saucy with the gods: nutrition and food security speak to poverty

Food Policy,Vol. 23, No. 3/4, pp. 215–230, 1998 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reservedPergamon

Printed in Great Britain0306-9192/98/$ - see front matter

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VIEWPOINT

Saucy with the Gods: nutrition and foodsecurity speak to poverty

Simon MaxwellOverseas Development Institute, Portland House, Stag Place, London SW1E 5DP, UK

Poverty reduction has become the dominant paradigm of the 1990s, but poverty plan-ners have had to re-learn many hard-won lessons from the earlier experience ofnutrition and food security. Poverty planners can also learn from the current strugglesof these related disciplines: for example, on how to discriminate between competingnarratives, on the problems consequent on nutrition transitions, on managing inter-national targets, and on questions of accountability. In general, this example of poorcommunication between disciplines emphasises the need for institutional learning andfor management of knowledge. Development organisations need networks that cutacross disciplines and sectors, which build cooperation in the field, and which developnew forms of partnership with poor people. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rightsreserved.

Keywords: poverty, food security, planning, rights

Introduction

My title is taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The story I have to tell is of dynasticrivalry and dynastic succession, set between Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and hisdefeat of Pompey in 49 BC, and the final defeat of Mark Antony by the young Octavian, laterthe Emperor Augustus, at the battle of Actium in 31 BC.

The theme of the paper is dynastic succession. Nutrition, prominent in the late 1970s andearly 1980s, was displaced in the 1980s by food security. Food security, in turn, was displacedin the 1990s by poverty. Along the way, there appears to have been a failure to learn lessonsin the process of dynastic succession. Many lessons were taken by Caesar to his grave; manymore by Brutus. Have those lessons been re-learned by Mark Antony and Augustus?

It is important to be clear here that my mission is not to bury poverty but to praise it. Thereis no question that the new emphasis on poverty reduction has re-energised and re-focuseddevelopment policy. However, there are lessons to learn from history. Equally, there may wellbe lessons for poverty in the current intellectual and programmatic struggles of nutrition andfood security. The wider issue is what it means for development agencies to be learning organ-isations.

In developing these ideas, I begin with a review of the lessons forgotten, or perhaps thelessons re-learned by poverty planners in the 1990s. There are at least a dozen of these. I then

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216 Saucy with the Gods: nutrition and food security speak to poverty: S. Maxwell

review current struggles in food security and nutrition, to see whether there are further lessonsfor poverty planners. There are five main areas of possible synergy. Finally, I turn to the futureand propose guidelines for a new Augustan age. There are four of these.

The lessons that poverty forgot, 1990–97

International work on poverty has evolved significantly since the landmark publication of the1990 World Development Report on poverty (World Bank, 1990). There has been creativethinking on policy, a large investment in poverty assessments at country level, and substantialprogrammatic experience. There is a great deal of agreement amongst us about the character-istics and causes of poverty, and about appropriate actions to reduce poverty. In particular,the 1997 UNDP Human Development Report sketched out a vision with which many canagree. Jim Wolfensohn’s speech to the World Bank Board of Governors in Hong Kong inSeptember 1997, ‘The challenge of inclusion’, covered similar territory (Wolfensohn, 1997).

What I want to show here is that much of the learning that has taken place in the 1990scan be traced back to the conventional wisdom of nutrition and food security in the 1980s.There are a dozen points grouped into four main categories. Fig. 1 provides a summary.

What is poverty?

In the 1990 WDR, poverty was discussed largely in income terms. The money metric measure,based on a poverty line of US$1 a day in 1985 purchasing power parity, has been a powerfultool of analysis in poverty assessments. However, the Bank has come to recognise that povertyis multi-dimensional and that it includes elements of self-esteem and social participation(Hanmeret al., 1996). The new thinking is reflected in the present emphasis on social exclusionand inclusion. Here, it closely parallels analysis in nutrition and food security, where conceptsof cultural acceptability, autonomy, and self-reliance have been common currency (Oshaug,1985; Barraclough and Utting, 1987; Barraclough, 1991; Maxwell, 1996a). Poverty plannerscan look to the literatures on nutrition and food security, not only to find definitions of povertywhich incorporate their new ideas, but also to find ways of investigating and measuring thesenon-material aspects of poverty (see, for example, Frankenberger, 1992).

