DELIVERING FOR NUTRITION IN SOUTH ASIA 2024 CONFERENCE: REFLECTIONS ON CONNECTING THE DOTS FOR IMPROVING NUTRITION
Even as it grapples with complex food system challenges such as climate change and water scarcity, South Asia, the world’s most populous region with more than 2 billion people, is home to many notable examples of progress in advancing nutrition. Every year, the Delivering for Nutrition (D4N) in South Asia Conference convenes a diverse array of stakeholders who bridge research, implementation, and policy to tackle nutrition challenges—as well as highlight examples of inspiration and success—across the region.
This year’s conference, with the theme “Connecting the Dots Across Systems,” took place in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from December 3–5, 2024, organized by IFPRI in collaboration with 30 national, regional, and global co-hosts. The conference theme was based on the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) Food Systems Conceptual Framework, emphasizing the interconnectedness of food production, distribution, consumption, and outcomes in addressing complex nutrition and food security challenges.
The three-day agenda included 63 oral and 56 rapid-fire presentations, featuring speakers from 12 countries. Overall, the conference program explored many factors affecting nutrition via program and policy plenaries, abstract-based thematic sessions, and interactive learning labs. This year, the conference hosted over 400 in-person attendees and many more online, leveraging a hybrid format to ensure inclusivity. The conference brought together high-level policymakers from various South Asian countries, ensuring that the evidence reached the right audience for impactful action.
Opening the conference, Dushni Weerakoon, Executive Director, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, reinforced this vision: “To make food systems more resilient, policies must cut across nutrition, agriculture, and climate … Any one country or institution could not handle this alone, so bringing all of us together can advance the cause of South Asia,” she said.
P. Sainath, Founder, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), reinforced the importance of equity in delivering nutrition to all in the keynote address—highlighting the incompatibility between supporting the marginalized and poor and endorsing policies that prioritize wealth concentration and economic inequality: “Grow inequality or nutrition, you cannot do both.”
Thomas Zacharias, Chef and Founder, The Locavore, explored how embracing local food traditions can contribute to these objectives, emphasizing thinking globally while acting locally and explaining that food is not just about nutrients but also identity, culture, and connection.
The D4N plenary session examined the host country’s successes, challenges, and future directions. The session chair, Herath Gunatilake, Executive Director, Centre for Poverty Analysis, noted that while Sri Lanka was once celebrated for its progress in poverty reduction, it now grapples with a severe economic crisis that has increased poverty, reduced meal frequency, and compromised meal quality, with significant and potentially generational nutritional consequences. Discussions focused on the varied approaches for mitigating these challenges, from shock-responsive social protection measures to initiatives that tackle both demand and supply issues to ensure increased availability and affordability of healthy foods for consumers.
Conference presentations identified several dots that should be connected to improve nutrition. One key connection was the diverse drivers of diets: Agricultural production links to markets and diets, while is itself shaped by efforts to advance behavior change, equity, and social inclusion. Climate change impacts affect food availability, access, prices, and water, with social protection and health systems playing a critical role in addressing these impacts in the region.
Wanjiku Gichohi, Senior Scientist & Impact Area Lead, WorldFish, underscored these links, stating, “Gender, equity, social inclusion, and climate change must always be central to crafting solutions, as they directly impact the outcomes we strive for.”The presentations also highlighted the missing links between agriculture and behavior change communications, nutrition education, capacity building, and policy and governance.
On another front, researchers noted that health systems community influencers are essential for successful nutrition interventions. Building evidence on the feasibility and acceptability of nutrition interventions remains crucial, beyond just assessing their impacts. Key insights also emerged around the role of social protection in promoting nutrition and equity. In particular, social behavior change communication (SBCC) is a vital component of social protection programs, while the lack of sufficient data to estimate coverage and improve program targeting is a significant challenge.
In a closing policy and program plenary session, speakers from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan emphasized the importance of strong coordination, demand-driven research, context-specific solutions for improving nutrition and food systems, and engaging the private sector and aligning its resources with sustainability goals. Geeta Sethi, Advisor and Global Lead for Food Systems, World Bank, urged that financing be aligned with current food system priorities—specifically, redirecting the $800 billion in annual global spending on agricultural subsidies, much of which supports sugar and grains, to promote agricultural and dietary diversity. She also stressed the importance of increasing agriculture’s share of climate finance, which is currently only 4% of the $660 billion annual total, even as the sector contributes 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In the closing session, Shakuntala Thilsted, Director for Nutrition, Health, and Food Security Impact Area Platform, CGIAR, and Shahidur Rashid, IFPRI South Asia Director, recognized D4N as a key effort for deliberating about key issues affecting food security and nutrition in South Asia, and noted that the conference discussions have provided a strong foundation for continuing these conversations at global events in 2025, such as Nutrition for Growth in Paris in March, and the UN Food Systems Summit Stocktaking Moment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July.
Overall, D4N2024 underscored the vital importance of connecting the dots across systems—bringing together people, ideas, and evidence—to address the complex challenges facing food systems in South Asia. The conference remains a catalyst for change, fostering dialogue and inspiring action toward healthier and more equitable food systems, with potential to be expanded to other regions in the future.
Blog contributors
Esha Sarswat, Julie Ghostlaw, Neha Kumar, Samuel Scott and Swetha Manohar are from IFPRI and Shreya Chakraborty is from IWMI.
Call to Action
Would you like to co-host the 2025 Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia Conference? Get in touch with us: IFPRI-D4N-CONF@cgiar.org
Explore more from the D4N2024 Conference
Check out the YouTube playlists of all sessions, photo galleries, presentations, resources, and other details on Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia 2024 Conference website.
