Articles

A systematic framework to identify climate service entry points for transforming nutrition

Grossi, Amanda; Downs, Shauna; Daouda, Misbath; Singh, Pranav; Pei, Lei; Foran, Sarah; Trzaska, Sylwia A.

Although climate variability and change impact food and nutrition programmes, policies and outcomes both directly and indirectly through their influences on food systems, the nutrition sector’s use of climate services to inform the targeting and delivery of these actions has been extremely limited to date. However, climate services have a key role to play in helping to address malnutrition and achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 more broadly by informing risk assessment for the better targeting of actions, early warnings and long-term planning and preparedness. In particular, climate services can help manage and mitigate climate risks, including those arising from extreme events such as droughts or floods. These risks affect: i) food production, which can, in turn, influence both the quantity and quality of food produced; ii) food safety and food loss; iii) the availability, affordability and acceptability of foods, particularly those that are nutrient-rich; iv) diseases among animals and humans; and v) other factors, such as migration, livelihoods and women’s empowerment, which have trickledown effects on diets and nutrition. There is, therefore, an exigent need to advance climate service solutions aimed at improving diets and nutrition within the context of increasing climate variability, including extreme events. To help advance the understanding and use of climate services by the nutrition sector, this paper outlines a systematic framework that was developed in the context of the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday) Columbia World Project for identifying entry points for climate services aimed at improving diets and nutrition (Columbia Climate School, n.d.). In doing so, it shares experiences from the framework’s application in two country contexts, Vietnam and Senegal, to demonstrate its value in guiding the coproduction of climate services for this sector.

Keywords: nutrition, climate services, Senegal, Vietnam, adaptation, climate, food systems

Geographic Areas

Files

  • thumnail for Grossi et al 2022_UNN Nutrition Journal.pdf Grossi et al 2022_UNN Nutrition Journal.pdf application/pdf 5.72 MB Download File

Also Published In

Title
UN-Nutrition Journal
Publisher
UN-Nutrition
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4060/cc2805en