Angol
This brief provides an answer as to why famines continues to torment humankind here in the 21st century despite all our progress in food production, logistics, information dissemination and relief work, where the short answer is that contemporary famines are inherently political, and so the interesting question is not how famines can be prevented, but why they are allowed to develop in the first place; only by understanding the latter, there is hope to eradicate major famines.§The brief assesses the various analytical approaches to the understanding of famine, from the classical approaches inspired by Thomas Malthus to the newer economic approaches based on Amartya Sen. While all approaches contribute with important insights on famine dynamics, they also struggle to capture the political dimension of contemporary famines. The brief introduces analytical tools capable of addressing this important but messy political dimension of contemporary famines.
