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UNITED NATIONS, March 27 (Xinhua) -- A new report showed that food security and nutrition levels in the Near East and North Africa have sharply deteriorated over the last five years, undermining the steady improvement achieved before 2010 when the prevalence of undernourishment, stunting, anemia and poverty were decreasing, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.
"This deterioration is largely driven by the spreading and intensity of conflicts and protracted crises," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here, citing a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on food insecurity in the Near East and North Africa.
"Beyond conflicts and crises, the report argues that water scarcity and climate change are the most fundamental challenges to ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture by 2030," the deadline to realize the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Haq said.
The report, entitled "FAO 2016 Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in the Near East and North Africa," showed that the prevalence of severe food insecurity in the adult population of the Near East and North Africa was close to 9.5 percent in 2014-2015, representing approximately 30 million people.
The Syria crisis in particular has deepened during the period 2015-2016, leaving more than half of the population in need of food assistance and 4.8 million refugees, mostly in neighboring countries. The numbers of food insecure and the internally displaced are also rising in Iraq and Yemen.
Water scarcity is the binding factor to agricultural production in the Near East and North Africa region and the driver of the region's dependency on food imports.
Meanwhile, the report also explored other major options for the adaptation to climate change impacts on water and agriculture, including the need for designing and implementing social protection measures for building resilience of farmers to extreme events, cutting food losses and improving trade policies.
