Naturschutz x Waldbrände
OBSERVATIONS
In this map it is possible to observe two characteristics: the number of cases of COVID-19 (large circles in dark red to small circles in light red, indicating a higher and lower number of cases, respectively) and insufficient food intake (regions highlighted in green in yellow, which indicate low and high levels of malnutrition).
First detected in December 2019 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, COVID-19 quickly spread throughout China and the world and became a global pandemic. By mid-June 2020, the 80,000 confirmed cases reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late January 2020 had increased to more than eight million. This rapid proliferation of cases has put most of the world on hold, leading to the biggest global economic recession in recent history. Created by the John Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, this dataset reports COVID-19 cases at the provincial level in China, at the country level in the US, and the state and national level for other countries.
Now about insufficient food intake, millions of people across the world do not have safe access to sufficient amounts of food for a healthy and active life. Ensuring food security is a critical step towards ending hunger and meeting SDG 2. The World Food Program (WFP) develops HungerMapLIVE, a global hunger monitoring system that tracks and predicts hunger in real-time.
PMA tracks the latest food safety trends using computer-assisted telephone interviews through call centers. The data is collected continuously, spread evenly over the previous month or three months. Daily updates are then produced showing a snapshot of the current food safety situation (with a lag of 2 to 4 days for data quality). To compensate for non-response and friction, new observations are added in each administrative area following the country-specific sample design.
To reduce the impacts of the economic recession and the high unemployment rates, the governments of several countries used the fiscal space, which is the limit at which it is possible to offer fiscal stimuli without compromising fiscal solvency and balance sheet strength. Of the public sector (that is, without compromising the functioning of the public machine and the capacity to honor its commitments).
In advanced economics countries, fiscal stimuli, measured in comparison with their GDP, were quite significant in 2020, as shown in the cases of Japan (44%), Italy (42.5%), Germany (38.8%), and the Kingdom United (32.4%). In the case of emerging and middle-income countries, the stimulus packages, although proportionally smaller, were also quite robust, as in the case of Peru (15%), Brazil (14.5%), Poland (13.1%), Thailand (12.6%) and Turkey (10.1%).
GENERAL NOTES
The coronavirus pandemic in Brazil had severe consequences for the population that go beyond the virus. The Gross Domestic Product, that is, the sum of all goods and services produced in the country, had a decline of 4.1% last year. It is the worst result since the beginning of the IBGE historical series in 1996.
The coronavirus pandemic in Brazil took on the dimension of a humanitarian catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, others suffered the consequences of a slow recovery, and millions were driven into unemployment and extreme poverty.
The drama is deepened by the fact that we experience four major simultaneous and interconnected crises: health, economic, political, and behavioral. Several factors feed them back, such as denial, necropolitics, morbid and inefficient public management, indifference to others, and lack of coordination at the federal level.
IN BRAZIL
Fitting results for cases and deaths for Brazil and São Paulo
Source: Mathematical model of COVID-19 intervention scenarios for São Paulo—Brazil-Nature Communications (Nat Commun)-18 January 2021
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in 2020 the G-20 countries contributed US$25 trillion to their economies through fiscal stimulus measures (US$15.23 trillion) and monetary stimulus measures (US$9.32 trillion ).
Average fiscal deficits, that is, the difference between countries' budget revenues and their revenues, measured as a proportion of GDP, reached in 2020 11.7% in the case of advanced economies, 9.8% in emerging market economies, and 5.5% for low-income developing countries (IMF, 2021).
The 1.5% retraction of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2020, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), reflects the impacts of the new coronavirus pandemic on the Brazilian economy. The number represents the lowest result since the second quarter of 2015 when the indicator fell -2.1%.
IBGE data also points out that the economic downturn was motivated by the 1.6% drop in services – a sector that accounts for 74% of the Brazilian GDP –, industry shrank -1.4%, and agriculture and livestock grew 0.6%. On the other hand, household consumption, which represents 65% of the gross domestic product, fell by 2%, while government consumption expanded by 0.2%.
GDP is the sum of all goods and services produced by the country in a given period. It is an important indicator of whether the economy has grown, shrank, or remained stable.
The Focus report, released weekly by the Central Bank (BC), gathers economists' expectations for the country's main indicators. Brazilian in 2020.
The number of unemployed people rose and reached 12.8 million (12.6%) in the quarter ended in April – 898 thousand more than the previous quarter – according to the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Continuous) of the IBGE. The survey points out that Brazil broke a record with 5 million despondent people – people who gave up looking for a job.
In Brazil, the economic growth that took place in the second half of 2020 was a surprise and allowed for an aggregate recovery of the economy in a “V” shape, which softened the forecasts of a drop of more than 9% in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The partial reversal of expectations, however, did not prevent one of the biggest economic and social downturns in the country's history. The Brazilian GDP in 2020 closed at R$7.4 trillion, which represented a drop of 4.1% compared to 2019.
