The Food and Nutrition Security Impact, Resilience, Sustainability and Transformation (FIRST) Programme represents a partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the European Union (EU). In 2018, the partnership agreed on the need to have a policy effectiveness analysis conducted in most of the FIRST countries. As policy implementation rather than formulation is repeatedly raised as one of Pakistan’s challenges, this assessment considered the implementation challenges of specific policy processes relevant to the FAO-EU partnership in the country, rather than the entire suite of relevant policies. It considered the necessary conditions to move forward and how best to meet these conditions, including through more strategic resource allocation and more effective approaches to building institutional capacity.

The evidence review for dietary guidance is the first step in establishing the Myanmar food based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) for pregnant and lactating women and children under 5 years old. The review process followed a systematic approach to gather, assess and analyse data and information related to food, diet and nutrient intakes of the Myanmar people, agricultural production and food supply, food sustainability, cultural food preference and behaviour, prevalence of malnutrition and diet-related diseases. The evidence review provides justifications for making FBDG recommendations based on up-to-date and country-specific information, as well as the global evidence base. The evidence review increases the transparency of the evidence-based process in establishing the Myanmar FBDGs. Moreover, The evidence review for dietary guidance is the first structured evidence review to guide FBDGs development in Myanmar.

This paper discusses how adapting food production systems to respond to consumer demand for healthier diets is a major opportunity to mitigate and adapt to climate change in agro-rural economies. It also addresses how existing technological solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation need to create more balance between the production and consumption tiers of agrifood systems. Policy dialogue includes managing trade-offs between different sector and stakeholder interests and exploring synergies rather than focusing on exclusivity and competition. This requires a new framework that goes beyond sector-specific policy development. Political economy issues compound the outcome of evidence-based policy dialogue results. For example, political motivation for exporting protein-rich foods may lead to negative impacts on local food sovereignty and food production for local markets. In this regard, the use of concrete policy dialogue tools (food-based dietary guidelines, land use planning and discussions on a protein production strategy) can facilitate a more interactive policy process. The document also stresses how specific rural transformation efforts (e.g., adopting territorial approaches for conceiving and implementing policies; targeting specific producer and consumer groups; strengthening resource ownership; and empowering women and young people) are an integral part of agrifood systems transformation.

This report builds on the OECD Well-being Framework and applies a new perspective that analyses synergies and trade-offs between climate change mitigation and broader goals such as health, education, jobs, as well as wider environmental quality and the resources needed to sustain our livelihoods through time. This report takes an explicitly political economy approach to the low-emissions transitions needed across five economic sectors (electricity, heavy industry, residential, surface transport, and agriculture) that are responsible for more than 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Resources, Partnerships, Impact – 2020 report elucidates who FAO is, what it has done, and how it has worked in collaboration with multiple stakeholders in 2019. Also, it highlights the way FAO has been adapting to changes in the development aid landscape, specifically by leveraging different kinds of funds and seeking innovative partnerships, in order to accelerate the attainment of the SDGs. The report takes a closer look at the challenges and strategies that guided FAO’s activities at the regional and global levels in 2019, while showcasing selected interventions that delivered critical results on the ground.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains.

Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions. The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report puts a spotlight on diet quality as a critical link between food security and nutrition. Meeting SDG 2 targets will only be possible if people have enough food to eat and if what they are eating is nutritious and affordable. The report also introduces new analysis of the cost and affordability of healthy diets around the world, by region and in different development contexts. It presents valuations of the health and climate-change costs associated with current food consumption patterns, as well as the potential cost savings if food consumption patterns were to shift towards healthy diets that include sustainability considerations. The report then concludes with a discussion of the policies and strategies to transform food systems to ensure affordable healthy diets, as part of the required efforts to end both hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

This brief examines estimates produced by several recent model simulations and frameworks that focus on the cost of ending hunger as well as progress toward other development goals—estimates that range from US$7 billion to US$265 billion per year. The differences among these estimates are largely attributable to the different targeted objectives and policy questions of each modeling exercise, different investment strategies considered, and varying assumptions about the role of different sectors in reducing hunger.

This report offers a rationale for urgently scaling up effective interventions to reduce the global burden of child and maternal undernutrition. It provides information on nutrition strategies and progress made by programmes, based on the most recent data available. The success stories and lessons leaned that are described in the publication demonstrate that reducing undernutrition is entirely feasible. The report presents detailed, up-to-date information on nutritional status, programme implementation and related indicators for the 24 countries where 80 per cent of the world’s stunted children live. While this report is a call to action for these 24 high-burden countries, it also highlights the need for accelerated efforts to reduce undernutrition in all countries.