Food Insecurity, Population Growth, Urbanization and Water Availability: The Role of Government Stability

Shazia Kousar,Amber Pervaiz,Štefan Bojnec,Farhan Ahmed

doi:10.3390/su132212336

Abstract

To examine the impact of population growth, urbanization and water availability on food insecurity, this study utilized time series data for the period of 1990–2019, from World Development Indicators (WDI), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and World Bank. The study applied an Auto-regressive distributive lag (ARDL) co-integration approach to test the hypothesized relationships among modeled variables. The study found a negative and significant association of water resources and agriculture research with food insecurity while urbanization and population growth has a significant and positive impact on food insecurity in the short-run as well as in the long-run period. Moreover, the study found that political stability has a negative and significant association with food insecurity in the short-run and long-run periods. Results also indicated that political stability significantly strengthens the relationship of water resources, and agriculture research with food insecurity while political stability weakens the relationship of urbanization and food insecurity significantly.

Highlights

More than 850 million people are chronically hungry; almost one in seven people around the world don’t have enough food to live a healthy and active life
The present study argues that it is the government of any nation thatis a barr which requires enough water availability for irrigation; water shortage can implement effective policies and laws to certify the rights of people to achieve food in the agriculture production which leads to insecurity
The results of the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and PP unit root test are reported in Table 4; results indicate that all variables, population growth, urbanization, agriculture research, and food insecurity, are integrated at the level I(0) while only water availability is stationary at the first difference

Summary

Introduction

More than 850 million people are chronically hungry; almost one in seven people around the world don’t have enough food to live a healthy and active life. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the number of malnourished people in the world reached approximately 834 million in 2017 [2]. Food insecurity became a crucial issue that needs to be solved as it becomes a substantial risk in the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and leads to many economic and non-economic problems [3]. Food insecurity and low nutritional quality food cause mental and physical development impairments among adults [5], various infectious diseases [6], and unacceptably high numbers of premature deaths [7]. No doubt food inflation and economic prosperity greatly affect food insecurity, but socio-economic trends like population growth, urbanization, water resources, and agriculture scientific research play an important role that needs to be investigated to provide an efficient solution to remove food insecurity

Results

Discussion

Conclusion