"I believe what the committee has done today is to acknowledge the fact that we cannot ignore the poor, needy and vulnerable who are suffering all over the world," said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program in a conversation with Olav. Njølstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. In this interview all the joy and the surprise for winning such a high award. Beasley describes how he heard the news: "Someone walked in and said 'The Nobel Peace Prize!' and I said 'Yeah, what about?' And he said "we won!". The Norwegian Nobel Committee motivated the awarding of the Prize with these words: "The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to a sharp increase in the number of hunger victims in the world. In countries such as Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Burkina Faso, the combination of conflict and pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people living on the verge of hunger. Faced with the pandemic, WFP has shown an impressive ability to step up its efforts. same organization, 'until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos'. " The pandemic, let us remember, has exacerbated situations of economic and food suffering not only in countries that have already been tried for decades but also in realities that believed themselves "immune" to the phenomenon. According to the latest analysis drawn up by Coldiretti, based on data from Caritas and Banco Alimentare, there are over one million more poor people in Italy, with a surge of 40% in requests for food aid. Already in the autumn, Coldiretti points out, Italy could find itself facing a wave of 4 million new poor people, "forced to ask for help for food to eat in canteens or especially with the distribution of food packages". And all this while in the world the global waste of food represents about 1/3 of the total product: then the need, for all of us, to adopt an ethical as well as sustainable lifestyle, which limits waste as much as possible, becomes even more pressing.
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