To reverse the strong economic downturn, the Federal Government has adopted a set of countercyclical policies through measures aimed at promoting production and maintaining employment.
The Brazilian government's fiscal response was quite significant in 2020 although it took place at very different speeds to serve the financial system (promoting liquidity and credit support) and the most vulnerable families (with emergency assistance). Measures used by the federal government to reduce the economic effects of the pandemic supported the banking sector, businesses, jobs, the most vulnerable people, and state governments.
The financial resources allocated by the federal government for measures to alleviate Covid-19's damages reached R$604.75 billion in 2020, of which only R$524.02 billion were spent, leaving R$81 billion in cash. Among the measures, the amount of R$322 billion set aside for emergency aid stands out, but of which only R$293 billion were released in 2020.
Of the total of R$81 billion that was set aside but not implemented in 2020, R$70 billion were allocated to three programs: R$29 billion for Emergency Aid, R$18 billion for the BEM Program, and R$22 billion for the acquisition of vaccines.
If we divide the economy into large activity groups for analysis, we will see that the services and trade sectors were the most affected by the pandemic due to social isolation measures to reduce the rate of contagion by Covid-19. Losses in sales revenue resulted in a reduction of 1.7 million jobs in 2020, out of a total of 16 million people who worked in the sector in the period immediately before the crisis.
STATISTICS
Families in extreme poverty between 2015 and October 2020. Brazil, 2020.
Source: Unemployment, poverty, and hunger in Brazil in Covid-19 pandemic times-Scielo-02 June 2021
Another sector heavily affected by the pandemic was servicing, which represents around 63% of the Brazilian GDP and 68% of employment. Among the groups of services, Accommodation and Food services stood out due to the negative result, which presented an estimated reduction of 21.3% compared to 2019, which meant a reduction of 1.2 million jobs. Before the pandemic, this activity had an average annual growth of 5.3% and accounted for an important part of the occupation of informal workers in the foodservice segment. Domestic servants' services had the second-biggest drop in 2020: 19.2%. The activity now has 5.1 million workers in 2020, representing a reduction of 1.2 million jobs compared to 2019. The drop-in family income and the home office explain a significant part of the dismissals of professionals who worked in this area.
The pandemic has had devastating effects on the economically most vulnerable population, who are salaried or engaged in informal jobs in which the percentage of blacks is expressive. In this sense, this population was doubly affected by the loss of income and by the impossibility of social distancing.
According to The Economist magazine, in times of pandemic suffering varied greatly depending on the color of the skin. A 40-year-old Hispanic American is 12 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than a white American of the same age. In São Paulo, black Brazilians under the age of 20 are twice as likely to die in this age group as whites (The Economist, 2020).
The worsening of the sanitary crisis at the beginning of 2021, with the emergence of a second wave of contamination by the P1 variant (strain from Manaus), definitively imposed on Brazil a widely announced and unprecedented sanitary tragedy, with approximately 4,000 deaths daily, as shown by the French newspaper Libération on its cover last April 15th (Covid La Tragédie Brésilienne). In the face of an increase in contagion and the collapse of the health system, it became necessary to adopt even more restrictive measures of social isolation to fight the disease and flatten the "contagion curve", which directly reverberated on the rhythm of economic activity.
The combination of these factors, added to the progressive underfunding of public food and nutrition security policies and the option for an austerity economic agenda, weaken the guarantee of one of the most basic human rights: food.
The problem of hunger in Brazil is historical and structural, involving phenomena before the pandemic. The process of construction of Brazilian society was crossed by different forms of exploitation and inequality which, among other implications, aggravated the gradient of poverty and made hunger a social constant. This is expressed, for example, in the recurrence of deficiency diseases and high infant mortality rates throughout Brazilian history.
Although, in recent decades, intersectoral actions have had a direct impact on access to food, especially with income transfer programs, the structural aspects that sustain the hunger problem continued to be present. A fundamental point concerns the recognition of food as a right.
The increase in the basic food basket is explained by several factors, including exchange rate fluctuation; the lack of planning for supply in the country, since there are no regulatory food stocks; and the increase in inflation on food and beverages, which, according to the Extended National Consumer Price Index (IPCA), accumulated an increase of 14.36% in 2020. With the purchasing power decreasing, and without adequate support from the power public, the population sees itself dependent on solidarity and philanthropy initiatives that multiply across the country.