By the same token, poverty planners have come to take much greater interest in the varia-bility of income, and the impact of shocks. In poverty studies, the terminology of livelihoodsecurity has become pre-eminent, with its emphasis on vulnerability and management of varia-bility as key components of welfare (Chambers, 1997). Again, this move was prefigured inthe nutrition and food security literatures. Nutritionists have long been concerned with theimpact of shocks on the growth and weight of children, and have developed this into modelswhich trace the nutrition security of households over time (Oshaug, 1985). Similarly, the notion

Figure 1 Twelve lessons that poverty forgot

217Saucy with the Gods: nutrition and food security speak to poverty: S. Maxwell

of variability and vulnerability is central to the very definition of food security (‘secure accessto enough food at all times for an active, healthy life’). Food security analysis is quintessentiallyabout the management of variability and risk (Davies, 1996). Again, the conceptual modelshave spawned substantial literatures on measurement and monitoring (Frankenberger, 1992).

Who, where, how many, why?

Poverty analysis has been very much concerned with understanding the social and geographicaldistribution of poverty, though it has often been hampered by the absence of accurate data,both for cross-section and longitudinal analysis. There is a rising tide of interest in panel datafor comparative purposes. In tackling this issue, a neglected source of data lies in anthro-pometry, where large scale national data sets are available, often going back to the 1970s. Forexample, the recent Review of the World Nutrition Situation, published by the ACC/SCNSecretariat in Geneva, has brought together data from 95 countries of which at least 61 hadtwo or more surveys for the estimation of trends in stunting of young children (ACC/SCN,1998). Anthropometric data on height and weight provide good omnibus indicators of bothlong-term and short-term nutrition stress. Substantively, they tell an important story aboutrelative progress in different regions and over different time periods. It is notable, for example,that early work on adjustment with a human face, which drew attention in the mid-1980s tothe adverse consequences of structural adjustment for the poor, relied largely on nutrition data(Corniaet al., 1987).

Sometimes, the nutrition data tell a story which reinforces the story told by the available,usually less rich, data on poverty. Sometimes, they extend the story in interesting ways. Aprime example is the contrast in nutrition and poverty data for Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,reproduced in Table 1. Why is it that income-poverty data show roughly comparable levelsin the two regions, whereas anthropometric data show a significantly higher level of deprivationin South Asia? Are the poverty data missing something important about the situation inSouth Asia?

In analysing poverty, an essential piece of the jigsaw is the analysis of underlying causes.Here, there is much common ground between nutrition and food security on the one hand, andpoverty on the other. However, it is worth emphasising that the entitlement and capabilityanalysis which now informs much discussion of poverty and human welfare (e.g. in the 1997UNDP Human Development Report), has its origins in Sen’s work on famine, and before thatin detailed work on the etiology of under-nutrition carried out by economists like Joy (Sen,1981; Joy, 1973). Nutritionists in the 1970s expended a great deal of effort on mapping thecauses of under-nutrition, not always, as they themselves would accept, productively (Field,1987). Food security analysis in the 1980s attempted to learn lessons about the need for simpli-fication, for example, in the wave of food security studies which followed the great famine of1984/85 in sub-Saharan Africa (Maxwell, 1990, 1996b). Similarly, nutritionists simplified their

Table 1 Poverty and under nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

% Population consuming less than % Children underweight (1993)b

US$1 per day (1993)a

Sub-Saharan Africa 39 27South Asia 43 49

Source:aUNDP (1997a, p. 27);bACC/SCN.


analysis of the problem, for example, in the well known UNICEF model of the causes of childunder-nutrition (Fig. 2). Can similar simplifications be applied to poverty analysis?

