PIED 5256 Assignmt 3
Module code and title: PIED5256M Global Inequalities and Development
Essay title: To what extent are famines a political phenomenon in need of political solutions? Use examples to build your argument.
Word count: [2,664 Words]
Student Number: 200657602
I. INTRODUCTION
Two overriding theories of famine that continue to dominate contemporary understandings on the causes of famine are the Food Availability Decline (FAD) theory and the Entitlement Approach theory.
Traditional understandings or variations of the FAD theory are two-fold. First, famines result from ‘acts of God’ such as natural disasters or climate shocks (drought and flooding). Second, famines result as a consequence of population growth surpassing the ‘carrying capacity’ of the earth’s resources to support it in terms of food production – the Malthusian demographic notion.
The ‘act of God’ approach sees vulnerability to famine as a consequence of living in natural disaster prone areas and advocates for movement out from such environs as a measure of prevention. Conversely, this view holds that should famine strike the supply of relief returns the situation to pre-famine normality (Devereux 1993, p.21-22). The Malthusian theory postulated in 1798 by Thomas Malthus, argued that an indefinite increase in human populations in a world of limited resources would result in famines as an ‘intervention’ for regulating population growth and balancing food demand and supplies (Devereux 2007, p.3, 5; Vadala 2008, p.2). Malthusianism remains influential in contemporary scarcity debates especially with population growth against the rise of environmental concern over resource extraction, smaller economic opportunities, cuts in purchasing power, and more recently, climate change.
The more modern and revolutionary Entitlement Approach Theory first introduced by economist Amartya Sen (1981) posits famine not as a problem of food availability, but one of access or entitlement to
Essay title: To what extent are famines a political phenomenon in need of political solutions? Use examples to build your argument.
Word count: [2,664 Words]
Student Number: 200657602
I. INTRODUCTION
Two overriding theories of famine that continue to dominate contemporary understandings on the causes of famine are the Food Availability Decline (FAD) theory and the Entitlement Approach theory.
Traditional understandings or variations of the FAD theory are two-fold. First, famines result from ‘acts of God’ such as natural disasters or climate shocks (drought and flooding). Second, famines result as a consequence of population growth surpassing the ‘carrying capacity’ of the earth’s resources to support it in terms of food production – the Malthusian demographic notion.
The ‘act of God’ approach sees vulnerability to famine as a consequence of living in natural disaster prone areas and advocates for movement out from such environs as a measure of prevention. Conversely, this view holds that should famine strike the supply of relief returns the situation to pre-famine normality (Devereux 1993, p.21-22). The Malthusian theory postulated in 1798 by Thomas Malthus, argued that an indefinite increase in human populations in a world of limited resources would result in famines as an ‘intervention’ for regulating population growth and balancing food demand and supplies (Devereux 2007, p.3, 5; Vadala 2008, p.2). Malthusianism remains influential in contemporary scarcity debates especially with population growth against the rise of environmental concern over resource extraction, smaller economic opportunities, cuts in purchasing power, and more recently, climate change.
The more modern and revolutionary Entitlement Approach Theory first introduced by economist Amartya Sen (1981) posits famine not as a problem of food availability, but one of access or entitlement to