, Godinho said. The governments of Italy, Norway, Portugal, and Spain have also expressed an interest in supporting the alliance’s operations, he said. Zero hunger The founders of the alliance are betting on officials in each country being the most capable of designing and implementing their own anti-hunger and anti-poverty policies, according to Fabio Veras Soares, international studies director at Brazil’s Institute of Applied Economic Research and a consultant for the alliance. The Brazilian government, under Lula’s first and second presidential terms from 2003 to 2010, helped millions find a way out of poverty through a program called Fome Zero, or Zero Hunger. It included three key pillars: the Bolsa Familia, or Family Allowance, cash-transfer program for low-income families, a national school nutrition program, and subsidies for small family farmers. Those programs had a lasting impact. FAO removed Brazil from its world hunger map in 2014 and the country kept an undernourishment rate below 2.5% until 2019. It came back on the map after the coronavirus pandemic in 2021 and peaked at a rate of 4.1% in 2022 during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who slashed social welfare spending, and remains on the map today. The alliance is designed to work even if individual member countries — including Brazil — drop out of it, Veras Soares told Devex. But its founders hope evidence of its success will encourage member governments to stay — regardless of their political stripes. “The idea is that it’s something that goes beyond the ideological color, right-wing or left-wing, of each government in turn,” Veras Soares said. Early support Lula’s proposal for the alliance was quickly welcomed by multilateral and private institutions. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain called on governments to follow Brazil’s example to prioritize ending hunger, and the Gates Foundation said Brazil was leading the way in sharing knowledge and solutions. Ibrahim Mayaki, a former prime minister of Niger and the African Union’s special envoy for food systems, told Devex that perhaps the biggest significance of the alliance is political. While many anti-hunger initiatives already exist, this one represents a new and deliberate effort to put political capital behind the issue, he said. “Having a global alliance is a call for pragmatism, it’s a reality check,” Mayaki said. “It’ll prove globally that there is a sense, a will, a motivation to go toward solving the problems of hunger, which are not being reduced, but are increasing in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.” For Asma Lateef, policy director at the London-based SDG2 Advocacy Hub, which campaigns for food security, the alliance can be an opportunity for countries to make commitments on curtailing malnutrition ahead of the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris next year. It can also be a resource for countries to learn what knowledge and experience may be available to help them, she said. “I think everyone is doing their own thing, in a way,” Lateef told Devex. “Agreeing on a clear set of policies, evidence, and pragmatic interventions could help align efforts so everybody’s working off the same song sheet.” Leaders summit in November Right now, Veras Soares said, the alliance task force is accepting commitments from countries interested in participating. And they’re overwhelmed because the interest is high and the infrastructure of the alliance won’t be in place until after the G20 leaders summit in Rio de Janeiro in November. They’re working with key collaborators, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the African Development Bank, he said. And for November, they’re hoping to be able to announce “a critical mass” of countries who have committed to participating, as well as the first list of countries that will be supported by it.