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 Studies
3 The Micronutrient Initiative
The Politics of Reducing Malnutrition:
Building Commitment and Accelerating Impact
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Shifts in the Nutrition Landscape
2013
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
• 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
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A More Collective Approach is Needed
A “whole of society” approach to combine resources and knowhow
• 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
New Framing and Evidence
• To draw actors in and show they can make a contribution
Politics and Governance
• To understand and navigate competing agendas
• To make the stakeholders’ commitments to nutrition visible and to
promote accountability
Human and Financial Resources
• To coordinate actions and to deliver, effectively, at scale
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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
high
Good cross-sectoral
coordination
&
Good cooperation between
centre and local levels
low
Vertical coordination
Maharashtra
Malawi,
Peru
low
high
Horizontal coordination
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Commitment to Nutrition is Not the Same as a
Commitment to Hunger Reduction
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Capacity to Deliver:
Prioritising, Sequencing, Scaling Actions
Individual
• Nutrition needs more leaders
Organisational
• What can one nutrition champion do within an organisation that does not
support her?
System
• Are there spaces for stakeholders to come together?
• Are roles clearly defined?
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Resources for Nutrition:
High-burden
countries
Create budget lines,
Increase commitments,
Find nutrition sensitive
opportunities
Donor
countries
Country type
Look everywhere but be guided by a plan, with checks and balances
Increase commitments,
Create incentives that
leverage high burden
Public-only
Fortification,
Logistics,
Local innovation
Risk sharing and pooling,
Innovation start ups
Private-public
networks
Market purchases
Ethical trading
Private-only
Resources for Nutrition
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Paper 4 Key Messages
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
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