1. Positioning Nutrition in the
Post-2015 Debate
Some Background
Lawrence Haddad
Institute of Development Studies
IDS
Brighton, UK
February 20, 2013

2. Outline
1. What have the MDGs accomplished?
2. What have the MDGs done for nutrition?
3. Which principles are guiding post 2015 discussions?
4. What can nutrition do for the next set of goals?
5. What are the emerging candidates for new goals?
6. How do we want the new goals to help reduce
malnutrition?
7. What are the options for nutrition and how to
prioritise?
8. Final Reflections
2

3. 1. What have the MDGs accomplished?
• Rallying call for international development
• Linked public support for development with
measurable progress
• Probably led to increased ODA flows
• Probably directed more to Sub-Saharan Africa
• May have increased ODA allocation to
HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB
• If they had not accomplished anything, we
wouldn’t be talking about them so much
3

4. 2. What have the MDGs done for
nutrition?
• Underweight: one (sub-optimal) indicator in
one sub-goal of one MDG
• Nevertheless, probably important in allowing
development agencies justify an increased
investment in nutrition over the past
• Location in the MDG1 probably particularly
helpful in supporting World Bank leadership
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5. 3. Which principles are guiding post 2015
discussion?
• Make goals global
• Get a better balance of outcomes, outputs and
inputs
• Greater focus on environment
• Greater focus on equity
• More on transparency and accountability
• More on peace and security
• Keep number of goals small, achieve greater
public recognition
• Put in place an M&E plan!
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6. 4. What can nutrition do for the next
set of goals?
• Generate individual level poverty outcomes;
help with equity
• Help give the MDGs a longer term perspective
• Help bridge the development and
humanitarian space (e.g. individual resilience)
• Make links/highlight tradeoffs between goals
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7. 5. Emerging candidates for new goals
Contribution from CIGI Karver, Kenny and Sumner 2012
2010-2030
1. Poverty: $2/day, malnutri on
2. Health: Life expectancy, child mortality
3. Educa on: Literacy, secondary educa on
4. Gender: Popula on disparity under the age of five
5. Sustainable Development: Forest area; alterna ve
energy as a percentage of total, GHG emissions,
species ex nc on
Post-2015 Goals,
Targets, and Indicators
6. Peace: Military expenditure as % GDP
Background Paper 7. Infrastructure: Access to mobile signal, access to
Paris, April 9-11, 2012 improved energy sources
Barry Carin and Nicole
Bates-Eamer. CIGI.
8. Development: Duty Free Access, Aid 0.7%
MDGs 2.0: What Goals, Targets and Timeframe?
Jonathan Karver, Charles Kenny, and Andy Sumner
July 2012 . IDS Working paper. 398
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8. Suggestions for Sustainable Development Goals
Rio 2012 Issues Briefs 25 CSOs (10 N, 15 S),
Produced by the UNCSD Secretariat No. 6 supported by 1400 CSOs
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9. Contribution from
Oxfam:
“The Doughnut”
Source: Oxfam. The
11 dimensions of the
social foundation are
illustrative and are
based on
governments’ priorities
for Rio+20. The nine
dimensions of the
environmental ceiling
are based on the
planetary boundaries
set out by Rockström
et al (2009b)
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10. What will the new goals look like? My
view.
• There will be goals!
• They will balance human appeal, resource use,
political feasibility and be more faithful to the
Millennium Declaration
o “One world”, with differentiated responsibilities
o Inequality will be taken more seriously
o Resource intensity and emissions issues built into
people centred goals, not the other way around
o Governance—rights, responsibilities, accountability,
capacity, transparency—will figure more strongly
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11. 6. What do we want the new goals
to do for nutrition?
• Stimulate progress on reducing malnutrition
priorities
– Increasing pace of stunting reduction
– Increasing pace of wasting reduction
– Improving nutrition status of girls and women of
reproductive age
– Slow down and reverse increases in overweight and
diet related risk factors
• Help identify the nutrition sensitive opportunities
• Make nutrition efforts more visible and
accountable
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12. 7. Options for nutrition in post 2015 space
• Recent initiatives from UN and elsewhere
• Views of 26 email respondents (half nutrition,
half development with a strong interest in
nutrition)
• 3 sets of options
• Criteria for prioritising
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13. Recent initiatives
• SUN: new nutrition goals need to support SUN!
• WHA global targets on nutrition
1. stunting 171m in 2010 to 100m in 2022
2. reduction of anaemia in women of reproductive age
3. 50% reduction of low birth weight
4. No increase in childhood overweight
5. Increase exclusive breastfeeding rates in the first six months of life
to at least 50%
• Zero Hunger Initiative/Zero Hunger Challenge
1. 100 percent access to adequate food all year round
2. zero stunted children
3. make all food systems sustainable
4. increase smallholder productivity and income by 100 percent.
5. zero loss or waste of food
• Universal Health coverage
• Save the Children: 12 nutrition related indicators embedded
within 5 goals (out of total of 10 goals)
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14. Views of 26 experts
• Undernutrition
– Stunting: inclusion a minimum non negotiable (under 2s
and under 5s)
– Wasting: should be included for under 5s
– Female BMI should feature strongly
• Include overweight and obesity
– growing shared agenda around healthy diets
• Include all countries
– global food system, double burden of malnutrition
• Goal?
– Nutrition community: Separate goal
– Broader development community: Strategic integration
with other goals more realistic
– All: Minimalist--replace underweight with stunting 14

15. Option Advantages Risks
1. Separate • Nutrition harder to ignore by • High risk given the lack of
nutrition goal those who care about MDGs political momentum & home
• Supports SUN directly for a nutrition goal
• “Reducing malnutrition” is easy • Nutrition easier to ignore by
to communicate other sectors and other goals
2. Incorporate • More feasible • Nutrition remains invisible –no
nutrition • New goal “buckets”, especially single champion
indicators and (1) separation of poverty and • Fractures reporting on
targets into hunger and (2) clustering of nutrition progress
other goals health, may favour nutrition • Divides nutrition community
• Potential leveraging of larger
resource flows & energy of
other goals
3. Minimalist— • Improvement on status quo • Too unambitious—too weak a
only replace • Feasible negotiating position
underweight • No reason to think stunting will
with stunting be more visible than
underweight 15

16. Criteria for prioritising options?
• Most likely to have a big impact on nutrition if
adopted
– Galvanise energy
• nutrition community
• wider development community
• wider public
– Guide action
• nutrition specific
• nutrition sensitive
• Likelihood of adoption
– Political feasibility
• among rich countries
• among emerging/high burden countries
– Ease of technical reporting
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17. Final reflections
• Positioning nutrition smartly in the Post 2015
settlement is vital to lock in current momentum
• This is about politics (domestic, international,
interagency, inter-INGO). Technical considerations
are important but one level down
• Need to unify nutrition community around one option
and then rally potential allies in other goal buckets to
support it
• Wise to have a strong plan B
• There is time, but it is rapidly running out. MDG high
level panel reports in May/June; open question on
how much movement post-Sept 2013 UNGASS 17