A recent United Nations food summit in Rome alerts the world that the number of under-fed people is now more than 15% the world’s estimated 6 billion population. It is now believed that the number of under-nourished people around the globe exceeds 1 billion for the first time in history.

Photo by Luke Redmond

Just weeks after preliminary results from the Global Ocean Economics project were made available on this site indicating that overfishing has exacerbated problems of undernourishment (PDF), this news from the UN food summit seems to highlight the importance of addressing the issue of overfishing around the globe. While the UN food agency calls for more funding of agriculture programs in developing countries, the International Fund for Agriculture Development’s president Kanyo Nwanze,  says:

“I think it is totally mistaken for us to expect that it is only through financial assistance from the developed world that the developing world is going to grow its own food and feed its own population.”

Indeed, under-nourishment is a global issue. Fisheries is one sector where we can begin to address the problem by investigating policies related to over-fishing in developed and developing countries.