Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture: High on the EU Agenda

In this first ‘Voices& Views’ for capacity4dev.eu’s Food and Nutrition Security week, EuropeAid’s Jean Pierre Halkin draws attention to the fact that food security and, increasingly, nutrition, are at the top of EU, G8 and G20 Agendas, and outlines some of the measures that the European Union is taking to support these complex issues.

Food security has been at the forefront of the international agenda since 2008 as global hunger continues to be a threat to international development. Demographic changes, rising incomes and associated consumption patterns, and the unpredictable impacts of climate change combine to place pressure on the world’s limited natural resources. According to the 2012 Global Hunger Index, hunger on a global scale remains “serious.” Twenty countries still have levels of hunger that are “alarming” or “extremely alarming.” Among the world’s regions, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa continue to have the highest levels of hunger.

To add to this bleak picture, recent research shows that undernutrition can have a devastating impact on development. The research highlights that a child who suffers from stunting or chronic undernutrition, particularly before the age of two, is unlikely to recover from its effects, both in terms of physical and mental development. “So nutrition is not only a humanitarian disaster, but it is a development challenge to be addressed,” said Jean-Pierre Halkin last week, from his office in the Rural Development, Food Security and Nutrition Unit at EuropeAid. To do so, last week the European Commission adopted a Communication on nutrition - Enhancing Maternal and Child Nutrition in External Assistance: an EU Policy Framework - to ensure this issue can be better addressed in development cooperation.

The European Union (EU) supports a number of initiatives to tackle hunger and under nutrition, and insists on placing emphasis on long-term solutions for food security issues, through adopting resilience measures.

“The fact that nutrition previously had not been properly addressed in the international development fora led to the creation of the SUN, or Scaling Up Nutrition, movement,” he said. The European Commission has played an integral role in setting up the SUN movement, notably by organizing a defining conference in 2009. Last week, the EU hosted another high-level SUN.

“Programming is really key to address the issue of nutrition, and we want to change the way we are supporting food and nutrition security,” stressed Mr Halkin.   

Between 2006 – 2013, the EU has actively supported food security issues, both politically and financially, in particular by mobilising significantly from thematic budget lines, notably the Food Security Thematic Programme and the EU Food Facility. “This allowed the EU to be extremely reactive to food crises, but we still needed to strengthen our long term approach to address the root causes of those crises. For the programming period starting in 2014 we want to change that,” explained Mr Halkin.

Earlier this year, Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs asked EuropeAid’s Deputy General, Fokion Fotiadis and David O’Sullivan, the Chief Operating Officer of the European External Action Service, to consult with the Heads of EU Delegations who work in food insecure countries, regarding how the EU can better address the root causes of food insecurity and support sustainable agricultural development. As a result, it is expected that a significant number of partner countries will benefit from the EU’s support in the food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture sectors for the period 2014 – 2020. 

“We want these issues to be a very important part of the political dialogue between the Delegations and the partner countries,” said Mr Halkin. 

Together with EU Member States, the Commission is developing a food and nutrition security Implementation Plan that will allow the EU and its Member States to coordinate better on common policy and political priorities, including through complementing the work done on joint programming at country level. “My understanding is that this is pioneering work in the aspect that we are working not only on doing more on a geographic basis, but doing more coordination on a thematic basis,” added Mr Halkin. After being transmitted to Member States at the end of March, the plan is expected to achieve concrete endorsement and ownership through conclusions from the Council under the Irish Presidency of the EU by the end of May. 

“The goal that we aim for 2014-2020 is to put more money into building resilience and capacity development, thereby reducing the need to focus on the consequences of food crises,” Mr Halkin said, in conclusion.

For more information on Food and Nutrition Security, please visit the Topic on capacity4dev, and the Public Group on Food and Nutrition Security.

This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Jean-Pierre Halkin with support from Raymond Lataste and Jennifer Keegan-Buckley the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.