Sustainable Development Goal 2

Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2 or Global Goal 2) aims to achieve "zero hunger". It is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015. The official wording is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". SDG 2 highlights the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture". According to the United Nations, there were up to 757 million people facing hunger in 2023 – one out of 11 people in the world, which accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of the world population. One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night, including 20 million people currently at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.

SDG 2 has eight targets and 14 indicators to measure progress. The five outcome targets are: ending hunger and improving access to food; ending all forms of malnutrition; agricultural productivity; sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices; and genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals; investments, research and technology. The three means of implementation targets include addressing trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets and food commodity markets and their derivatives.

After falling for decades, under-nutrition rose after 2015, with causes including various stresses in food systems such as climate shocks, the locust crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Those threats indirectly reduced the purchasing power and the capacity to produce and distribute food, which affects the most vulnerable populations and furthermore has reduced their accessibility to food.

While the world was witnessing a gradual decline in under-nutrition in 2023, the double burden of malnutrition – defined as the co-existence of undernutrition together with overweight and obesity – has been on the rise over the last two decades, characterized by a sharp increase in obesity rates and with only a gradual decline in thinness and underweight. Underweight among adults and the elderly has been cut in half while obesity is on the rise in all age groups.

The world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. "The signs of increasing hunger and food insecurity are a warning that there is considerable work to be done to make sure the world "leaves no one behind" on the road towards a world with zero hunger." It is unlikely there will be an end to malnutrition in Africa by 2030.

Data from 2019 showed that "globally, 1 in 9 people are undernourished, the vast majority of whom live in developing countries. Under nutrition causes wasting or severe wasting of 52 million children worldwide".