As the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Tokyo draws to a close today, Team Europe has made a bold commitment to fighting the global malnutrition crisis. Taken together, the Team Europe commitments amount to at least €4.3 billion.
- On behalf of the EU, the European Commission has pledged €2.5 billion for the period 2021-2024. The EU will fund development and humanitarian actions in nutrition-relevant sectors including food assistance, agriculture, water, sanitation and hygiene, social protection, health, education, to help improve nutrition outcomes with focus on women, girls, adolescents and children under five.
- Denmark has pledged €28,3 million per year until the end of 2022. In addition, Denmark have also launched new National Dietary Guidelines – good for health and climate – and will host the 2022 World Food Summit.
- Finland has committed to spend €20 million on nutrition in the next three years (2022-2024) by supporting the implementation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)’s Nutrition Action Plan through the core contribution to IFAD12. Finland will also support the school meals coalition.
- France announced the hosting of the next Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2024. In addition, France has committed to devote half of its food assistance funding and 25% of the French Muskoka Fund to nutrition by 2024. France also committed to reach by 2024 15% of Agence Française de Développement (AFD)’s commitments in the fields of WASH- water and sanitation-health and agriculture, to contribute to nutrition in 8 priority countries. France also reaffirmed its support to the recently-launched School Meals Coalition led by WFP.
- Germany has committed to spend €580 million in the field of nutrition for the period 2022-2025. This amount will include support to the Rome-based agencies and nutrition-related bilateral programmes. This does not exclude further commitments at a later stage.
- Ireland will spend €800 million over the next 5 years on nutrition programmes and interventions. Equating to €160 million a year, this will include funding to multilateral organisations, country based NGOs, recipient governments and international NGOs. It will also include a focus on tacking wasting for 0-6 months children and providing technical and financial assistance for food systems transformation.
- Netherlands has announced a pledge of €400 million until 2030. This pledge is part of the food security budget and will help 32 million women and young children gain access to healthy diets all year round. Funding of humanitarian assistance and general contributions to multilateral organisations supporting improvement of food systems are not included in this pledge.
- Slovenia decided to pledge its €120,000 contribution through the UN World Food Program (WFP) for emergency assistance to the affected population in Madagascar.
Background
The Summit takes place as COVID-19 risks reversing years of progress and deepen the existing hunger and malnutrition crisis — with just four years remaining to achieve the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets and nine years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Malnutrition triggered by COVID is now expected to cause 168,000 more deaths among children under five, leave 9.3 million more wasted and 2.6 million more stunted, and make 2.1 million more women anemic by the end of 2022. Therefore commitments made at the Tokyo Summit take place at a critical moment of the global malnutrition crisis and this follows the outcome of the UN Food Systems Summit and Glasgow COP. Nutrition needs to be tackled at the cross roads of agriculture, health and education, environment and climate change-in a cross cutting-systems approach.
This Team Europe announcement is a major contribution to the outcomes of the Summit. The results of the Summit will be enshrined in a global compact that will serve as a global agreement on international and multi-stakeholder commitments to nutrition. It will summarize the combined ambition of all stakeholders to reach specific, time-bound nutrition targets.
