Just before midnight on Monday, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo appeared on television to declare an unprecedented state of emergency for Lima, the capital. All the city’s residents, he said, were to stay indoors for 24 hours, beginning just two hours after his announcement. The controversial decision, which would later be rescinded after protesters ignored it, came in response to widespread demonstrations by truck drivers and transportation syndicates against the spike in fuel prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Peru’s new crisis came just after Sri Lanka’s president declared a state of emergency in his own country. The Indian Ocean nation [...]
According to a United Nations report released last month, just under one-tenth of the global population was undernourished in 2020, up from 8.4 percent in 2019. Much of that spike was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has severely strained global food systems that were already under pressure due to climate change, population growth, conflict and migration. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Julie Howard, a senior adviser to the global food security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss the U.N. report’s findings. Listen to the full conversation here: If you like [...]
Editor’s Note: You can find all of our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. If you would like to help support our work, please consider taking advantage of our subscription offer here. Late last month, as the coronavirus continued to spread across the globe, the World Food Program warned of a “hunger pandemic.” With lockdowns constraining the incomes of the poor and supply chain disruptions preventing food from reaching consumers, pandemic-related hunger and malnutrition could eventually take more lives than the disease itself. Understanding the geography of the pandemic and the vulnerability of different food systems is critical for a [...]
