Alex de Waal - Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine

Copyright Alex de Waal 2018

The right of Alex de Waal to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2018 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300,

Medford, MA 02155

USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2466-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2467-9(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon

by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives PLC.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:

politybooks.com

Distribution of great, calamitous and catastrophic famines

Catalogue of great and calamitous famines and forced mass starvation

Catalogue of great and calamitous famines and forced mass starvation, 191550

Catalogue of great, calamitous and catastrophic famines and forced mass starvation, 195085

Catalogue of great famines and forced mass starvation, 19862011

Famine crime endings, 19502010

Famines and food crises in Ethiopia

Life chances in Ethiopia

Mortality in great and calamitous famines by decade, 18702010

Causes of death in Darfur per month, 20035

World population and death toll from great famines, 18702010

Mortality in great and calamitous famines by continent and decade, 18702010

Numbers of famines per decade

Geographical distribution of famine mortality, 18702010

Economies of Western Europe, China and India as a proportion of world GDP, 17001950

Famine mortality by age group in Darfur

Humanitarian assistance budgets (all donors): 19712015

Ethiopian GDP per capita and famine mortality, 19582010

Number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day worldwide, 19902015 (millions)

Relative gain in income per capita by global income level, 19882008

Global cereal prices, 19902017

Index of real cereal prices (US), 18662008

Global population at risk of hunger, without climate change and with median and high scenarios for climate change

Almost all writing on famine seeks to explain why famines happen exercises in the most dismal science or how humanitarian responses succeed or fail. I began writing this book in 2016 by turning these questions around, asking why calamitous famines had become so rare in the contemporary world, and what could be done to abolish them entirely. These are still relevant questions, but over the course of writing this book my optimism faded. In 2017, famines came back. The head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O'Brien, said in May, famine is knocking on the doors of millions tonight. As this book goes to press, we are left to consider whether the starvation in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen represents a temporary setback or heralds a new era of famines and how we can best respond in either case.

Famine is a shapeshifter. Whether or not there are calamitous famines in the coming century, and where and how such famines will manifest themselves, depends on the forces that shape our global political economy. Let me highlight two elements and how they may interact to shape famine.

One is climate change and the societal transformations needed for humanity to live within the capacity of the planet. There is absolutely no good reason why global warming, and its adverse impacts on the natural environment and on food production, need cause famine.

The second element is the rise of transactional politics. Elsewhere I have called this the political marketplace a governance system characterized by the exchange of political services and loyalties for material resources in a competitive manner, overwhelming any institutional forms of government. In such a system, private interest prevails over public goods and human lives are valued only in so far as they contribute to political gain. Humanitarian action is subordinate to political bargaining. It is no coincidence that each of the sites of mass starvation in 2017 qualifies as a political marketplace.

The logic of political power ultimately, power over who is entitled to live and who doesn't enjoy that right is often seen most clearly from the global margins. That is the case for Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen today. The mass starvation in these countries is both a scandal and a tragedy in its own right and also a lens for understanding global political trends. Security bosses and political entrepreneurs in these countries are candid that they are operators in a market in which political power is traded, and where people are commodities or bargaining chips. The same political logic is now recognizable in Washington, DC, and American political operators are using a political vernacular that is familiar to their counterparts in Khartoum or Kabul. President Donald J. Trump's security and economic advisors have written, The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a global community but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage. Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.

Transactional politics provides fertile soil for counter-humanitarianism the rolling back of the hard-won humane norms of the last seventy years. Among the counter-humanitarians are political-business elites, who use humanitarian actions only as part of power games, and ideologues, such as religious absolutists, who reject the norms altogether.

In so far as the Trump Administration can be said to have a humanitarian agenda or doctrine, it is tactical and instrumental. Consider the situations in Syria and Yemen in 2017. In both countries, military campaigns have inflicted starvation and destroyed the infrastructure necessary for sustaining life. In a remarkably candid address to the Security Council, O'Brien said:

The people of Yemen are being subjected to deprivation, disease and death as the world watches. This is not an unforeseen or coincidental result of forces beyond our control. It is a direct consequence of actions of the parties and supporters of the conflict, and is also, sadly, a result of inaction whether due to inability or indifference by the international community.

Most of the USAID staff working on these countries are responding with the same commitment and professionalism as they did under previous administrations. Some are compromised by clandestine second jobs in intelligence or logistics for special operations. It was rare for her to make any reference to a destructive and faminogenic campaign fought by US allies, using US weapons, and she did not acknowledge responsibility, express any readiness to curtail the infliction of starvation or concede that a universal principle was at stake.