The Politics of Reducing Malnutrition: Building Commitment and Accelerating Impact

Stuart Gillespie1, Lawrence Haddad2, Venkatesh Mannar3, Purnima Menon1, Nick Nisbett2 and the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

1 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)2 Institute for Development Studies3 The Micronutrient Initiative

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The Politics of Reducing Malnutrition: Building Commitment and Accelerating Impact

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Shifts in the Nutrition Landscape

2008•Stewardship of the nutrition system

dysfunctional and deeply fragmented •New evidence base introduced in the

2008 Lancet Series, identified critical 1,000 day window

•Pinpointed a package of highly effective interventions for reducing undernutrition

•Proposed a group of “high burden” countries as priorities for increased investment

2013•Nutrition significantly elevated on the

global agenda•Launch of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN)

Movement in 2010: a major step toward improved stewardship of nutrition architecture

•Nearly every major development agency has published a policy document on undernutrition

•Donors have increased ODA to basic nutrition by more than 60 percent between 2008 and 2011, amidst a very difficult fiscal climate

•Nutrition is now more prominent on the agendas of the United Nations, the G8 and G20 and supporting civil society

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The Challenges

To maintain global commitment

To accelerate country level commitment

To convert commitment into action

To accelerate improvements in nutrition status

Improvements in nutrition status are lagging behind economic growth

A More Collective Approach is Needed

A “whole of society” approach to combine resources and know-how

• Beyond government, e.g. business and civil society• Beyond the usual sectors, e.g. education and ICT

Need to create an “enabling environment” for nutrition • Enable these actors to come together • Enable the emergence of new champions• Incentivise them to do the right things for nutrition

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Characterising Enabling Environments

What does an enabling environment for undernutrition reduction look like?

Three vital factors for creating momentum and converting it to impact:

Framing, knowledge

and evidence

Politics and governance

Capacity and

financial resources

Impact

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Key Features of an Enabling Environment

•To draw actors in and show they can make a contribution

New Framing and Evidence

•To understand and navigate competing agendas•To make the stakeholders’ commitments to nutrition visible and to

promote accountability

Politics and Governance

•To coordinate actions and to deliver, effectively, at scale

Human and Financial Resources

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Nutrition Narratives

• Nutrition for Growth

• Supercharging the Demographic Dividend

• Nourishing Minds

• Child Survival

• Hidden Hunger

• The First Step in Preventing NCDs in later life

Narratives need to be backed up with credible evidence

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Politics and Governance

Vertical coordination

high

Good cross-sectoral coordination

&Good cooperation between

centre and local levels

low

low highHorizontal coordination

Malawi, Peru

Maharashtra

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Commitment to Nutrition is Not the Same as a Commitment to Hunger Reduction

Capacity to Deliver:Prioritising, Sequencing, Scaling Actions

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•Nutrition needs more leaders

Individual

•What can one nutrition champion do within an organisation that does not support her?

Organisational

•Are there spaces for stakeholders to come together?•Are roles clearly defined?

System

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Resources for Nutrition: Look everywhere but be guided by a plan, with checks and balances

Country type

High-burde

n countries

Create budget lines, Increase commitments,Find nutrition sensitive

opportunities

Fortification,Logistics,

Local innovationMarket purchases

Donor

countries Increase commitments,

Create incentives that leverage high burden

Risk sharing and pooling,Innovation start ups Ethical trading

Public-only Private-public networks

Private-only

Resources for Nutrition

Enabling environments are needed to bring stakeholders together in harmony for nutrition

Key features of enabling environments for nutrition:• Collective approach, political approach, accountability strengthened,

strengthened capacity at all levels, more creativity around resource mobilisation with stronger checks and balances

Leadership at all levels is fundamentally important – for creating and sustaining momentum and converting it to impact

Operational research on how to scale up and a shift to the “why?” and “how?” as well as the “what” of effectiveness

Undernutrition reduction can be accelerated through deliberate action

Let’s not wait for political will, let’s will our politicians to act

Paper 4 Key Messages

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