Interventions

When it comes to identifying the most appropriate interventions to tackle under-nutrition, foodinsecurity or poverty, there is again a great deal of common ground. We would all recognisethat growth is necessary, but not sufficient; that targeting is necessary, especially whenresources are limited; and that interventions in different sectors reinforce each other. However,there are a number of themes in the nutrition and food security areas that are only now begin-ning to achieve prominence in the poverty area.

Figure 2 Causes of malnutrition and death.Source: UNICEF (1990)


The first of these is the importance of safety nets, present almost as an after-thought in the1990 WDR, where the strategy is often referred to as ‘two-and-a-half legs’, with labour inten-sive growth and human capital being the two main legs, and safety nets an inferior third.Because of the emphasis on vulnerability and variability, managing shocks has always beencentral to food security analysis especially. Thus, the World Bank’s own pioneering reviewof the subject in 1986,Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security, dis-tinguished clearly between chronic and transitory food insecurity, and reviewed in some detailthe measures needed to reduce transitory food insecurity, including stabilising domestic foodsupply, stabilising demand, and protecting vulnerable groups (World Bank, 1986).

More generally, food security analysis has accorded greater prominence to the macro econ-omic management of shocks than has traditionally been the case in poverty analysis; and,partly in consequence, to the question of linking relief and development. A recent publicationby the World Bank itself illustrates the complexity of the linkages between drought and themacro economy (Benson and Clay, 1998). By the same token, rehabilitation after shocks hasbeen a major feature of food security analysis (Green and Mavie, 1994; Harvey, 1997).

In the food security arena, much of our work has been driven by the impact of conflict.Sometimes, this has been indirect, as in the link between the civil war in Ethiopia and thefamine of 1984–85. More recently the link has been direct, with conflict now being the majorcause of famine, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (de Waal, 1993). It is interesting that thepowerful World Bank task force report on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, published in 1996,also identified conflict as a critical factor (World Bank, 1996).

A further point is the sudden interest in the late 1990s in social capital as an essentialingredient in anti-poverty work (Putnam, 1993; World Bank, 1997a). Poverty planners havecome to see that social cohesion and social integration play an important part in enablinggrowth and in protecting individuals against shocks. It might be interesting for them to lookback at the long trajectory of work on community development in the nutrition arena. Pro-grammes like the child survival and development programme in Iringa in Tanzania, whichbegan in the early 1980s, were based on the idea of full community participation. As summar-ised by UNICEF,

Quarterly weighing sessions sparked the participation not only of fathers and mothers, but also ofthe whole community in analysing why children were malnourished and why some seemed tothrive while others did not. An improved understanding of the facts involved in the nutritionalwell-being of their children in turn helped the villagers to plan and initiate actions that wouldcontribute to better growth and overall child health (UNICEF, 1997, p. 41).

Finally, under this head, the nutrition community in particular has taught us important lessonsabout the complexity of human development problems, by focusing not just on aggregatenutrition intake (for which read income), but also on specifics like micro nutrients (principallyvitamin A, iron and iodine). The extraordinary impact of micro nutrient interventions – forexample, vitamin A supplementation in areas of evident xeropthalmia can lead to a reductionin child mortality of 23% (Beatonet al., 1993) – has important lessons for the planning ofpoverty programmes.

Planning

Three final lessons from nutrition and food security are about the process of planning forpoverty reduction. The first is that participation matters. The current wave of interest in partici-pation (Gaventa, 1998) had a pedigree in many nutrition programmes in the 1970s, as the


Iringa experience cited earlier demonstrates. Are there some lessons to be learned, for examplefrom UNICEF’s triple A cycle of assessment, analysis and action?

