DELIVERING FOR NUTRITION IN SOUTH ASIA 2024 CONFERENCE: REFLECTIONS ON CONNECTING THE DOTS FOR IMPROVING NUTRITION

Even as it grapples with complex challenges, South Asia, the world’s most populous region, is home to inspiring exemplars of excellence 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, organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with 30 national, regional and global co-hosts, was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from December 3–5, 2024. This year’s theme of Connecting the Dots Across Systems 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 the 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, stating, “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.”

Setting the stage for the conference in his keynote, P. Sainath, Founder, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) reinforced the importance of equity in delivering nutrition to all. Specifically, he highlighted 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.”

Building on P. Sainath’s call for equity in advancing nutrition, Thomas Zacharias, Chef and Founder, The Locavore explored how embracing local food traditions can contribute to these objectives. While Sainath underscored the need to challenge systemic inequalities, Zacharias emphasized thinking globally while acting locally, highlighting how food is not just about nutrients but also identity, culture, and connection.

With the conference taking place in Sri Lanka, D4N also featured a plenary session that examined the country’s successes, challenges, and future directions. The session chair, Herath Gunatilake, Executive Director, The 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.

During the conference, the presentations identified several dots that need to connect to improve nutrition. One key connection was the diverse drivers of diets: agricultural production links to markets and diets but is also shaped by behavior change, equity, and social inclusion. Climate further drives complexity, affecting 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 & governance.

Furthermore, researchers noted that, within 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. Social behavior change communication (SBCC) was identified as a vital component of social protection programs, while the lack of sufficient data to estimate coverage and improve program targeting was highlighted as 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 for aligning financing with food system priorities. Specifically, she highlighted the need to repurpose $800 billion in subsidies, much of which supports sugar and grains, to promote agricultural and dietary diversity. She also stressed increasing agriculture’s share of climate finance, currently only 4% of $660 billion annually, despite the sector contributing 30% of global emissions.

In the closing session, Shakuntala Thilsted, Director for Nutrition, Health, and Food Security Impact Area Platform, CGIAR  and Shahidur Rashid, Director, South Asia, IFPRI 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 and the UN Food Systems Summit.

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.