Realizing the human right to adequate and affordable food depends on multiple SDGs

Access to adequate and affordable food to support health and well-being is a fundamental human right. The need to accelerate progress in universal realization of this right is restated in the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #2: End malnutrition, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Yet as the 2030 endline for the SDGs approaches, more than a quarter of the world’s population remains food insecure. The reasons for this stem from our collective failure on tackling other SDGs. For a start, food security cannot be assured without ending poverty (SDG-1) and improving gender equality (SDG-5). 

Food insecurity is defined as a lack of access to an adequate quantity and quality of food due to resource constraints, or poverty. Persistent gender inequalities place women at disproportionate risk. Despite their crucial role in food production, women have lower access to land, agricultural inputs and decision-making power than men, and are more likely to have lower paid and precarious employment (SDG-8). Women also shoulder significant unpaid care responsibilities, and are often last in line for household food resources. The implications of gender inequalities were made stark by the COVID-19 pandemic, when women’s job losses were significantly higher than men’s, care burdens increased and the global gender gap in food insecurity widened to more than 4 percentage points.

The perinatal period is a particularly vulnerable time. Nutritional requirements and care responsibilities increase during pregnancy and lactation, but access to income decreases. Millions of women around the world rely on informal employment with precarious working conditions and no provision for leave. Here in Canada, federal maternity and parental leave income supports operate through an insurance model, with eligibility and benefits based on prior employment. This income support structure makes paid maternity leave unavailable or unaffordable to women with lower incomes, precarious work or who are lone parents. Perinatal food insecurity is prevalent among marginalized families in Canada and around the world. This compromises health and well-being (SDG-3) at a critical stage of the life course, and perpetuates social inequalities (SDG-10). 

Compounding these chronic drivers of global food insecurity, conflict (SDG-16) and climate change (SDG-13) disrupt food production systems and cause people to be displaced from their communities and to threaten livelihoods. These crises increase poverty and food insecurity, again with gender inequalities placing women at disproportionate risk. The ripple effects of these shocks can extend regionally and globally, as with the devastating impact of the conflict in Ukraine on global wheat and energy prices.

Structures, systems, policies and social norms hold the power to perpetuate or alleviate food insecurity at all levels from local to global. The SDGs provide multiple avenues for positive and equitable change. They also represent the interconnected pathways to human and planetary well-being, starting with attainment of the most basic of human rights: sufficient safe and nutritious food.