A second issue is about the problem of choosing interventions. As we have seen, povertyreduction, food security and nutrition security are all complex, multi-dimensional objectives,with strong subjective elements. Furthermore, interventions have to be chosen to achieve theobjectives in situations of high variability. In these circumstances, quantitative methods, forexample, based on social accounting matrices, are of little help. Nutrition and food securityplanners have developed alternative and more informal methods, often based on checklists.For example, in the late 1980s, FAO pioneered a multiple criteria, check-list approach toselecting food security interventions (Huddleston, 1990). This has proved to be robust.

Finally, one of the features of the new wave of work on poverty has been the creation ofpoverty planning units in developing countries – and indeed in donor agencies. The new socialexclusion unit created by Tony Blair in the UK is a prime example of the genre. Characteristi-cally, poverty units find it extremely difficult to plan effectively across central ministries, whichhave their own agendas, sources of financing and power bases. These problems are very fam-iliar from nutrition and food security, and have been extensively reviewed (e.g. Field, 1987;Levinson, 1995; Maxwell, 1996b). Some clear lessons have come out of this analysis(summarised in Fig. 3).

I have been trying (not very hard) to resist the temptation to say ‘we told you so’. It isactually hard to resist the conclusion that the learning process on poverty could have beenaccelerated with more attention to the previous experience of nutrition and food security. It iscommon to talk of the 1980s as the wasted decade in development. There is at least a sensein which the period 1990–95 can be identified as a wasted half-decade in poverty analysis.Perhaps there is just a hint, as with Julius Caesar, that ‘wisdom is confused in confidence’

Current struggles in nutrition and food security

I turn now to current debates in food security and nutrition, in the hope that these may informthe poverty debate.

Figure 3 Ten lessons on food security planning.Source: Maxwell (1996b)


Competing narratives about food insecurity

My first point is an indirect one, about the importance of ‘getting the story right’ – or discrimi-nating between competing narratives about the problem policy is supposed to tackle. ‘Policynarratives’ are simplifying stories which inform policy (Roe, 1991). In food security, the under-lying narrative is highly contested (Maxwell, 1996c). I suspect the same is true of poverty.

In the field of food security, the competing narratives relate to our understanding of theworld food problem. One interpretation of the problem is that the main problem facing theworld is a growing shortfall in aggregate supply, resulting from the interaction between rapidpopulation growth and slowing increases in agricultural productivity. The competing narrativegives greater prominence to the short-term crisis of under-nutrition currently existing in theworld. On FAO estimates presented to the World Food Summit in 1996 (admittedly highlydubious; Smith, 1997), some 840 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. Manymillions more are exposed to the risk of food shortage, or to specific micro nutrient deficiencies,particularly vitamin A, iron and iodine.

The point about these two competitive narratives is that they have different implications forpolicy. A narrative which focuses on aggregate supply shortfalls is likely to lead to policieswhich emphasise increased production, often in high potential areas. These areas may be inthe North, even when the nominal shortfall is found in the South (Pretty, 1995). Alternatively,they may be in the flat, well-watered and well connected areas of the South. In either case,production may be remote from poor people, many of whom will live in mountainous, aridor other low potential areas in developing countries, or in growing urban slums. A policynarrative which focuses on the food and security of the poor is likely to give greater emphasisto problems affecting access to food, and therefore to focus on income-earning activities andsocial safety nets. Seen from this perspective, a food production strategy may help the poorindirectly, by leading to a reduction in the price of food, but will be insufficient on its ownto tackle hunger.

No one should think that adjudicating between these competing narratives is not importantfor the allocation of resources: to production or consumption; to North or South; and to highor low potential areas. I have argued elsewhere that both narratives contain elements of truth,and that neither can be ignored – but that priority must be given to meeting short term consump-tion needs, not least because the private sector in high potential areas is more capable offinancing its own development. I have called this strategy ‘Walking on two legs, but with oneleg longer than the other’ (Maxwell, 1996d).

When we turn from food security to poverty, we find that narratives do not compete overthe same terrain (though there are interesting points to make, to which I shall return, about therelative importance of poverty in North and South). There are, however, competing narratives.

