THE WORLD BANK

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COMPASSION IN WORLD FARMING: The Extinction & Livestock Conference, organised by CiWF in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), was the world’s first ever conference to explore the impact of livestock production on animals, people and the planet. It attracted more than 500 people from 30 different countries who heard from many world leading experts on the environment, conservation, food policy, animal welfare and human health.

THE GUARDIAN NOVEMBER 4 2017 - $640 MILLION PLEDGED TO MALNOURISHED THIRD WORLD

Donors have pledged an extra $640m (£490m) to reduce the serious burden of malnutrition, which affects one in three people in the world.

The crisis “endangers the physical and mental wellbeing of present and future generations”, warned Kofi Annan, speaking in advance of the global nutrition summit in Milan on Saturday. “We need further urgent investments so that people, communities and nations can reach their full potential.”

The World Bank has pledged to increase its spending on nutrition to $1.7bn by 2020. The summit will be accompanied by the launch of the 2017 global nutrition report, in which almost every country in the world is identified as facing a serious nutritional challenge.

The annual report found 88% of all the countries surveyed face a serious burden of two or three forms of malnutrition, including childhood stunting, anaemia in women of childbearing age, and/or overweight in women.

Although the number of children under five who are chronically or acutely malnourished has fallen in many countries, the data show the rate of decline is not rapid enough to meet internationally agreed targets. At the other end of the spectrum, the “inexorable rise” in obesity continues, with 2 billion adults obese or overweight and 41 million children overweight.

FAST FOOD: The global nutrition report estimates that the likelihood of meeting internationally agreed targets to halt the rise in obesity and diabetes by 2025 is less than 1%. While some countries enjoy virtually limitless supplies of food to fuel over-eating on a regular basis, others are at the other end of the extremes. While trying to achieve a balance, we must not blame the fast food chains for providing meals quickly. Using plastic for packaging though, is something that we can address by making people aware of the harm careless disposal could mean. We must fight to conserve our food resources to be able to tackle starvation that is likely to increase seriously when the fish run out. For that is sure to happen if we do not make waves now to do something about ocean waste.

The likelihood of meeting global targets to halt the rise in obesity and diabetes by 2025 is less than 1%.

At the summit, governments including Ivory Coast, El Salvador and Madagascar committed to extending their nutrition programmes. Philanthropic organisations in India and Nigeria have promised to spend $150m to tackle the problem in the two countries with the highest numbers of malnourished children.

A study published earlier this year showed how the number of people going hungry in the world had increased for the first time since the turn of the century, sparking concern that climate change and conflict could reverse years of progress.

Roughly 815 million people were going to bed hungry last year, compared with 777 million in 2015.

An estimated 38 million people face food insecurity in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, while Ethiopia and Kenya are facing severe droughts.

The report found that spending by donors on undernutrition increased by 1% to $5m between 2014 and 2015, but fell as a proportion of official development assistance, from 0.57% in 2014 to 0.5% in 2015.

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “When nutrition is at the top of the agenda, countries can tap into their full potential … These commitments bring us one step closer to a future in which every child not only survives, but thrives.” By Karen Mcveigh

ABOUT THE WORLD BANK

The World Bank consists of five organizations:

CLOSE CROP: Industrial agriculture is raping the land and depositing the dirty laundry in our oceans and rivers. This picture is of combine harvesters crop soybeans in Campo Novo do Parecis, a former rainforest in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

WORLD BANK GOALS

The World Bank Group has set two goals for the world to achieve by 2030:

1. End extreme poverty by decreasing the percentage of people living on less than $1.90 a day to no more than 3%

2. Promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40% for every country

The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. We are not a bank in the ordinary sense but a unique partnership to reduce poverty and support development. The World Bank Group comprises five institutions managed by their member countries.

Established in 1944, the World Bank Group is headquartered in Washington DC. They have more than 10,000 employees in more than 120 offices worldwide.

The WB provide low-interest loans, zero to low-interest credits, and grants to developing countries. These support a wide array of investments in such areas as education, health, public administration, infrastructure, financial and private sector development, agriculture, and environmental and natural resource management. Some of their projects are co-financed with governments, other multilateral institutions, commercial banks, export credit agencies, and private sector investors.

They also provide or facilitate financing through trust fund partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donors.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 2018

POVERTY

More than 1 billion people still live in deep poverty, a state of affairs that is morally unacceptable given the resources and technology we have available today. At the same time, rising inequality and social exclusion seems to accompany rising prosperity in many countries.

Under these circumstances, the World Bank's overarching mission of a world free of poverty is as relevant today as it has ever been.

With this is mind the World Bank has established ambitious, but achievable goals to galvanize international and national efforts to end extreme poverty globally within a generation and to promote "shared prosperity," a sustainable increase in the well-being of the poorer segments of society.

This second goal reflects the fact that all countries aspire to a better living standard for all of their citizens, not only for the already-privileged. To end extreme poverty, the Bank's goal is to decrease the percentage of people living with less than $1.90 a day to no more than 3 percent by 2030.

SWAMPED: Dead fish in a polluted bayou off the Pearl river in St Tammany parish, Louisiana.