Measuring famine
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2012
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you measure a famine? Following the UN’s recent announcement that famine conditions have ended in Somalia, More or Less explores what the definition of a famine is – and how definite a definition it is. Tim Harford hears from Grainne Moloney, head of the UN’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit and Professor Stephen Devereux from the Institute of Development Studies. Also in the programme: Muhammed Ali’s boxing trainer, Angelo Dundee, was arguably one of sport’s greatest behind-the-scenes figures. But did he really deliberately tear Ali’s boxing glove to win the star crucial recovery time in his 1963 fight against Sir Henry Cooper? Tim Harford gets out his stopwatch for a simple exercise in counting. This programme was originally broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to |
| 0:08.0 | BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:12.0 | You're listening to a download from the BBC. |
| 0:16.0 | This is more or less the mathematical icing on the cake of life. |
| 0:20.0 | We make an edition of the programme for BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:24.0 | but this is a download of a special edition broadcast on the World Service. |
| 0:28.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:32.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:36.0 | This week we fight the good fight to slay an urban legend. |
| 0:48.0 | But first... |
| 0:52.0 | Today the United Nations had some very welcome news. |
| 0:56.0 | It announced that famine conditions in Somalia have officially ended, |
| 1:00.0 | mainly because of an exceptional harvest and food deliveries by aid agencies. |
| 1:06.0 | But that news got us thinking at more or less. |
| 1:08.0 | How do you measure a famine? |
| 1:10.0 | And when a famine is declared over, does that mean everything's fine? |
| 1:13.0 | Charlotte McDonald's here. What have you discovered Charlotte? |
| 1:16.0 | Well, Somalia may be technically out of the famine, but the situation is still bad. |
| 1:20.0 | The UN uses a scale of food scarcity with levels 1 to 5, |
| 1:24.0 | called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, more simply referred to as the IPC scale. |
| 1:30.0 | Anyway, level 5 equals famine. |
... |
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