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DRAFT

Breakout Session P1.2 Household Nutrition Security: Speaker Brief

South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI) - Secure Nutrition

Knowledge Platform

Yurie Tanimichi Hoberg (World Bank)

Context – the problems being addressed

1. In several countries with robust economic and agricultural growth, malnutrition rates remain

surprisingly high. Children who are malnourished in early life (from conception to 24 months) often

suffer from irreparable physical and cognitive damage, with evidence of impacts on adult productivity,

particularly in rural, agricultural settings by lowering stature and physical strength, and indirectly by

increasing the burden of disease and morbidity. In addition, malnutrition retards cognitive

development in children, undermining the development of human capital critical for economic growth

in the longer-term.

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3. In general, nutrition outcomes have improved more quickly in countries with more equitable economic

growth and pro-poor agricultural growth policies.1 However, while economic growth, poverty

reduction and agricultural productivity all contribute to better nutrition; in most countries gains in

economic growth or agricultural productivity alone have been insufficient to improve child nutrition

outcomes.2

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15. There are major opportunities to incorporate small adjustments to investments across sectors to make

them more nutrition sensitive with a potentially impressive impact on nutrition outcomes. Based on

experience to-date, five steps are necessary for transforming new operations across several sectors to

be more nutrition-sensitive:

a. Explicitly incorporate nutritional considerations into initial design of projects/policies;

b. Integrate nutritional considerations as elements of investments, not necessarily as the primary

objective;

c. Modify the design/consider alternatives to minimize unintended negative consequences and

maximize positive impacts;

d. Support nutritional objectives with technical capacity within countries;

e. Monitor and evaluate nutrition impacts with appropriate indicators.

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Current activities presented and discussed in the session

Over the past three years, the World Bank has made a concerted effort to scale-up work in nutrition

and is strongly committed to increasing the multisectorality of its investments by supporting nutrition

through other relevant sectors, such as agriculture, social protection and education. The Bank's work

on nutrition is based on the scale-up of evidence-based interventions, targeted at the most vulnerable

populations. This translates into a particular focus on the critical window of opportunity in the first

1 Webb, P. and Block, S. 2010. Support for agriculture during economic transformation: Impacts on poverty and

undernutrition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2 See Module B on poverty and nutrition for more details and discussion on this issue.

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1 000 days (pregnancy through two years) during which undernutrition has been shown to have often

irreversible consequences. Increased attention has shifted towards agriculture and rural development

for the implementation of nutrition sensitive activities that can accelerate progress towards nutrition

objectives in high burden countries. The following activities highlight some of the work that the Bank

is doing to address nutrition through agriculture and rural development initiatives.

The South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI): Financed by DfID and

AusAID, SAFANSI was formed to foster the cross-cutting actions that will lead to measurable

improvements in food and nutrition security in South Asia. To this end, SAFANSI is enabling

stakeholder platforms that can operationalize cross-sectoral action and enable more effective

domestic stewardship of the food and nutrition security agenda. The ultimate objective of

SAFANSI is to increase the commitment of governments and development partners to more

effective and integrated food and nutrition-related policies and investments. To date, SAFANSI

has supported the South Asia Region (SAR) (the region with the highest levels of undernutrition)

to build demand for the Bank's engagement in nutrition.

SecureNutrition: The SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform is focused on taking a multi-sectoral

approach to improved nutrition outcomes through investments in the agriculture and rural

development sector. SecureNutrition is dedicated to expanding and disseminating the evidence

base of operational knowledge focused on the intersection of agriculture, food security and

nutrition and is collaborating with a number of partners from academia, NGOs, research centers,

and UN and bilateral agencies to bridge the knowledge gap between these sectors. The main

objective of the SecureNutrition is to create an active community of practice - both virtual and

physical - where information and operational knowledge can be shared on how to increase the

nutritional impact of agriculture and food security investments and interventions.

