ABSTRACT
Introduction A comprehensive analysis of modern interventions that have reduced hunger would require a second book, but it is important to conclude this text with a review of some positive changes and optimistic scenarios. Understanding world hunger is, after all, only a worthwhile exercise if it suggests ways to eliminate it. This text has described the complexity of factors at a variety of levels which help to explain why some people in some places continue to suffer from hunger. That complexity, the hierarchies of interacting structural and proximate variables, means that universal ‘answers’ are unavailable. The thesis adopted in this text does suggest, however, the relevance of one generalisation. The relatively powerless lack food, so strategies that promote their ability to make and implement decisions about resources will enhance their access to food. Employing the concept of entitlements, we can say it is essential that the poor have both sufficient and secure entitlements. To that end, changes are required at all levels, from the international to the household. But such a statement is so sweeping that its insights are limited; it is more productive to consider how such alterations may be effected in specific places. If the spaces within which hunger occurs are social spaces then we must examine the spaces within which change can occur to eliminate hunger. This chapter reviews potential changes at the levels employed as a framework in the book-global, national, sub-national-before considering the relevance of several concepts which are important at all levels. First, however, another review of some statistics.
