COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2017

At the sub-regional level, there does not appear to be a serious problem in Asian and Arab

Groups with respect to access to improved water sources. In 2014, the percentage of

population having access to improved drinking water sources has reached 89 percent in the

Asian Group and 88 percent in the Arab Group, both of which were slightly lower than the

World average. However, access to improved water sources in the African Group is still a big

concern. Even though great extent of progress has been achieved from the 1990s to the

present, the percentage of population having access to improved drinking water sources in the

African Group was recorded as 70 percent in 2014.

3.4.

Stability

The definition of food security stresses the time spatial extent of food security by stating

“when all people,

at all times

, have physical, social and economic access to safe and nutritious

food … for an active and healthy life”. In this definition,

at all times

refer to the stability aspect

by covering the availability, access and utilization dimension of food security on a periodic

basis. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of having to reduce the risk of adverse

effects on the other three dimensions, namely availability, access and utilization. Therefore,

these three dimensions should be stable over time and not be affected negatively by natural

(drought, floods), social (unemployment), economic, (rising food prices) or political factors

(social unrest).

Accordingly, FAO describes the stability dimension of food security such that a population,

household or individual must have acquire to adequate food

at all times

without any risk

losing access to food as a consequence of sudden shocks (e.g. an economic or climatic crisis) or

cyclical events (e.g. seasonal food insecurity).

In the FAO study of food security indicators, the access dimension of food security is measured

by various indicators such as cereal import dependency ratio, percent of arable land equipped

for irrigation, value of food imports over total merchandise exports, political stability and

absence of violence/terrorism, domestic food price volatility, per capita food production

variability, per capita food supply variability. In this study, among these indicators, the

domestic food price volatility which compares the variations of the domestic food price index

across countries and time is seen as the most useful indicator to assess the stability dimension

of food security in the OIC member countries.

Annex 36 illustrates the domestic food price volatility index that measures the variability in

the relative price of food in the OIC member countries and world. It is calculated from the

monthly domestic food price level index using monthly consumer and general food price

indices and purchasing power parity data. Similar to the global trends, domestic food price

volatility in some OIC member countries such as Cameroon, Gambia, Mozambique, Kuwait,

Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia realized

between these intervals. Nonetheless, Burkina Faso, Togo, Uganda, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran and

FAO, 2006