A survey carried out in February/2021 by DataFavela, in partnership with the Locomotiva Institute and the Central Única das Favelas (CUFA), indicates that of the 16 million Brazilians living in favelas and communities across Brazil, 67% had to cut basic items from the budget with the end of emergency aid of R$ 600.00. Eight out of ten families reported that they would not be able to buy food, hygiene products and pay the monthly bills if they were not receiving some kind of donation during the pandemic. The survey shows that residents of the 76 communities participating in the study currently have 1.9 meals a day, on average, corresponding to just one meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner).
When eating is more expensive and food is scarce, families with children and teenagers tend to prioritize food for this group so that adults can eat later if there is enough for that. Another observed change concerns the purchasing profile. With few resources, the population turns to cheaper foods which, for the most part, are ultra-processed, rich in sugars, sodium, and fats, poor in nutrients.
The survey carried out in the last quarter of 2020 shows that 19.1 million Brazilians are hungry today in Brazil, equivalent to 9.0% of the population. In addition, the data also show that around 55% of Brazilians live with some degree of food insecurity.
"New data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics shows that, in 2018, 4.6% of households face severe food insecurity"
Source: The Brazilian Report-IBGE, 2018
Food Type
x
Percentage of Total Food Purchase
Source: Avaliação Nutricional da Disponibilidade Domiciliar de Alimentos no Brasil, IBGE. Notes: Income values in GBP calculated 28 May 2020 (GBP 1 = BRL 6.59) ; percentages based on annual purchases in kilograms; family units are defined as people sharing housing and food.
Looking at the country's recent history, it is possible to recognize actions that proved to be fundamental for the reversal of this situation between the years 2004 and 2013. The centrality given to fighting hunger in government agendas in this period led to public policies aimed at this objective being implemented, guaranteeing the intersectionality necessary for the actions to have the expected success. Although the problem has not been eradicated, in 2013 4.2% of the population was in a situation of hunger, the lowest rate achieved so far. Currently, the results of the survey show us that we have regressed to the levels of 2004.
The survey also presents two other types of portraits of hunger in the country: the Geographical Map of Hunger and the Human Map of Hunger in Brazil. The first indicates that in 2020, of the 9.0% of the Brazilian population that began to live with hunger daily, 18.1% were in households in the North region and 13.8% in the Northeast. In absolute terms, the Northeast is where the largest number of hungry people are concentrated, around 7.7 million Brazilians.
The second, the Human Hunger Map, shows the influence of issues of race, gender, and education on the situation of these families. In 2020, 11.1% of households headed by women were hungry. When compared to those headed by men, this number dropped to 7.7%. In terms of race, 10.7% of the houses inhabited by blacks and browns were in a situation of hunger, against 7.5% of those inhabited by whites. Finally, when the theme is education, 14.7% of households whose head of the family had no education level or had incomplete primary education lived with hunger. This number dropped to 4.7% when the grade moved to complete high school onwards.
What can be seen, therefore, is a progressive increase in hunger in the country, with an aggravation of the pandemic scenario, which poses new challenges. Part of the solution to these problems lies in the creation of public policies to generate employment and income that take into account the country's regional inequalities, in addition to strengthening the social protection system, which in recent years has suffered from progressive lack of financing.
It is possible to observe that in the countries of the southern hemisphere there is a greater presence of a high index of insufficient food, precisely because it is the region of the globe that comprises most of the emerging and underdeveloped countries, which, in turn, have lower GDP and higher rates of poverty, factors that are directly related to the population's food insecurity. In the northern hemisphere, the incidence of high levels of insufficient food is low, precisely because of the higher GDP and HDI, which help the population to access adequate food, preventing the presence of hunger in low-income population groups.
Interpretations
Population density of countries 2018 world map, people per sq km
Source: Giorgi Balakhadze, 26 August 2020
World map of total confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people
Source: COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University-Our World in Data, 19 March 2020
In addition, it is possible to observe that most countries with a higher number of coronavirus cases are countries with higher population density, which, in turn, are countries with a greater number of cities and considerable industrial development, which makes the population concentrated in a small space, which helps the virus to spread and makes pandemic control difficult.
And, with few exceptions, these countries are the ones with the greatest wealth and, often, the majority of the population has easy access to good food.
However, in a capitalist system, the more industrialized the country and the more wealth it produces, the greater the social inequality because for there to be too much production of products and services, there must be the availability of workers who will have their labor. Exploited and will generate profit for a given class. This is the Added Value, which is the value of unpaid labor to the worker, a primordial factor in the production of capital.
So, while part of the population in these countries does not have access to an adequate diet, a large portion consumes exaggerated numbers of calories per day.
Number of people who are moderately or severely food insecure
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (2020)-Our World in Data
Daily per capita caloric supply
Source: FAO (2017) & Various historical sources-Our World in Data
Note: Historical data for the USSR is highly uncertain – it likely gives an overestimate of caloric supply
Percentage of population that cannot afford a healthy diet
Source: FAO and others, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020
