Remarking on the results of a UN report this week that found over 870 million people around the world are going hungry, Oxfam hit the nail right on the head when one of its spokespeople said: “The fact that almost 870 million people — more than the population of the US, Europe, and Canada — are hungry in a world which produces enough for everyone to eat is the biggest scandal of our time”.

“In today’s world of unprecedented technical and economic opportunities, it is also entirely unacceptable that more than 100 million children under the age of five are underweight, and are unable to realise their full socio-economic and human potential”, the UN report, published on Tuesday, states.

While we here in Malta worry because our spending power is decreasing, because a brand of HD television is out of our financial reach or because electricity has become so expensive that we can no longer leave our air conditioners and lights on day and night, there is a very large segment of the world that does not have enough food on its table.

We worry that the price of petrol for our cars is rising, that the price of gas to cook our food with is skyrocketing, but we have vehicles to drive and food to cook and as such a sense of proportion would certainly not go amiss.

While all things are, or course, relative, when looking at the big picture we should thank our lucky stars that these are the things that we have to complain about. Yes, times are challenging and they are bound to become more challenging still, but we do not have people going hungry in the streets.

Although this week’s report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation downward revised previous UN estimates from one billion hungry to 870 million, the correction offers very little solace – 870 million people – again, more than the combined populations of the EU, the US and Canada - not being able to meet the basic human need of putting enough food in their own and their families’ mouths is far too many in a world that is looking toward commercial space travel in the near future.

But there was some good news in that the number of hungry people has actually been declining steadily, as opposed to increasing, over the past two decades although progress had slowed once again since the 2007-2008 food crisis and the global economic downturn. According to Oxfam, the slowdown in progress in lifting people out of hunger over the past five years should sound alarm bells around the globe.

The UN’s FAO in its report projected that if the right action were to be taken now to boost economic growth and invest in agriculture, particularly in poor countries, the UN’s goal of halving the number of the world’s hungry people by 2015 would still be very much within reach – a worthy goal that this generation should be rising to.

Many, however, are questioning the political will to really tackle the problem. The issue is not whether political leaders can deliver on their Millennium Development Goal promise to halve the proportion of hungry people by 2015 - the question is whether they actually want to.

As Oxfam points out, “Political inaction means high and volatile food prices, lack of investment in agriculture, gender inequality, land grabs and climate change are in danger of reversing past gains in the fight  against hunger.  We need a new approach to the way we grow, share and manage food and other natural resources.”

It urges governments to kick start a transformation to a fairer, more sustainable and resilient food system at the Committee on World Food Security Summit in Rome this month by helping poor countries build food reserves as buffers against high and volatile food prices, scaling up programmes that protect people at risk of hunger, and putting the right to food at the centre of all climate change policies and actions.

The UN is also pressing for a €350 billion international tax, as well as other innovative financing mechanisms such as a billionaire tax, to finance development needs in the face of countries cutting back on development assistance, the flows of which for the first time in many years in 2011 declined in real terms. Such taxes would, under the UN plan, tap resources through international mechanisms such as coordinated taxes on carbon emissions, air traffic and financial and currency transactions.

A tax on carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries of €20 per tonne would, for example, raise an estimated €200 billion per year; a small currency transaction tax of 0.005% on all trading in the dollar, euro, yen and pound sterling could yield an estimated €35 billion per year; earmarking a portion of the €40 billion to €60 billion proposed European Union financial transaction tax for international cooperation; and regular allocations of IMF special drawing rights could yield about €80 billion per year.

Such taxes, the UN argues, also make economic sense in that they help stimulate green growth and mitigate financial market instability while at the same time helping donor countries overcome their record of broken promises for the benefit of the world at large.

The developed world cannot wait for the rest of the world to feed itself, its people must make their leaders keep their pledges despite the political hardships - otherwise we stand little chance of meeting those lofty Millennium Development Goals of pulling the world’s most disadvantaged out of destitution.