Taking Integrated Action on Climate and Nutrition

6 December 2023. InfoPoint conference: Taking Integrated Action on Climate and Nutrition

Can we find win-win solutions which tackle both climate change and improve food security and healthier diets?

The bidirectional relationship between nutrition and climate change means there are multiple opportunities for systems’ approaches that integrate action for climate and nutrition to address multiple national and global priorities simultaneously. Climate action positively impacting food, water and sanitation, social protection, and health systems can benefit nutrition. Good nutrition is, in turn, needed for healthy populations, healthy populations are needed for thriving economies.

Leonard Mizzi, Head of Unit INTPA F3 Agri-Food Systems and Fisheries

Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)

GAIN Executive Director and World Food Prize Laureate, Lawrence Haddad, presented the new report of the initiative on climate action and nutrition (I-CAN). 

The report analyses levels of climate-nutrition integration across policy, research and finance. The report was researched by GAIN and launched at the Committee for Food Security (CFS) in November 2023. It forms part of efforts at COP28 to focus more on how food systems and climate are interlinked. It aims to foster collaboration to accelerate transformative action to address the critical nexus of climate change and nutrition. I-CAN further aims to build a strong alliance across nutrition and climate communities, strengthen existing efforts and take action to address the gaps, and develop an evidence base of integrated nutrition and climate action.

Lawrence Haddad introduced the I-CAN vision and objectives and shared the reports main findings. For example, just 2% of NDCs have concrete plans to address nutrition and only 1% of climate-related ODA financing explicitly mentions nutrition. At the same time, 95% of Global Nutrition Report commitments do not consider climate or sustainability at all.

Rudaba Khondker, Country Director, GAIN Bangladesh
She presented a concrete example on the co-benefits of integrated action and collaboration across environment and nutrition. The case study from Bangladesh complemented the presentation with practical efforts to link climate and nutrition.

Recording:

Forthcoming here

Resource

FAO(2023) Climate action and nutrition. Pathways to impact. #44 p.

Climate change and malnutrition are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity today, both interconnected through agrifood, water, social protection, and health systems. Responding to both climate change and malnutrition with integrated actions provides one solution to two of our biggest barriers to sustainable development.

This paper, prepared as a contribution to the Initiative on Climate Change and Nutrition (I-CAN), explores options for integrated actions addressing jointly climate change and malnutrition across agrifood, water, social protection, and health systems by

1. recapping each system’s importance to good nutrition, 
2. compiling the evidence on the interaction of each system with climate change, and 
3. documenting the response options for integrated actions that have the potential to benefit climate change and malnutrition.

The evidence compiled in this paper shows there is the potential for each of the systems to be nutrition-sensitive and climate-smart for healthy diets, safe food, efficiently managed clean water for all needs, enhanced coping strategies, and less illness from systems that significantly reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity, preserve natural resources and increase resilience resulting in a virtuous cycle of healthier people, and stronger communities that can drive sustainable development. 

Integrated actions can lead to positive outcomes on both climate and nutrition, with the support of key enablers identified in this paper. A comprehensive and strategic research agenda is also key in order to identify other key influencers and fill other priority gaps in our understanding of the trade-offs, enablers and pathways of integrated action to impact.