Archive for category: UNSCN

The report Diets of children and adolescents: Unlocking gains for human and planetary health summarizes the outcomes of a strategic meeting by UNICEF and EAT in Oslo, March 2020.
 
In the context of the two organizations’ Children Eating Well (CHEW) collaboration, the meeting brought together experts from governments, academia, development partners and youth organizations. They reviewed the latest evidence on healthy and sustainable diets for children and adolescents, identified research gaps and opportunity areas for action, and explored the role children and adolescents can play in advancing food systems transformation.
 
Children have unique dietary needs, requiring a diversity of foods and foods of higher nutrient density than adults; they also have specific rights that governments must fulfill and protect. Meeting participants agreed that children’s needs should be positioned at the center of food systems transformations for healthy and sustainable diets. Three opportunity areas for action were identified: 1) influencing public policy; 2) addressing the issue of affordability of nutritious foods; and 3) improving multi-stakeholder, multi-scale collaboration. Meaningful engagement of children and adolescents themselves as part of this agenda was also considered crucial.

This evidence-based report offers policy solutions to improve the quality of diets using a food systems approach through promoting availability, accessibility, affordability, desirability, and sustainably, healthy diets for all. 

The aim and key added value of this report is to draw on the best available science and evidence to set out a practical way forward which is grounded in the realities of policy development in LMICs.

The advice and recommendations offered by the Global Panel are aimed primarily at decision makers in LMICs, but they alone cannot turn global challenges around. In a highly interconnected world, high-income countries also have a vital role to play, particularly where their own decisions have impacts on LMICs. High-income countries (HICs) not only share responsibility for some of the major problems facing us all but are also facing obesity and diet-related disease epidemics of their own.

This report shows that the underlying problems run deep. Our food systems are failing to produce the foods essential for healthy diets in sufficient quantity and at affordable prices. They are also driving degradation of the natural environment – soil, water and air quality, biodiversity loss and climate change – and dangerously undermining our future well-being. Since this report was commissioned in 2018, COVID-19 has highlighted just how fragile and precarious the world’s food systems have become. The situation is unsustainable.

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29th September 2020 | 2PM CEST 

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The report: Future Food Systems: For people, our planet, and prosperity assesses the developing crises that relate to malnutrition, the dysfunctional relationship between food systems and the natural environment, and also the lack of resilience of food systems – highlighted most recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the latest science and evidence, the report identifies the systemic policy failures that are behind these interlinked crises and sets out the essential steps which need to be taken so that food systems can transition to become fit for the future. Importantly, the advice and recommendations are grounded in the realities of policy development-resource constraints, competing priorities and inevitable trade-offs – particularly in low- and middle-income countries. 

The report makes an urgent call for action by the Global Panel to leaders and other decision-makers concerned with diets and nutrition, health, and the natural environment. 

The launch will be of interest to both public and private sectors,  donors, investors, researchers, international organisations and civil society.  Join the event for a panel discussion on the report, and the priorities for action on making sustainable, healthy diets and nutrient-rich foods accessible, affordable and available to all.

Food-based strategies have the goal of improving nutrition through increasing the availability and consumption of a nutritionally adequate micronutrient rich diet made up of a variety of safe, affordable nutritious foods.

Fortification, biofortification and improved dietary practices are considered important food-based strategies to reduce anaemia due to iron and other nutritional deficiencies.

Please join us in this webinar where we will discuss the status of these interventions globally and how they can be combined by countries to achieve the global target of halving anaemia in women by 2030.

This publication outlines methods and actions for countries to monitor nutrition-related spending. It will contribute to understanding the importance and opportunities for countries to use costing and tracking their nutrition-sensitive investments in agriculture and food systems. The lessons outlined here focus on the implementation of national nutrition plans to sustain results and impact, with attention to decisions influencing the budget planning and analysis for nutrition.

This budget analysis guidance note was written by FAO in collaboration with the SUN Movement Secretariat and with substantial contribution from the UN Network, Results for Development and MQSUN+. 

For more information visit: http://www.fao.org/nutrition/policies-programmes/enabling-environment-for-improved-nutrition/en/ 

Wednesday 16 September 2020 | 14:30 - 16:00 CEST 

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This international technical webinar is part of the series organized by the FAO eLearning Academy, Agreenium (l'Institut agronomique, vétérinaire et forestier de France) and UN-ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific). These webinars are an opportunity for all of us to share experiences and lessons learnt, discuss challenges, and propose innovative solutions and models. They aim to provide a holistic and comprehensive view of current trends in thematic areas related to global challenges, by combining development research and innovation perspectives.

The main objective of these technical webinars is to give practitioners the opportunity to interact with international experts, United Nations officers, University professors, researchers and fellow participants, throughout the world. Webinars can be attended as interactive online sessions on Zoom, where sharing perspectives and asking questions to experts is encouraged. These sessions are also recorded and therefore available at any time, through the FAO elearning Academy: elearning.fao.org.

OBJECTIVES OF THIS SESSION

• Present the work that the RBA working group is doing on sustainable food value chains for nutrition
• Provide a comprehensive overview on the e-learning course on Sustainable Food Value Chains for Nutrition
• Introduce country experiences in designing sustainable food value chains using this approach