Why Nations Fail, Famine and the Nobel Prize

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded in October to the authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in part for the analysis of international inequalities in their best-selling 2012 book Why Nations Fail:  The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Crown Publishers), which arrays economic development experiences of many countries to argue that poverty and famine are due to a lack of inclusive institutions allow for broad participation in decision-making processes and provide incentives for innovation and productivity.  The authors refer to “extractive” examples where the interests of elites are empowered over the needs of the population.

While not specifically exploring hunger, the authors touch on agriculture and food insecurity, for instance when comparing North Korea (characterized by extractive institutions) and South Korea (inclusive), including North Korea’s drift toward famines.  The authors also look at the extractive rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, which resulted in famine.  They write:  “The persistence of poverty in many parts of the world is not due to lack of resources or ignorance… but to extractive economic institutions.”

Acemoglu teaches economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Robinson at Harvard University.   They write: “economies based on the repression of labor and systems such as slavery and serfdom are notoriously noninnovative. This is true from the ancient world to the modern era. In the United States, for example, the northern states took part in the Industrial Revolution, not the South. Of course slavery and serfdom created huge wealth for those who owned the slaves and controlled the serfs, but it did not create technological innovation or prosperity for society.

Governments resist agricultural reforms that can mitigate malnutrition and poor health because of fear.  “”Fear of creative destruction is often at the root of the opposition to inclusive economic and political institutions.”

The authors note: “In many African countries, the majority of the labor force works in agriculture, yet agricultural productivity is very low…. The Green Revolution in agriculture… had a major impact on the lives of millions of people, but its benefits were highly unevenly distributed.”

Acemoglu and Robinson acknowledge that geography and culture play some role, as does agency.  But they array evidence that inclusive economic institutions like property rights, rule of law, ease of starting businesses, and open, competitive markets create incentives for investment, innovation, and widespread economic participation – driving sustained growth.  Echoing decades of comments by other economists, they observe that many poor nations are trapped in a “vicious circle” where extractive political institutions inhibit economic reform and preserve the power and wealth of elites.

Some critics of the authors’ argument focus on reverse causality.  In other words, wealthier, modernized countries are more likely to foster inclusive institutions.  Bill Gates critiqued the authors for attributing Venice’s decline to institutional changes rather than external factors like competition in trade routes.  Similarly, Gates argued that the authors overlook environmental factors like droughts in explaining the collapse of civilizations such as the Mayans.

 

S Hansch

 

Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response by Fred Cuny

Book Classic:  Famine, Conflict and Response:  a Basic Guide

By Fred Cuny, with Rick Hill      (West Hartford, CN:  Kumarian Press       1999)

This basic, extremely readable text about famine prevention and relief remains a preferred textbook decades after first written by Fred Cuny, and published after he was killed along with his team near Chechnya.  Compiled posthumously by Fred’s colleagues Rick Hill and Pat Reed, the text style is not academic, but practical, reflecting Fred’s own frontline problem solving in a wide range of emergencies.

Chapter one addresses the causes of famine, including war, drought, disruptions to markets, failure to plant, collapse in purchasing power and environmental degradation.  This is followed by an examination of the consequences of famine, including measles, diarrhea, the separation of family members, and challenges to social bonds.  In chapter three, Cuny puts forward the notion famines spread geographically, how famine ‘belts’ shift.  Chapter four explores the economy of rural subsistence communities and herding pastoralists.  He observes how famine coping strategies, such as eating seed stocks, prolong the famine by decreasing the next year’s harvest.

Chapter five shifts to aid agency response, namely early warning, including the USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) which watches for indicators of famine;  increases in distress sales, livestock deaths, crop failure, poor rainfall, low food reserves, and then – at a late stage – increases in the rate of child malnutrition.  Fred pointed out the value of “food demand models” that “attempt to find out whether people have reasonable access to that food..  Access is measured by the market price and whether people have the money to buy an item or barter for it.”  Notably:  “a rapid increase in food prices or a drop in family income may indicate the onset of famine.”

