By Amos Tauna
Kaduna (Nigeria) — The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition is to launch a new brief on Urban diets and nutrition; trends, challenges, and opportunities for policy action
The panel is looking at the challenge of providing healthy diets in urban environments, low and middle-income countries, presenting eight recommendations directed primarily at policymakers especially those working at the sub-national level.
It observed that 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban by 2050 while additional 2.5 billion urban residents would live primarily in Africa and Asia leading to a growing crisis of urban malnutrition.
“There is an urgent need for better urban governance around food, nutrition and health”, said Adesina. “Urban populations need improved information on how to live well by eating well.”
The panel called for a wider policy approach that integrates actions from food, agriculture and nutrition into urban planning, education, health, sanitation, water and infrastructure development.
It noted that there is the need for a shift in attitudes towards the informal food sector and the collection of better data on urban diets.
The panel observed that policymakers at the local level need to champion better diets and nutrition that requires them to mandate and empower to act.
Panel Member, Tom Arnold, argues that these “public policymakers need to recognise that productivity, quality of life and life expectancy in urban areas will revolve around healthy diets and lifestyles.”
The panel argues that the urban malnutrition crisis would deepen in low and middle-income countries where urban dwellers do not consume enough basic calories, lack sufficient micronutrients, or suffer from being overweight or obese with associated diet-related non-communicable diseases, leading to a triple burden of urban malnutrition.
Dr. Kalibata observed, “The growing threat of an urban food crisis can no longer be ignored.
The launch will be attended by Global Panel Members Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank and 2017 World Food Prize laureate; Agnes Kalibata, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.
Others are Tom Arnold, Former Director General, Institute of International and European Affairs, Emmy Simmons, Senior Adviser, Non-resident to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Global Food Security Project and former Assistant Administrator, US Agency for International Development.
The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition was established in August 2013 at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in London, jointly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development.
