Covid-19’s Impact on the Developing World

Vidya Sethuraman
India Post News Service

Ethnic media services had organized a conference call with the experts to discuss Covid-19’s Impact on the Developing World on May 8.
This call with the experts is imperative at this time because the UN World Food Program predicts, “hunger pandemics”; migration flows have ground to a halt; desperate people seek survival in the forests, putting the rainforest at risk.

Experts reviewed the trends as the pandemic spreads to the developing world. This call sends out a clear message to the Global leadership, who will have to address these crises as an integral part of the pandemic.

The speakers included Demetrios Papademetriou, Co-founder and President Emeritus, Migration Policy Institute, Washington, D.C., Dan Nepstad, President and Founder, Earth Innovation Institute and Dulce Gamboa, Policy Specialist, Bread for the World.

Demetrios G. Papademetriou, co-founder and president emeritus of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, said all over the World, borders are closed and migration has come to a standstill. All components of the migration are affected and these massive shifts are truly unprecedented.

Family immigrants have been ground to a halt. Labor migration, agricultural and essential workers sections see thin migration movement compared to the past. “The pandemic has essentially—not absolutely, but essentially—stopped international migration and mobility dead in its tracks,” he said.

This migration trend is expected to be followed for the rest of the year and also in the first part of 2021. He added that $142 Billion cut in remittances is expected and this will impact the developing countries, which depend on foreign remittances. We have started seeing return migration among the people who had hoped to find better lives in other countries, added Demetrios.

Dan Nepstad, President and Founder, Earth Innovation Institute spoke on how the pandemic is pushing desperate populations to seek survival in the rain forests, 
putting them further at risk. Tropical rainforests all over the world have immense importance as they provide a life support system for the planet as well as goods and services to the people who live in the rainforests.

They are most important to regulate the composition of the atmosphere, influence the hydrological cycle and maintain soil health. Last year, wildfire and deforestation in the Amazon hit the highest levels in a decade.

But the flames were contained by the rainforest’s natural humidity after several months of intense rainfall. This year, the rainforest may not be so lucky. “It’s very worrisome, it could be that there are much more fire events than what we saw last year, and earlier in the season. When people venture into forested areas for resources and when animals venture out of their habitats to raid crops, the chances increase for transmission of zoonotic—or animal-to-human—disease.

Ms. Gamboa spoke on the impact of Covid-19 on malnutrition and famine in the developing world and the need for a global response to a new pandemic of hunger. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to double the number of people facing food crisis, which will soar to 265 million, according to the World Food Program. COVID-19 is expected to drive up hunger, especially in countries already suffering from food crises – meaning they don’t have enough food and there are higher levels of acute malnutrition.

For example, people in Angola, South Sudan, Yemen, and the drought-affected parts of Pakistan, as well as Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Ecuador, are already acutely food insecure and at higher risk of starvation from COVID-19. 

The following 10 countries were the worst food crises in 2019, and would therefore be of greater concern this year with COVID-19: Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, the Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti. U.S. leadership support $12 billion for a Global Response to COVID-19 relief to ensure funding for global food and nutrition programs, emergency global health, flexible humanitarian assistance and urgent economic relief, and development of and access to new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. She urged the Global leadership to address these crises as an integral part of the pandemic.