In the field of poverty, the main competing narratives are about ‘poverty’ on one side, and‘human development’ on the other (Baulch, 1996). The first is associated with work in theWorld Bank (especially World Bank, 1990), the second with UNDP (especially UNDP, 1997a).The caricature is that ‘poverty’ is about income measured in money terms, usually at the levelof US$1 per day; and that ‘human development’ is about multi-dimensional deprivation, inwhich subjective feelings play an important part, and for which social exclusion acts as a meta-phor.

The great divide between poverty and human development has been much exaggerated, andpossibly reflects the need for product differentiation as much as it does a genuine intellectualdispute between the World Bank and UNDP (Askwith, 1994). For its part, the World Bank


has recognised the need to extend the concept of poverty beyond money-metric measures(Hanmer et al., 1996); by the same token, UNDP has recognised the need for growth(UNDP, 1997a).

On the ground, however, it is not so clear that harmony prevails. Different narratives doco-exist, and they can imply quite different policies. Table 2 gives an example of two alterna-tive narratives of poverty in an African country, the first taken from World Bank docu-mentation, and the second from UN material. It is clear that the two narratives would lead indifferent policy directions.

Nutrition transitions

My second case is of more direct relevance to the poverty community. It has to do withnutrition transitions, and the implications for public policy of the rapid increase in chronicdietary diseases.

The size of the problem is undisputed. The forthcoming report of the Commission onNutrition, established by the ACC/SCN, summarises the problem as follows:

WHO produced for the 1997 Health Assembly new evidence demonstrating that the major globalburden of dietary diseases in adult life affects the developing world more than the developedcountries. Now WHO is publishing new evidence of an escalating epidemic of obesity which isbecoming apparent throughout the urban communities of the developing world, bringing in itswake the closely linked problem of diabetes… Rising cancer rates, particularly of the colon, breast,pancreas and prostrate, and heart disease, can now be expected (SCN, 1998, p. 9).

Table 2 Narratives on poverty in Tanzania

A. A World Bank narrativePoverty is largely a question of low income, compounded by poor social indicators. In Tanzania, it is largely arural problem, and is found principally among households without access to a cash crop economy. For practicalpurposes, this means largely in semi-arid or isolated areas. Poverty fell sharply in the 1980s and early 1990s,mainly as a result of the liberalisation of input and crop marketing. The momentum was checkedwhen the government lost control of the macro-economic aggregates in the mid-1990s. However, control has beenreestablished. The main route to poverty reduction is broad-based agricultural growth, principally in cash cropsectors, partly through bringing new land into production, but mainly by enhancing productivity. Infrastructure andsocial sector investment is also very important, within the limits of a tight fiscal regime. Safety nets will have torely largely on private initiatives. If per capita growth of 3% p.a. can be sustained (equivalent to 6% p.a. gross),then poverty could be reduced to around 10% by 2010.B. An alternative narrativePoverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, in which low income, poor social indicators, and social exclusion allplay a part. Vulnerability, to drought or macro-economic shocks, is a key dimension of poverty. Poverty needs tobe understood as both chronic and transitory, including the impact of seasonal hardship. In Tanzania, incomeinequality within agro-ecological zones is an important feature, and the poor are found in both high and lowpotential areas. Resource poor households, with little land and few livestock, are particularly at risk: many female-headed households fall into this category. Liberalisation has led to improved incentives and increased revenues forsome – but not all have benefited, directly or indirectly, and income distribution has worsened since the early1980s. Growth is obviously essential, to lift the average income and enable social services to be provided.However, cash crop sectors and areas should largely provide their own finance. The concentration of governmentand donor funding should be on programmes to empower and support the livelihood strategies of poor householdsand communities, including by helping the poor to improve health and education status. State safety nets areessential to supplement private provision. Tanzania cannot hope to eliminate income poverty by 2010. But it canaim gradually to increase incomes, while simultaneously reducing vulnerability to shocks, and helping the poor toachieve greater control over their own lives.

