Lola Castro (1963, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) is a “Canarian” who has traveled the entire planet with one mission: to end hunger. As current regional director of the World Food Program in Latin America and the Caribbean, she resides in Panama, but for three decades she has worked on “all continents.”
Now the need to fight hunger is everywhere: the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have had a negative impact around the world, “especially in the southern hemisphere,” precise. Between 691 and 783 million people did not have enough food last year, 122 million more than in 2019, according to the latest UN food security report. And with this, there are already six years of increase in the number of hungry people. “The truth is that it is very sad; “We were making progress,” she laments. There is no good news in the area of food security either: 2.4 billion people wake up every day without knowing if they will have something to put in their mouths that day. Of them, many of those who manage to put a dish on the table cannot even consider a varied and nutritious menu.
The current crises are a perfect storm that is hitting Latin America and the Caribbean hard, Castro emphasizes. Literally, because the adverse effects of climate change, from droughts to hurricanes, are hitting this region that also structurally suffers from high rates of inequality and poverty, he analyzes. The pandemic made even more people increase that statistic and today the shopping basket is so expensive that 131 million Latin Americans cannot afford a healthy diet. Therefore, mobilizing resources to adapt to these phenomena is vital for its inhabitants: their livelihood depends on it. And Castro has come to speak about this at a conference at Casa América in Madrid, where he has also met with the Government, which he praises for having doubled its contributions to the World Food Program for projects in Haiti, Venezuela and Guatemala. “Spain is becoming a good donor,” he says.
Ask. Besides people, what else kills hunger?
Answer. I’m going to tell it with an example. If I am a seven-year-old girl and I go to school to learn, to be a mayor in my community, a doctor, a nurse or an architect when I grow up, and at home they have nothing to feed me other than a tea or a coffee – a red wine As they say in the region, I get to school and I’m so hungry that I don’t understand what my teacher is explaining and I can’t learn anything because my stomach prevents me; basically, hunger is killing my future as a productive woman. It is killing me to develop as a healthy and energetic person, capable of forming a family that will grow with me. It’s killing my hope of getting out of poverty.
In Guatemala, chronic malnutrition is on average 48% of the population. If you go to Huehuetenango, where people of Mayan origin live, you will find up to 85%
Q. What is food photography in Latin America and the Caribbean today?
R. We have structural problems that have to do with poverty and social marginalization, especially of indigenous peoples and people of African descent, who are much further behind in food and nutritional security indicators. For example, in Guatemala, chronic malnutrition is on average 48% of the population. If you go to Huehuetenango, where people of Mayan origin live, you will find up to 85%.
Q. What does this high index mean?
R. Chronic malnutrition is harder to see. It is detected when people are short; It is not that they are shorter, it is that they have not had adequate micronutrients in the mother’s womb and during the first thousand days of life. For this reason, they have grown less and, worse, the internal organs are less developed, which means a great cost for both health systems and families, because they will not be able to develop their full potential.
Q. The region had been making great progress in the fight against this evil, but now it has slowed down. Are governments sufficiently aware?
R. From 3 to 16% of the gross domestic product is lost due to chronic malnutrition in our Latin American and Caribbean countries. When you are a Government and you know that you are going to lose millions of dollars a year because you have not addressed this problem, you want to invest. And many are doing it with good results. But permanent crises prevent governments from sustaining social protection systems that last.
Permanent crises prevent governments from sustaining social protection systems that last
Q. In fact, millions cannot afford a healthy diet.
R. The problem is that the cost of a healthy diet has risen enormously. It now costs four dollars (3.75 euros) per person per day to put three dishes on the table at home, and more than 130 million people do not have that amount. In eight countries where we work, there is food inflation in more than double digits. Households cannot afford it and especially the most vulnerable, those with less income, lower salaries, minimum wages. Another problem we have is obesity due to the change in diets; We consume junk food full of sugars. That also needs to be changed.
Q. You meet more and more with Environment Ministers, why?
R. Food security and the climate crisis are increasingly linked. And hurricanes, droughts, rising seas, and the loss of forests greatly affect the region. In Nicaragua last year we had a hurricane that passed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which is not a normal route, the Julia or the Ian in eastern Cuba, and now with the phenomenon The boy, the entire region of Central America and South America is extremely affected. The climate crisis affects communities, people, and homes and leaves them in poverty. That’s why we see big migrations.
Q. What message do you take to the next climate summit, COP28 in November?
R. We must ensure that climate funds are greater; and now, because the climate crisis is now. In the region we have countries that are going to be highly indebted, especially in the Caribbean; A financial innovation could be debt swapping for adaptation and mitigation activities.
Q. What is adaptation and mitigation in practice?
R. Let’s say you live in a drought area in Guatemala and your corn crop doesn’t grow because it simply isn’t raining at the time the corn germinates. Well, there are options: plant other cereals that are more resistant to drought, sorghum or tubers such as cassava, which are also used to produce flour. Then there is the issue of having water collection systems for the home. And finally, the anticipation. We know what is going to happen. There are so many satellites and weather units in the world that we can make predictions. And take out insurance. In Europe we all have our houses or cars insured, because a farmer in Central America or the Caribbean, if she is insured and loses the harvest, she will be able to plant again.
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