Since its founding, the United Nations has included among its goals poverty eradication, food security, “health for all,” universal literacy and education, protection of the environment, and the end of social discrimination. Special international mobilisations for one particular goal (or a particular set of goals) have taken place several times during the past 50 years. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) movement is the latest and perhaps the most politically committed of these initiatives. UN summit declarations and subsequent international activism are beneficial at all levels: as a result of their momentum, policies are enhanced, funds raised, and programmes implemented. However, there are sometimes unintended effects at the field level, where great pressure is put on project managers and staff to change approaches, invest money, scale up activities, and get “visible” results in a short time. The present case study illustrates such side effects in the context of the FAO Special Program for Food Security (SPFS) in Guatemala. The study argues that poverty and hunger reduction require long-term fieldwork and steady impact monitoring, and that the MDG-related “scaling-up” of development projects and programmes should be adjusted to the local pace.