Source: Greeley and Maxwell (1997).


There are two causes of obesity and the various problems associated with it. The first isrising prosperity. Recent data from India, cited in SCN 1998, show that middle class men inIndia are over 30 times as likely to be overweight as poor men. This is not surprising. Morestartlingly, perhaps, the other factor is that nutrition deficiencies in the womb or infancy canlead to the appearance of chronic dietary diseases in later life. As infectious diseases arecontrolled and people live longer, such diseases are more likely to become apparent. A much-quoted example is that a nutrition shortfall in pregnancy can produce an under-developedpancreas, which in turn is associated with the development of late-onset diabetes in middle age.

It might be expected that rising general standards of nutrition will eliminate the inheritedforms of chronic dietary disease. However, the same phenomena will produce an increase inobesity and other dietary diseases of affluence. This nutrition transition is likely to put healthbudgets under even greater strain, and intensify competition for health resources. It is aphenomenon not discussed in the recent World Bank health nutrition and population policypaper (World Bank, 1997b).

Meaningful targets

A third issue where poverty can learn from food security is in the area of targets. Internationaltargets have recently become very popular, not least because of the dissemination work of theDevelopment Assistance Committee of the OECD. The DAC’s publication,Shaping the 21stCentury: The Contribution of Development Cooperation, puts targets for 2015 at the heart ofits strategy. The document has influenced national policy, as in the case of the recent UKWhite Paper on international development. The key target in the DAC document is a reductionin the proportion of people living in absolute poverty by half by 2015 (DAC, 1996).

Targets are an innovation in the field of poverty, but have been well established in foodsecurity and nutrition, at least since the World Food Conference of 1974, which announced that

Within a decade no child will go to bed hungry… no family will fear for its next day’s bread,…no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition (UN, 1975, p. 4).

Targets on nutrition and food security were also adopted by the World Food Council in1989, by the World Summit for Children in 1990, by the International Conference on Nutritionin 1992 and by the World Food Summit in 1996. A selection of food security goals for theyear 2000, adopted by the World Summit for Children and the International Conference onNutrition is reproduced in Fig. 4. The World Food Summit made a general commitment toprevious targets, but concentrated on a new target, reducing the absolute number of hungrypeople by half by 2015. This latter target is not included in the DAC list, which predates it.

Experience in food security and nutrition shows that targets can be useful, particularly inproviding political impetus and in generating additional funding. However, our experience alsoshows that a certain caution is in order. Summarising the argument against targets, I havesuggested that the sceptical case may be summarised as follows:

International targets over-simplify and over-generalise complex problems. They distort publicexpenditure priorities, both because they misrepresent the problem, and because they privilegesome sectors at the expense of others. Monitoring progress is extremely expensive and detractsfrom action on the ground. And the political benefits, though appreciable at first, may rapidly belost if targets are not achieved (Maxwell, 1998b, p. 2).

As we have already seen, this series of nutrition and food security targets has been adopted,without much regard as to whether previous targets were achieved, or to the consistencybetween them. More importantly, we have seen that targets raise many conceptual problems,


Figure 4 Food security goals for the year 2000

for example, about the very concept of ‘under-nourishment’, about the balance between chronicand transitory food insecurity, and about problems of measurement. The latest under-nutritiontarget, based on FAO’s calculation that 840 million people were under-nourished in 1996, isdecidedly problematic. Thus, Smith concluded that the FAO calculation of under-nourishment

had limited practical use as an indicator of food security for planning and monitoring food securityinterventions. It should not be used, in particular … to make cross-country and regional compari-sons of food insecurity…, to track changes in food insecurity over time…, and to understand thecauses of food insecurity (Smith, 1997).

