Decade of action on nutrition

Decade of action on nutrition

The United Nations General Assembly recently proclaimed 2016-2025 as the Decade of Action on Nutrition, and New Zealand can play a key role in this, says Massey University’s Nutrition and Food Systems Professor Barbara Burlingame.

The Decade of Action on Nutrition is a commitment of UN Member States, including New Zealand, to undertake 10 years of sustained and coherent implementation of policies and programmes tackling a range of issues, from obesity to sustainable food production.

Professor Burlingame says the Rome Declaration on Nutrition, adopted at the UN’s Second International Conference on Nutrition in 2014, recommended the establishment of the Decade of Action. “We should feel particularly committed to this, as New Zealand was one of a handful of countries to serve on the Joint Working Group that drafted the Rome Declaration and the associated Framework for Action.”

She says nutrition-related proclamations, declarations and plans of action are nothing new in intergovernmental forums. “There have been some successes, but many failures over the years in developing and implementing actions to address the multiple burdens of malnutrition. Some of these failures have been the result of different sectors working at cross-purposes, for example with the initiatives related to agricultural production in direct conflict with initiatives related to environmental sustainability.

“What is new in the Decade of Action is the linkages among health, agriculture and the environment. Human nutrition is transdisciplinary and multisectoral. When addressed coherently, human nutrition becomes the champion of sustainable food systems, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity conservation through sustainable use, and the agriculture sector serves as an equal partner with health in halting the epidemics of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases.”

Click here to see the United Nations General Assembly agenda item.

ENDS

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