Agriculture Action Plan: The World Bank is currently finalizing the new Agriculture Action Plan

for FY13-15 that builds on the first action plan for FY10-12. The new plan shows a greater

commitment to maximizing nutrition impacts through agricultural investments. The Agriculture

Action Plan FY13-15 will contribute to the objectives and results of our clients through projected

IDA/IBRD/IFC/MIGA support at between US$7 billion and US$9 billion a year. With regards to

nutrition, the new plan proposes to better monitor nutrition outcomes of agricultural projects

through gender analysis on women’s discretionary income and women’s time use as well as

through incorporating explicit nutrition objectives and indicators into project design, such as direct

nutrition indicators like child anthropometrics or body mass index, or more intermediate level

indicators such as those reflecting level of food consumption (of certain nutritious food groups) or

dietary diversity.

Involvement in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Global Movement: The Bank actively engages

with governments, CSOs, and international partners in the SUN movement with a particular focus

on the reduction of stunting in high burden countries. Recently, the Bank has emphasized the need

to improve nutrition outcomes through its investments in agriculture (which are increasing from

$7 to $9 billion/year by 2015) and through global partnerships such as GAFSP and the CGIAR.

Improving Nutrition Through Multisectoral Approaches Guidance Note: The World Bank has

recently completed a report, or set of “guidance notes” that respond to the global development

community’s request for operational guidance to maximize the impact of investments on nutrition

outcomes for women and young children. The authors' aim is to provide guidance for World Bank

Task Team Leaders (TTLs), international financial partners and country-level implementers to

mainstream nutrition activities into agriculture, social protection and health by adjusting the

design of existing or future operations in their respective sector to be more nutrition sensitive.

Intended outcomes

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The World Bank looks forward to learning about other initiatives and approaches that focus on

improving nutrition among vulnerable populations through both regional and national impact

pathways. In addition, the World Bank will continue working towards a better understanding of such

pathways through collaboration with external partners (particularly through the SecureNutrition

knowledge platform) to more effectively bring the food security and nutrition agendas closer together

so that investments in one will have positive impacts on the other. Through the above-mentioned

initiatives, the Bank essentially intends to increase the number of projects and programs that

mainstream nutrition considerations into their agriculture investments, and/or reduce unintended harm

to nutrition.

Commitments to collective actions in 2012-2014 (national, regional or international)

i. With existing resources

The Bank’s agriculture portfolio is extensive, with large potential for the integration of nutrition

sensitive activities. However, to date, only a small proportion of these have explicitly attempted to

address nutrition through their operations. It is expected that in the coming years, more task team

leaders in the agriculture sector will integrate nutrition into their programs.

Some examples of current activities (2012-2014) that explicitly include activities to improve nutrition

include:

(i) Haiti’s RESEPAG II Project has a matching grant mechanism that prioritizes nutrition;

(ii) Nepal’s Agriculture and Food Security Project will support the integration of nutrition into

traditional agriculture activities;

(iii) Nepal’s Social Safety Nets Project focuses on nutritious foods as inputs for the food for work

programs, as well distribution of micronutrient powders to children 6-24 months;

(iv) India’s National Rural Livelihood project has integrated food security activities and targeted

support to nutritional interventions;

(v) India’s BIHAR Pangchayat Strengthening Project has incorporated nutrition actions into its

design and results framework.

ii. With additional support

The World Bank will continue to seek interest and resources to scale-up nutrition sensitive agriculture,

particularly in countries with high undernutrition burden. A better understanding of impact pathways

for agriculture and nutrition will be critical to successfully implement and scale-up such interventions

and measure impact.

iii. With specific large scale programme investment

The World Bank is engaged in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme

(CAADP) Compact process. Specifically, both agriculture and nutrition teams from the World Bank

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are collaborating and engaging on Pillar 3 of the CAADP, which is focused on increasing the food

supply and reducing hunger across the region by raising smallholder productivity and improved

responses in emergency situations.