In thinking about this problem, I have been led to conclude that the answer lies in subsidiar-ity. The answer is to keep the international targets universal, unambiguous and simple, andnot do too much to measure them. Instead, responsibility for definition and measurement canbe devolved to lower levels, mainly national, but also sub-national:

We should agree that international targets have almost no connections to the real world of nationalplanning and national resource allocation. These activities need to be guided by quite a different


epistemology, one which recognises the richness, diversity and complexity of real world situations,and which builds on the knowledge, insight and ideas of poor people themselves. There are narra-tives to be reported about poverty and food insecurity, and they will bear very little relation tothe narratives implied by international targets (Maxwell, 1998b).

Accountability

A fourth issue which is currently high on the agenda, especially in the nutrition community,has to do with implementing the right to food. It has wider implications for accountability forpublic performance. Both rights and accountability are relevant to the poverty debate.

The question of the human right to food has long presented a paradox. On the one hand,the right is well-entrenched in international legislation, particularly in the Universal Declarationof Human Rights of 1948 and the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Culturalrights of 1966 (UN, 1948, 1966). There is a large literature on the obligation of the state torespect, protect and fulfil the human right to food, in peace and war. On the other hand, theright to food, along with other economic and social rights, largely remains aspirational ratherthan legally enforceable. Pinstrup-Andersenet al. (1995) noted that

Countries have offered various justifications for not enacting the right to food as a legal right:enforcement would be prohibitively expensive to the state, it is impossible to define economic andsocial rights in legally enforceable terms, protecting these rights would involve redistribution ofprivately held resources, and such rights can be easily abused by repressive governments (Pinstrup-Andersenet al., 1995).

Recent debate has, however, advanced somewhat from this position. One entry point has beento devise Codes of Conduct. For example, the International Federation of Red Cross and RedCrescent Societies has produced a Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and RedCrescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief (IFRCRCS, 1996). This has been endorsedby more than 100 agencies, and the possibility of creating an ombudsman to oversee implemen-tation is now being discussed. A code of conduct on the right to adequate food is also beingprepared (WANAHR, 1997).

I believe it is possible to go further and work towards a charter on food security and nutrition,setting out the guarantees that states make to their citizens. Essentially, these reflect perform-ance standards to which governments can be held accountable. A proposal for a charter on foodsecurity is in Fig. 5. I have similarly proposed a charter on poverty reduction (UNDP, 1997b).

An international charter is problematic, of course. It leaves important questions unansweredabout funding and about the appropriateness of universal standards. Nevertheless, it offersenticing possibilities to the poverty community.

North–south linkages

A final issue has to do with North–South linkages. This is an issue where there is a good dealof material both on poverty and food security. It has become prominent because of the rapidrise in levels of poverty in the North during the last decade and a half. For example, recentdata show that one-third of children in the UK currently live in poverty – and that poverty onthis scale has real consequences for child nutrition, growth and development (Dowler, 1998).

Food poverty provides a powerful window on poverty in the North more generally. Thus,Dowler has traced the use of food and nutrition data as indicators of poverty, and also theimpact of food poverty on individuals. In a discussion of the link between food poverty andsocial exclusion, she has also made important points about the social role of food:


Figure 5 A charter for food security

Those who cannot afford to eat in ways acceptable to society; who find food shopping a stressfulor potentially humiliating experience because they might have insufficient money; whose childrencannot have a packed lunch similar to their friends’; who do not call on others to avoid havingto accommodate return calls – these are people excluded from the ‘minimum acceptable way oflife’. Food is an expression of who a person is and what they are worth, and of their ability toprovide their family’s basic needs; it is also a focus for social exchange. Food is, of course, amajor contributor to health and well-being. But it is not just health that is compromised in food-poor households: social behaviour is also at risk (Dowler, 1998).


A related point which comes out of the northern discussion is that income inequality has anegative impact on life expectancy, irrespective of income level and living conditions. Wilkin-son (1996), in particular, has brought together cross-country survey data, epidemiological evi-dence, and the results of animal research, in order to demonstrate that the psycho-social conse-quences of being at the bottom of the income distribution, particularly stress, have adverseconsequences for life expectancy. Feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem are not simplysubjective dimensions of poverty and social exclusion, they also have explicit physical conse-quences.