The book then has several chapters of “counter-famine” interventions, including food, cash, “market interventions” including loans, market sales, food-for-work, price supports for livestock, barter, grain-for animal exchanges, subsidies, price controls, and income-generating projects that improve agricultural systems.  Page 76 presents a novel and brilliant diagram matching stages of famine (hoarding, migration, starvation, etc.) against preferred interventions (monetization, food-for-work, price support, intensive feeding, etc.)  Fred encourages counter-famine operations “aimed at keeping the local market system from collapsing, preventing people from having to sell their assets, stopping migration and maintaining the family.”

Decades ahead of his time, Cuny outlined the use of vouchers or coupons, to be redeemed with identified food vendors set up for each community.  He also recognized the counter-famine dynamics of tapping local merchants and food supplies:  “Once merchants release food they are hoarding, others will also start to sell… helping to reactive the normal market system.”

The book explains food rations and the logistics of moving and storing food to camps.  His explanation of the use of aircraft is short but clear.  The book concludes with chapters about effective aid monitoring and cross-border operations which are frequently necessary for reaching conflict zones.  The book concludes with discussion of helping populations along border “enclaves” and their long-term shift to rehabilitation and return.

In the volume’s introduction former OXFAM, CEO John Hammock, and former USAID administrator, Andrew Natsios, explain that Fred’s “powers of observation and analysis were his greatest strengths, allowing him to aggregate disparate and seemingly unrelated data into a coherent explanation of what was happening and then design a comprehensive strategy to address the crisis.” Then, “Whenever Fred traveled to a food emergency, he would first stop at the local market to review prices for price and livestock and to talk with merchants about inflationary pressures, the volume of commodity turnover in the market, the sources of commodity supply, and to which local ethnic or political groups the merchants were allied.  And then he would simply stand and observe:  who was buying, what they were buying, and what they were using for currency.  By the end of the first day, he would understand much of the economy of famine in the region.”

They also summarize key themes that ran through Fred’s analyses:

  •  The context of the emergency is crucial;
  •   Traditional responses by international agencies can cause more harm than good;
  •   International aid is a drop in the bucket compared with local aid;
  •   The key to success in relief aid is involving local people directly;
  •   Relief and development are intricately linked;
  •   Relief aid is not a logistical exercise to get goods to people – it is a process to accelerate recovery; and
  •   Relief intervention teaches us lessons; we should heed the lessons learned from the past.

WHO Reports 43,000 excess deaths in Somalia, in 2022, due to Drought

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported the results of a retrospective study commissioned by both their WHO-Somalia office and Unicef’s Somalia office.  The study,  conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College-London, used  statistical modeling to determine that approximately 43,000 excess deaths occurred in 2022 due to the drought in Somalia, largely associated with malnutrition.

“Love and Liberation” Captures Voices of Local Aid Workers in Famine Zone

Lauren Carruth’s important 2021 book, Love and Liberation – Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) fills a gap in the literature about aid programs by listening to the perspectives of those personnel delivering aid on the front-lines who are not expatriates, but locals, who, by the way, represent the majority of staff for all aid agencies everywhere.  In doing so she discusses alternate ways of understanding crises, what “localization” actually means, inequalities in local labor hierarchies.

Carruth, a Professor at American University in Washington, DC, explores the reasons why the eastern region of Ethiopia is repeatedly beset by food crises that have compelled substantial amounts of food and health assistance by the World Food Programme, Save the Children, UNICEF and other aid organizations for decades.  This cyclical nature of the relief industry plays out in other countries as well.  An anthropologist, Dr. Carruth suggests a typology for places and peoples who suffer repeat or perpetual food insecurity.

The author’s interviews cover not only the conditions driving food insecurity, but the emotional lives of the local aid workers who are passionate about their work and emotional about the problems they see firsthand.  As she says “Drivers, logistics managers, translators, data collectors, researchers and field monitors and the like were all necessary to aid operations because, essentially, they make projects happen.”   She compares the expectations and experiences of locals working with the UN, with Non-governmental Organizations, and the Ethiopian government.  The book returns often to this theme:  “the global humanitarian industry depends on ample supplies of cheap, temporary, flexible and expendable labor from the localities where it intervenes — ironically to proffer a narrative of improving the lives of locals.”  She gives voices to the 95% of humanitarian personnel who are from the countries and communities in crisis.

