[LONDON] Development banks, national authorities and the private sector must step up to help fight malnutrition, say leading diplomats, ahead of a key development summit where financial pledges from the US and UK will be notably absent.
The Nutrition for Growth (N4G) summit, held every four years in the host country of the Olympics, takes place this year in Paris from 27 to 28 March, with the aim of catalysing investment to bridge a US$13 billion annual shortfall in nutrition funding.
Japan, host of the 2021 summit in Tokyo, set the bar “astronomically high”, raising US$27 billion, says Brieuc Pont, France’s special envoy on nutrition and secretary-general of the N4G summit.
But “we need to accept that we’re in a different world”, he said in an online interview with SciDev.Net.
“Russia has unleashed full-scale, high-intensity war in Europe … we’ve seen the food crisis that this has induced and subsequently the financial crisis.
“Development aid has evaporated and we’ve seen massive cuts in … US development policy.”
He said the US would be represented at the summit “probably as an observer” but was not expected to make any financial pledges following the effective dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.
“I understand that the United Kingdom will not issue a pledge at N4G because there’s a spending review, so it’s not only the US,” Pont added.
The UK has said it plans to cut its aid budget in 2027 to fund an increase in defence spending in response to the war in Ukraine.
Pont says the summit will be an opportunity to “adapt to that new reality” and find new sources of finance for nutrition, which he believes can help supercharge progress towards the flailing UN Sustainable Development Goals.
System ‘suffering’
David Nabarro, the UN special representative on food and nutrition, says the international mechanisms for tackling malnutrition have been “dented” by the recent aid cuts, with UN agencies such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF, as well as non-governmental organisations, facing challenges.
“It’s a difficult time for the international response to food insecurity and poor nutrition and for the governance of that response,” he told SciDev.Net.
“That will mean there will be quite a lot of anxiety at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris next week.”
Nabarro, the former coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement—a UN-established intergovernmental initiative to tackle malnutrition—believes nutrition is primarily a “local and national responsibility”.
However, he also believes that rich countries should bear some of the burden for dealing with extreme hunger, such as in Sudan, and “the instruments for doing that are really suffering right now”.
He warned that the withdrawal from the World Health Organization by the US—which accounted for about 18 per cent of its funding—would also have serious implications for nutrition.
The “disparaging” of the WHO and withdrawal of funds by a key contributor creates “real concerns about the functioning of the international system”, he said.
Hunger and obesity
The summit comes as the world faces a mounting food crisis, with hunger levels rising.
The UN’s last report on the state of food security and nutrition found that one in five people in Africa were facing hunger, while globally the figure is one in 11.
“Climate change, conflict and the cost-of-living crisis are making it very difficult for people on low incomes to ensure good nourishment,” said Nabarro, adding that pregnant women, small children, older people and the sick, are the worst affected.
At the same time, obesity is on the rise in many parts of the world, including low- and middle-income countries.
Nabarro highlights concerns about aggressive marketing of breast-milk substitutes, companies putting too much sugar in foods designed for children, and overprocessing of foods, and says the private sector has an important role to play in improving nutrition.
He says big improvements can also be made through agriculture, health systems, social welfare, and educating people about nutrition.
Value for money
Both diplomats hope the summit can cement an appreciation by governments of the economic value of good nutrition.
In the absence of two key donors, Pont hopes to see the World Bank along with other development banks and the private sector, step up to help plug the gap.
Countries will also need to mobilise their own resources, he says, hailing the governments of El Salvador and Madagascar for “taking matters into their own hands”.
Making the case for investment, Pont says nutrition is not the “risky business” it is sometimes seen as. For every pound invested in the fight against malnutrition, there is a return on investment of 23 pounds, he says.
However, “It’s not only about more money for nutrition,” he added. “It’s also about more nutrition for money, more development for money, more value for money.”
Sometimes tiny investments can make a difference, he says, adding that scientific evidence plays a crucial role. “For instance, putting a network of researchers in a country and giving them the resources to effectively collect data … helps government to design policy, or to detect where action is badly needed.”
Nabarro is also a firm believer that science-based interventions are critical to finding effective, cost-efficient ways of reducing malnutrition: “Science has a hugely powerful role to play”.
“There needs to be a widespread appreciation of the value of having well-nourished populations, particularly in their early years, among leaders of all countries,” he added.
“Good nutrition is good development, good development means economically viable populations and governments.”
Countries looking to reduce overseas development assistance should conduct an “audit” of what it has done for nutrition, he suggests, adding that the window of opportunity to pledge funds does not end at the summit.
Countries have until November to make pledges before the Scaling Up Nutrition global gathering in Kigali, Rwanda, he added.
Neither the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, nor the US Department of State responded to request for comment from SciDev.Net in time for publishing this article.
This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.