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	Report finds ‘significant burdens’ of malnutrition in all 140 countries studied by Global Nutrition Report 2017   Nov. 2017   Global nutrition crisis threatens human development, demands ‘critical step change’ in response. Urgent, integrated response needed if world to meet any of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.   Almost every country in the world now faces a serious nutrition-related challenge, whether stemming from undernutrition or obesity, the authors of The Global Nutrition Report 2017 said this week.   In all 140 countries studied, the report found ‘significant burdens’ of three important forms of malnutrition used as a indicator of broader trends: 1) childhood stunting, children too short for their age due to lack of nutrients, suffering irreversible damage to brain capacity, 2) anaemia in women of reproductive age, a serious condition that can have long term health impacts for mother and child, and 3) overweight adult women, a rising concern as women are disproportionately affected by the global obesity epidemic.   The report found the vast majority (88%) of countries studied face a serious burden of two or three of these forms of malnutrition. It highlights the damaging impact this burden is having on broader global development efforts.   “The world can’t afford not to act on nutrition or we risk putting the brakes on human development as a whole,” said Corinna Hawkes, Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report’s Independent Expert Group and Director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University London. “We will not achieve any of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs) by the 2030 deadline unless there is a critical step change in our response to malnutrition in all its forms. Equally, we need action throughout the goals to tackle the many causes of malnutrition.”   The Global Nutrition Report 2017 calls for nutrition to be placed at the heart of efforts to end poverty, fight disease, raise educational standards and tackle climate change.   "We know that a well-nourished child is one third more likely to escape poverty,” said Jessica Fanzo, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy & Ethics at Johns Hopkins University and Global Nutrition Report CoChair.   “They will learn better in school, be healthier and grow into productive contributors to their economies. Good nutrition provides the brainpower, the ‘grey matter infrastructure’ to build the economies of the future.”   Emorn Udomkesmalee, Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report’s Independent Expert Group and Senior Advisor, Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University, Thailand, said: “It’s not just about more money – although that is important - it’s also about breaking down silos and addressing malnutrition in a more joined-up way alongside all the other drivers of development. There’s a powerful multiplier effect here that we have to harness.”   The report found that overweight and obesity are on the rise in almost every country, with 2 billion of the world’s 7 billion people now overweight or obese and a less than 1 per cent chance of meeting the global target of halting the rise in obesity and diabetes by 2025.   At least 41 million children under five are overweight, with the problem affecting high and lower income countries alike.   At least 10 million children in Africa are now classified as overweight. One third of North American men (33%) and women (34%) are obese.   Rates of undernutrition in children are slowly decreasing, the report said. But global progress is not fast enough to meet internationally agreed nutrition goals, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target 2.2 to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.   155 million under-fives are stunted; Africa is the only region where absolute numbers are rising, due to population growth.   52 million children worldwide are defined as wasted, meaning they do not weigh enough for their height.   Rising rates of anaemia in women of reproductive age are also cited as a concern with almost one in three women affected worldwide and no country on track to meet global targets.   “Historically, maternal anaemia and child undernutrition have been seen as separate problems to obesity and non-communicable diseases,” said Ms Fanzo. “The reality is they are intimately connected and driven by inequalities everywhere in the world. That’s why governments and their partners need to tackle them holistically, not as distinct problems.”   The report says funding needs to be ‘turbo charged’ and calls for a tripling of global investments in nutrition, to $70bn over 10 years to tackle childhood stunting, wasting and anaemia and to increase breastfeeding rates. Crucially, donors are only spending 0.01 per cent of official development assistance on diet related Non-Communicable Diseases, a ‘disturbingly low’ level.   Pledges to invest in nutrition must be ‘concrete’ and ‘acted upon’, not ‘empty rhetoric’, the report said.   The coming months provide an opportunity for renewed action and pledges, as part of the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2026).   The report also found there is a critical need for better data on nutrition - many countries don’t have enough data to track the nutrition targets they signed up to and to identify who is being left behind.   # The Global Nutrition Report is an independently produced annual stock-take of the state of the world’s nutrition. The report tracks global nutrition targets on maternal, infant and young child nutrition and on diet related Non-Communicable Diseases adopted by member states of the World Health Organization as well as governments’ delivery against their commitments. It aims to make it easier for governments and other stakeholders to make - and deliver on - high impact commitments to end malnutrition in all its forms.   * Access the report: http://www.globalnutritionreport.org/the-report/ Visit the related web page
	Manage climate risks or face much more hunger by 2050 by World Food Programme, agencies   Nov. 2017   Climate change threats, from worsening drought and flooding to sea level rise, could increase the risks of hunger and child malnutrition around the world by 20 percent by 2050, food security researchers warned this week.   But looking carefully at the very different risks facing each country, region and type of food producer – from highland rice farmers in Cambodia to cattle herders in South Sudan – could help reduce that threat of growing hunger, they said.   In North Africa, for instance, both herders and farmers face fast-growing risks from more frequent, longer and more intense heatwaves and declining water availability, while population growth and greater urbanisation could also hit food security, according to a report by the World Food Programme (WFP) released at the U.N. climate talks in Bonn.   In South Asia, by comparison, dense populations of farmers face threats from worsening floods, cyclones and droughts, as well as long-term threats to the stability of monsoons and water flow in glacier-fed rivers.   "Different groups are affected by different types of risks, at different intensities and at different times," said Gernot Laganda, the director of climate and disaster risk reduction programmes at WFP.   Building greater resilience to the threats will require "layers" of responses, he said.   Catastrophic threats of large-scale losses of crops or animals – the type that might come along every 5 to 10 years, for instance, and force those hit to migrate – might be dealt with in part with insurance plans, Laganda said.   But more regular seasonal threats – of smaller-scale flooding, for instance – cannot be insured, he said, as the problems come too frequently.   In those cases, building savings groups among women farmers, for instance, to ensure cash is on hand to deal with the crop failures, could be a better way to deal with risks.   The report aims to give country governments, and food security organisations, a clearer and more specific look at the threats they face, and better tools to deal with them. It looks in detail at particularly threatened regions, including parts of Africa and Asia, and at 15 specific countries, from Afghanistan to Mali.   One surprise from the work, Laganda said, is that it was not always the poorest countries that were most vulnerable to hunger threats.   "Sometimes we assume middle-income countries have a much easier time … which is not necessarily the case," he said.   South Asia, in particular, has big numbers of hungry people, he said and overall "the largest vulnerabilities to loss and damage in food systems occur in Asia".   In Africa, drought is the biggest threat to hunger levels, but conflicts also play a big role, he said.   Laganda said such differences need a careful look if countries and food security agencies are to better manage coming climate threats and achieve the international goal of ending hunger by 2030.   "We are not going to achieve zero hunger by 2030 if we do not factor climate-related shocks and stresses into our equation," he warned. "Climate needs to factor into food security discussions … at a country level in a much bigger form than it does now."   And aid agencies like WFP – as much as governments – need to focus more on risk management, he said. Mikael Eriksson, who works on climate, energy and environmental issues for Sweden''s government, said the growing complexity of humanitarian disasters requires innovation and rethinking old ways of doing things. "Prevention is so much more efficient than disaster management," he said.   http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/new-wfp-report-examines-how-climate-change-drives-hunger http://www.wfp.org/videos/archive Visit the related web page
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