Note: This blog post is based on the intervention of Juan Echanove at the event "Addressing the Debt and Development Crises in Developing Countries", co-organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and Columbia University, on 20 June 2025.
Today, over 735 million people suffer from hunger. This figure has been increasing for eight consecutive years. Despite global progress in many areas, hunger remains a growing crisis, and its roots are not only climatic or agricultural. One of the most urgent, yet under-discussed, drivers is sovereign debt.
In many developing countries, the burden of debt is limiting—if not entirely disabling—the ability of governments to provide for their populations. The result is not just slower development or missed targets. It is hunger. When food programs are cut, when subsidies for rural communities are removed, and when nutritional safety nets collapse under the weight of austerity or fiscal conditionalities, people go hungry.
Many in the policy world speak of the need to “do no harm.” But hunger is already happening. We must be willing to acknowledge it as a direct harm linked to the current structure of debt responses. And if we are serious about development, then food must be treated as a non-negotiable element of any economic strategy.
Protecting food-related public spending
Public investments in food systems—school meals, nutrition programs, rural safety nets, agricultural support—must be explicitly protected in debt restructuring processes. These are not peripheral items. They are central to public health, social cohesion, and basic dignity.
Loan agreements and adjustment frameworks should contain built-in safeguards that prevent cuts to food-related budgets. Just as some sectors (like security or debt servicing itself) are shielded from austerity, food should be granted the same protection. It is a matter of survival, not discretion.
Requiring food security impact assessments
Debt sustainability frameworks must evolve. It is no longer acceptable to assess a country’s repayment capacity purely through fiscal indicators. Any debt strategy should also consider whether repayment can occur without pushing people into hunger.
Is the debt burden compatible with feeding the population? Will a given restructuring measure result in higher malnutrition or reduced access to basic food? These questions must be central—not optional—in any analysis.
Including food security as a core dimension of sustainability would shift the discussion away from abstract macroeconomics and anchor it in the lived reality of millions. Because if a country cannot feed its people under a given debt plan, then the plan is not sustainable in any meaningful sense.
Promoting debt-for-food swaps
Finally, it is time to think creatively. One promising avenue is to adapt the logic of debt-for-nature swaps to the food domain. In countries facing both high debt and high hunger, partial cancellation of debt could be exchanged for concrete, verifiable investments in food systems.
These could include sustainable agriculture, school feeding programs, nutrition-sensitive social protection, or the construction of local food infrastructure. This is not about easing debt for its own sake. It is about transforming financial relief into long-term human security.
Conclusion
The question we must ask, again and again, is simple: Are people eating?
If the answer is no, then the system is not working. No economic strategy can claim success if it undermines the basic conditions of human dignity. The right to food is not an abstract idea. It is a legally binding obligation, recognised by more than 170 countries in international treaties.
Debt responses that ignore this right are not just incomplete—they are unjust. And if a financial system fails to protect the most basic human needs, then it is the system—not the rights—that must be reformed.