Dr. Carruth’s focus is the Somali region in the northeast of Ethiopia, not the also-disaster-prone central and northern regions of Ethiopia or the recent warzone in Tigray.  The northeast region, past Jijiga is arid lowlands where many populations are pastoral herders, moving around, posing challenges for aid agencies to reach.  Drivers of conflict, the author explains, include both drought and inter-communal conflict.  The research for this book occurred during a confluence of these hazards:  “By July 2018, as I was conducting research for this book, there were over one million persons internally displaced in eastern Ethiopia, newly settled into makeshift camps and informal settlements near Jijiga and Dire Dawa and all along the Oromia-Somali regional boundaries.”

An example of the type of work the book draws on are mobile health and nutrition teams.  “Mobile teams have been active in the [East Ethiopian] Somali Region since 2005 during a measles and polio outbreak.  Most mobile teams are designed to provide vaccinations, a few essential medications, water treatment equipment referrals to higher medical facilities, supplies of ready-to-eat fortified BP-5 biscuits and therapeutic Plumpy’Nut peanut paste…  Typically communities qualify for mobile team visits based on local rates of acute malnutrition in children under five years or reported outbreaks of infectious disease in the local population… but ..most humanitarian relief targeted the lives and health of young children and their mothers and not the entire community.”

While describing the “affable characters” whom the author finds in the local humanitarian outreach, Dr. Carruth also documents the reciprocal exchange networks  by which the population copes, including trade over long distances.  For instance:

  •        “The decentralization of relief work with its focus on training and hiring ever more local staff and deploying them throughout the region — often on mobile dynamic projects — requires hospitality on the part of hosting family members, friends and recipient communities.  Hospitality is therefore necessary to accomplish the logistics and travel humanitarian interventions require.”
  •    Local staff are compensated in a range of ways.  For instance, “Food for work, training workshops in midwifery and similar interventions organized through governmental and UN relief programs are almost free gifts and …humanitarian handouts.”

Carruth does an admirable job describing the tensions between short-term relief (band aids) and longer-term systemic problems.  So many locals in Ethiopia have been saturated with surveys by NGOs who also promise assistance that doesn’t come.

She describes how local aid workers who are indispensable feel, nevertheless, that they are invisible. “The humanitarian industry continues to rely on the willingness of locals to accept temporary, precarious and flexible contracts, informal labor arrangements and small salaries and per diems [reimbursements] for less money than either Amharic-speaking Ethiopians or expatriates occasionally flying into the Somali [eastern] Region.  The informality of the aid work so often performed by locals and the popularity of tropes about the heroic local aid worker also leave unquestioned the consideration in which their labor takes place, and leave unquestioned the fact that it is often performed in unacceptable conditions with no benefits and no legal rights or recourse for workers’ emotional well-being, abuse, exploitation or injury.”

At 169 pages this book is readable, timely and relevant to anyone interested in how actual humanitarian work unfolds, telling a very neglected part of the story.

To follow the author’s research, see:  https://laurencarruth.com/

For further information about food insecurity in eastern Ethiopia, see:

https://fews.net/east-africa/ethiopia

https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/over-3-million-people-impacted-worst-drought-40-years-ethiopias-somali-region

 

reviewed by Steven Hansch, WHES board

OXFAM warns that current famine in Horn of Africa will kill a person every 36 seconds.

In a press release of October 14,  2022 Oxfam has sent a warning that from now until the end of the year, the current famine in the Horn of Africa will cause hunger related deaths equivalent to a rate of one person dying every 36 seconds.

OXFAM reiterated  that this famine is worse than the famine in 2011, in which more than a quarter million people died.

Inter-Agency Standing Committee Says Famine Affecting 7.1 Million People Imminent in Somalia

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a United Nations forum which includes the International Committee of the Red Cross, issued a statement last week indicating that up to 7.1 Million people will be affected by famine in parts of Somalia. In a statement on September 5, 2022, the IASC indicated that there is a desperate need for more money from countries around the world.

HUNGER HOTSPOTS ACROSS THE GLOBE

This is a view of the most urgent hunger hotspots around the world. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) used by the United Nations and International Aid Agencies consists of five levels of severity for food insecurity as follows:
1. Minimal – Acceptable
2. Stressed – Alert
3. Crisis – Serious
4. Emergency – Critical
5. Catastrophe – Famine

https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/ipc-overview-and-classification-system/en/

For the following countries, the operative factor was the prevalence (current rate among children) of Acute Malnutrition (also known as wasting) from 2021 assessments.

