On the surface, we seem to stumble from global crisis to catastrophe, and—as I've observed here before—it does feel like the world is descending into chaos. The news media largely communicates this doomsday impression, partly because plenty of "bad stuff" does happen every day and week and partly because bad news sells. In truth, however, things are not all doom and gloom and, in some ways, definitely getting better. The world is less violent than it used to be esp. in terms of international conflicts. It turns out that the world is also better fed than we realize. While we see images of extreme poverty and hunger in the media, a
Christian Science Monitor news posting entitled, "
Confounding expectations, global hunger is down," reports that, "Despite sustained drought across some of the world’s bread baskets, despite the widespread impact of global warming and a destabilizing rise in global food prices – and despite continuing population growth – hunger has decreased over the past two decades." It has decreased by about 6.5% from 19% of the world's population in the 1990s to 12.5% today. There are a number of reasons for this decline, including more innovative ways of carrying out international development by focusing on women as food producers and initiating many smaller projects that are conceived, led, and carried out by local people. The article points out, however, that while there is hope that the decline in hunger will continue, there are still hundreds of millions of people who are hungry and not all of the trend lines are rosy. Still, we are living in a perceptibly less hungry world than we were twenty years ago, and that is a very good thing. Amen.
