The picture in Asia and the Pacific continues to deteriorate and the region is significantly off track towards achievement of the Targets 2.1 and 2.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Urgent systemic and sectoral actions are needed.

This year’s report presents the latest updates of the food security and nutrition situation around the region, including updated estimates on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet. Reducing the cost of a healthy diet and making it more affordable is a critical element for achieving ending hunger (SDG2) and also the other SDGs. The report then takes a deep dive into urban food security and nutrition which will increasingly contribute to the progress in SDG indicators in the coming years as the percentage of the population in urban areas across countries in the region is set to cross 50 percent in this decade.

Of the 767.9 million undernourished in the world, 52 percent are in the region and 83 percent of them are in Southern Asia. The estimates of PoU almost halved from 14.3 percent in 2000 to 7.3 percent in 2019, reflecting almost two decades of rapid economic growth. However, challenged by climate change, conflict and other factors, the rate of decline in PoU was already slowing down before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of undernourished in the Asia-Pacific region increased from 370 million in 2020 to 396 million in 2021 and the PoU rose to 9.1 percent. This is a clear message that food systems in the region are not sufficiently resilient and are unable to recover robustly from shocks.

Asia and the Pacific accounts for half the people facing moderate or severe food insecurity in the world. A quarter of the population in the region suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity as measured by the FIES scale. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that this number is more than a billion people in 2021. 460 million people in the region suffered from severe food insecurity, while an additional 586 million suffered moderate food insecurity.

These figures are a result of pre-existing economic shocks and the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of the war in Ukraine on global food, energy and fertilizer prices and supplies are not captured but it is significantly impacting economies and poses further threats to food security, nutrition and livelihoods. Many households are experiencing a continuous and relentless succession of these shocks, which heighten the severity and magnitude of their acute food insecurity over time.

Progress towards multiple global nutrition targets have also significantly slowed down or stalled. These include stunting and wasting in children under five years of age and child overweight. The region is home to nearly 75 million stunted children and almost 10 percent of children under five years of age are wasted. These numbers therefore will have a significant impact on the productivity of populations and economies in the future. The magnitude of the problem is such that responses at scale such as the global action plan on child wasting are needed to accelerate progress in their prevention and management. These estimates are based primarily on data collected prior to 2020 and do not account for the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Concomitantly, childhood overweight is rising in the Asia and Pacific region, as in the rest of the world and was at 5 percent in 2020. The most striking change has been in South-eastern Asia, where the prevalence of overweight children doubled from 3.7 percent to 7.5 percent in between 2000 and 2020.

Food insecurity and malnutrition severely affect women as exemplified by the prevalence of anaemia. It continues to be uniformly high (greater than 10 percent) across the region in women between 15 and 49 years of age. In Southern Asia, almost half the women (48 percent) have anemia and relatively richer countries are also struggling to reach the target of a 50 percent reduction by 2025, as set by the WHA. The prevalence of adult obesity in Asia and the Pacific (6.1 percent) was lower than the global prevalence of 13.1 percent, but adult obesity has been rising in every country in the region.

The estimates of PoU and FIES and the figures on child malnutrition and obesity show that the region is way off-track from achieving SDG2 targets by 2030. The data on adult obesity, anaemia among women and prevalence of low birthweight show up the urgent need for increased access to a healthy diet and reducing the heavy marketing of unhealthy options. However, a healthy diet is unaffordable in the region based on 2020 data. The average cost is USD 3.98 per person per day. Almost 1.9 billion people or 44.5 percent of the population in Asia and the Pacific could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 due to the increased cost. Between 2019 and 2020, Asia and the Pacific experienced the highest surge in the cost of a healthy diet (4.5 percent).

Investment, in agriculture, both public and private, with a focus on small holders and family farmers needs to be stepped up. Persisting with and expanding social protection programmes especially for women and children and repurposing policies to reduce the cost of healthy diets and enhance their affordability for consumers are critically needed measures.

Urban food security and nutrition will increasingly contribute a bigger component to the achievement of SDG2 and WHA indicators as more than 50 percent of the Asia and the Pacific region’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2030. About 40 percent of the region’s current urban population, 500 million, lives in informal settlements.

Urbanization is contributing to changing food environments and the modernization of supply chains. A sign of that change in a region still dominated by traditional fresh food markets, is the increase in number of supermarkets by 55 percent in the five years from 2013 to 2018. Trends show that eating away from home and the share of income spent on of food prepared away from home is clearly increasing in urban areas. Moreover, there is a rise in sales and promotion of highly processed foods and drinks with high energy density and low nutritional value which do not contribute to healthy diets. The cost of healthy diets and food environments, including street foods, play important roles in meeting the energy needs of urban residents in a nutrition transition context. Targeted support for urban poor households, and key social interventions that local governments and communities have promoted, provide meaningful lessons across Asia and the Pacific, including from the COVID-19 pandemic.