AFGHANISTAN
Fourteen (14) million people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity, and an estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year. At least 1 million of these children are at risk of dying due to severe acute malnutrition without immediate treatment.
A November 2021 UN survey mission  to Kandahar Province to assess the current capacity and needs found increases in number of cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition were also reported. (WFP)

ETHIOPIA
This severe crisis results from the combined effects of civil war, limited humanitarian access, loss of harvest and livelihoods, and collapsed markets.
In May 2021, it was reported that 5.5 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity and 3.1 million people were in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) while 2.1 million people were in an Emergency (IPC Phase 4).

A food security analysis update conducted in Tigray and the neighboring zones of Amhara and Afar concludes that over 350,000 people were in ‘catastrophe’, according to Integrated Phase Classification or IPC 5 (famine) levels between May and June 2021. Since November 2021, approximately 100,000 people have fled their homes in Tigray, including more than 48,000 who headed westwards and crossed the border into eastern Sudan. Thousands are at risk of hunger, and peace is vital to stop the situation in Tigray from worsening.

YEMEN
The food security situation in Yemen significantly deteriorated during 2020 and has reached crisis levels. Over 2.25 million children under five years old have suffered from acute malnutrition in 2021. The reasons include the ongoing civil conflict, very poor access to health services and poor sanitation in most areas.

SOMALIA
The key drivers of acute food insecurity in Somalia include the combined effects of poor rainfall, as well as flooding and war. Almost 3.5 million people across Somalia faced food gaps or loss of livelihood assets indicative of Crisis (IPC Phase 3) through the end of the year. Moreover, it is estimated 1.2 million children under the age of five are likely to be acutely malnourished, including nearly 213,400 who are likely to be severely malnourished. Desert Locust will continue to pose a serious risk to both pasture availability and crop production across Somalia.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
During a Food Insecurity analysis of Central African Republic conducted in September 2021, 67 of the country’s 71 sub-prefectures were assessed The Assessment projected that from the period of September 2021 to March 2022, nine sub-prefectures are to be classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and 59 in Crisis (IPC Phase 3). Of the 4.9 million people living in these sub-prefectures, 2.1 million (43%) will experience high levels of acute food insecurity through March 2022, including around 620,000 people in Emergency levels (IPC Phase 4).

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC)
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. More than five million people have been displaced, including three million children. Most of these displaced families have sheltered in local communities that are only just managing to meet their own needs. Other displaced persons live in informal camps where living conditions are even harsher.

According to the latest Acute Malnutrition analysis, nearly 900,000 children under five and more than 400,000 pregnant or lactating women are likely to be acutely malnourished through August 2022 in the 70 health zones assessed out of a total of 519 health zones. These estimates include more than 200,000 severely malnourished children requiring urgent care.

KENYA
An estimated 653,000 children and 96,500 pregnant and lactating women require treatment for acute malnutrition. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic that is affecting all counties in the country, the caseload among children aged 6 to 59 months requires urgent attention. The nutrition situation has remained similar across arid counties compared to the August 2020 analysis.

ANGOLA
An analysis of Acute Malnutrition in 10 municipalities in Southern Angola has revealed that around 114,000 children under the age of five are suffering or are likely to suffer from acute malnutrition in the next 12 months and therefore require treatment

MADAGASCAR
Over 500,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished through April 2022, of which over 110,000 are likely severely malnourished and require urgent life-saving treatment. Food insecurity is a major contributing factor to the nutrition situation, followed by poor access to sanitation facilities and improved drinking water sources due to drought.

Conditions are likely to continue deteriorating in the coming months. Nearly 1.6 million people—approximately 60 percent of southern Madagascar’s population—will likely require humanitarian assistance from June 2021 to May 2022.

CHAD
Over 500,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished through April 2022, of which over 110,000 are likely  to be severely malnourished and require urgent life-saving treatment. Food insecurity is a major contributing factor to the nutrition situation, followed by poor access to sanitation facilities and improved drinking water sources due to drought.