A/HRC/9/23 page 5 countries, and to abstain from taking new measures that would have such an impact; (b) to protect the right to adequate food by ensuring that third parties, including private actors do not interfere with the enjoyment of the right to food; and (c) to contribute to the fulfilment of the right to adequate food by cooperating in the identification of the obstacles to the realization of the right to food and in the elimination of them (see sect. IV). 3. The increase in prices on the international markets during the period 2005-2007 will result in increased poverty, which a World Bank study of April 2008, based on a survey of nine low-income countries, estimated at 4.5 per cent in the absence of policy measures taken to mitigate the price increases, driving an additional 105 million people into poverty.4 Given the annual poverty reduction of 0.68 per cent since 1984, this 4.5% increase in poverty would destroy almost seven years of poverty reduction efforts. It has been estimated that with a 20 per cent increase in food prices in 2025 relative to the 1996 baseline, the number of undernourished people in the world would increase by 440 million.5 In addition, rising food prices are forcing families to stop buying more nutritious foods as they can barely afford the staple foods they need. A reversal of the already slow progress in reducing under nutrition seems inevitable. In such a context, it is imperative that policies which measures that could worsen the crisis be avoided. 4. It is equally clear that efforts aimed at limiting the increase in prices on international markets are not sufficient. Even before the current crisis, an estimated 852 million people were food-insecure. The current crisis shows that the mismatch between supply of and solvent demand for agricultural products may in the future further worsen this situation by making food even less affordable for people whose entitlements are insufficient to allow them to procure sufficient food. The world population, now at 6.7 billion, increases by some 75 million each year; in 2025, there will be 8 billion living on the planet, and 9.2 billion in 2050. It has been estimated that the production of food will have to increase by 50 per cent by 2030, and double by 2050, if an increase growth in demand is to be met. But if a response to the current crisis is sought exclusively in a rise in the overall production of agricultural commodities in order to address the imbalance between the supply and the demand for food as a source of tension on the global commodities markets, it will largely miss its target. This is not only because tackling food insecurity and increasing agricultural investment do not explicitly tackle malnutrition, which affects 2 billion people in the world who suffer from micronutrient deficiency. It is also and even more importantly overconsumption and wastage by some,6 and insufficient purchasing power for 4 Ivanic Maros and Martin Will, ‘Implications of Higher Global Food Prices for Poverty in Low-Income Countries’, World Bank Policy research Working paper, April 2008. 5 B. Senauer and M. Sur, ‘Ending global hunger in the 21st century: projections of the number of food insecure people’, Rev. Agr. Econ., vol. 23(1), 2001, 68-81. 6 For instance, a 2004 study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson indicates that forty to fifty per cent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten: http://www.foodnavigatorusa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half.