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“If you are hungry and malnourished, it is difficult to be a productive member of society,” writes Todd Rosenstock, a CCAFS scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre in a Blog post on IMMANA (Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions).

Besides the personal hardship and the social tragedy behind this reality, there are also striking macro-economic implications. Each year, the global economy forgoes up to US$3.5 trillion due to malnutrition-related low productivity and health care costs, according to estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Enhancing nutrition is fundamentally about fueling growth and the development of individuals and society”, Rosenstock writes. But how? This behemoth of a task will not be easy to tackle at all. He explains:

For years, the development communities have used every tool at their disposal to fight malnutrition, including technology, training, and communications to increase food availability and change consumption patterns.

Much progress has been made but in 2015 as many as 159 million children across the globe were still suffering from stunting (low height for their age) and another 50 million from wasting (low weight for their height). 

Rosenstock goes on to describe some of the complexity inherent in trying to combat these ills and also reports from a number of COP21 events in which nutrition and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches to enhanced nutrition were in the focus.

One positive trend at COP21 was the sheer volume of talks, presentations and discussions focussing on nutrition. ‘More than 10 side events focused on ‘health’ versus just one six year ago, with many specifically discussing nutrition,’ Rosenstock observes.

At one event, co-organised by CCAFS and the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, several speakers suggested CSA as a ‘key approach for improving nutrition in the face of climate change, and that we need to work explicitly toward climate-smart food systems for enhanced nutrition,’ as Rosenstock records.

Read the original blog post COP21: A coming of age for the climate-smart agriculture for enhanced nutrition agenda?

Learn More

Read blog story: Without nutrition security, climate resilience is a myth

Download policy brief: Climate-smart food systems for enhanced nutrition

Read the CCAFS analysis of INDCs: How countries plan to address agricultural adaptation and mitigation: An analysis of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by Meryl Richards, Thilde B. Bruun, Bruce M. Campbell, Lucy E. Gregersen, Sophia Huyer, Victoria Kuntze, Simone T.N. Madsen, Mads B. Oldvig, Ioannis Vasileiou.