It is a legitimate question whether the discussion of poverty and social exclusion in theNorth has any consequences or implications for the South. In considering this question, I haveasked whether there are lessons to be learned on three aspects: (a) the comparisons to be drawnbetween North and South; (b) the possible convergence between North and South; and (c) theconnections between poverty in North and South. My conclusion is:

The thesis is that the answer to each of these questions is ‘yes’: there are then exciting possibilitiesfor a new ‘mono-economics’, in which the boundaries of development studies begin to dissolve.Perhaps the Third World really is no more than a ‘collective psychological delusion’. Or doesglobalisation now mean that we are all developing countries? (Maxwell, 1998a).

Guidelines for a new Augustan Age

This brief review of the lessons that poverty forgot, and of current struggles in nutrition andfood security, suggests that there are lessons to learn about how these different policy com-munities can work together in the future. There are wider implications, too, for agencies whichclaim a new mission as learning organisations and knowledge banks. Four conclusions inparticular are worth emphasising.

First, there is an obvious need for networks that work. On all the issues I have touchedupon, we can see a need for better networking, within and between disciplines. A genuinecommitment to multi-sectoral analysis implies the need to learn more systematically from thepast experience and current preoccupations of other disciplines; and also to create teams thatcut across disciplines and sectors.

This, again, is a much studied subject in the food security and nutrition fields, as we haveseen. Perhaps the most important lesson is to build cooperation from the bottom up, workingtogether in a task culture. In my experience, joint field work is often the best way to achievethis, perhaps in the context of participatory appraisals. If we are to struggle with competingnarratives, the best place to do it is out in the field, and in partnership with poor people them-selves.

The second lesson is about the importance of subsidiarity in setting targets. This is a highlyrelevant issue for the 1999 World Development Report, which will deal with internationaltargets, and for the report on poverty in 2000. Global narratives are inevitably reductionist andmisleading. The best work in any of our sectors, nutrition, food security or poverty, will beinformed by local realities. This is much more than simply saying that countries should producenational action plans to implement the targets agreed internationally. As I have written else-where

National action plans exhibit a top down approach, in which the international targets drive thepolicy agenda at country level… In fact the approach we recommend is much more open, partici-patory, subversive and potentially deviant than this. In a process planning approach, we can be


sure that poverty and food insecurity will feature prominently, but there is no guarantee that theparticular target set internationally will feature at all (Maxwell, 1998b).

Third, there is both real need and real scope to work together on performance standards thatwill implement economic and social rights. This exercise could take the form either of a codeof conduct or of a charter. In either case, it would lay down a set of guarantees that poorpeople can expect from those who control the resources and policies that affect their lives.

Finally, the issue of accountability raises separate questions about the nature of partnershipbetween donors and recipients. This is another topic highlighted in the DAC 21st Centurydocument, and one picked up in the British White Paper on international development, whichplaces partnership at the heart of its programme for bilateral relationships (UK, 1997). Manyquestions arise, however, about what exactly partnership means. Is it in fact a form of con-ditionality, in which recipients are expected to conform to good government and povertyreduction criteria before being granted the privilege of an aid relationship? Or is it insteadsomething more contractual, in which both parties commit themselves to the principles thatwill govern their relationship, and the particular forms it will take. Some aid relationships havetaken this form. For example, the Lome´ Convention has traditionally provided both a set ofguiding principles and a concrete commitment to aid flows. There is a strong analogy here withthe idea of a ‘participation ladder’, with co-option on the bottom rung and full empowerment onthe top rung. As developing countries talk to their donors about partnership, can they expectmore than asymmetric accountability, in which they carry the main burden of accountability?

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented as a keynote address to the World Bank Human Development Week,2–6 March 1998. Special thanks to Judith McGuire and other colleagues. Responsibility isthe author’s.

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saucy with the gods: nutrition and food security speak to poverty

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