Atmaram Pandey/Jhabindra Bhandari

In the recent years, nutrition is increasingly considered as an important development agenda. There are several initiatives of governments, development partners, civil society, private sectors and academia to achieve the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs will not be realised without adequate and sustained investments in nutrition and food security. Therefore, there are critical needs of mobilising resources to end all forms of poverty, reduce malnutrition, and tackle climate change. In this context, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) is broadly a significant movement that is both stimulated and reinforced by political interest in nutrition among leaders of governments and development partners which puts national priorities at the heart of global efforts to improve nutrition.

Complex challenges
There are growing evidences that nutrition is a precondition to achieve goals of eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating disease and eventually contributing to the SDGs. However, the challenges of reducing malnutrition are complex as it links to poverty, poor health systems, illiteracy and lack of food security in most of the developing countries. In Nepal, approximately 36 per cent of children suffer from stunting, 10 per cent from wasting and almost 53 per cent from anemia. On the other hand, 41 percent of women of reproductive age suffer from anemia and 17 per cent from long-term energy deficiencies. The national target is to reduce the rate of stunting from 36 per cent to 24 per cent by the year 2025 and to 14 percent by 2030.  
For the first time, Nepal hosted the SUN Global Gathering from 4 to 7 November this year in Kathmandu. With the theme of nourishing people and planet together, this important gathering is indeed a flagship event of the SUN movement which offers an important opportunity to celebrate progress, take stock of challenges and share their unique experiences and perspectives. Thus, it brings together all SUN Government focal points, representatives from United Nations agencies, civil society, private sector, academia, media, parliamentarians and others.
Similarly, the SUN civil society network has been instrumental in bringing together national and international organisations which are working in the area of women empowerment and community development to support for nutrition and food security issues at the grass-roots. Therefore, there is an emerging need of collaborative process where governments lead for collective actions to ensure every child, adolescent, mother and family can realise their right to food and nutrition, reach their full potential and shape sustainable and prosperous societies.
More importantly, the SUN Movement Strategy and Roadmap (2016-2020) has been a major landmark in terms of enhancing collaborative process to reduce the global challenges of malnutrition. This also aims to enhance social and political accountability of governments and development partners for sustaining the progress for good nutrition. This global event needs to critically review the progress, opportunities, challenges and identify key priorities for actions to accelerate the momentum for ensuring nutrition security at large.
Nepal’s leadership and political commitment to improve nutrition and food security have been appreciated by all SUN countries. After joining the SUN movement in 2011, Nepal first ever established a multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral platform under the National Planning Commission (NPC) which largely coordinates and facilitates planning and implementation of nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions at all levels. Coordination with other sectors such as education, health, agriculture, livestock, drinking water and sanitation, women, children and social welfare and local governance has been effective in advancing multi-sector response for good nutrition at all levels.
Despite several challenges of natural disasters, including flooding, landslides, and earthquakes, climate change, poverty, poor infrastructure and migration, Nepal has made remarkable progress to end hunger and malnutrition. Government’s priority for nutrition and food security is clearly reflected in national development policies, strategies and plans. However, there is a growing need for effective implementation of these policies to ensure tangible progress and sustain the results. In 2017, Nepal launched the second phase of Multi-sector Nutrition Plan MSNP (2018-2022) which primarily targets women, children and adolescent girls in the country. Thus, MSNP is being implemented by the Government of Nepal in collaboration with UNICEF, WFP and other development partners to scale up MSNP across the country. However, there are critical gaps of capacity and resources to mainstream nutrition across all sectors at the local level.
At the country level, it is important to understand how governance works to improve nutrition outcomes, and how stakeholders such as nutritionists, development actors, donors, civil society and the private sectors can support governments in sustaining political commitments over the long run. Hence, analysing nutrition governance is an important step as it uses a political economy approach to examine the motivations of various stakeholders in which they operate and their capacity to mobilise resources more effectively and efficiently.

Joint action
In line with the vision and principles of SUN movement, Nepal can demonstrate much progress by strengthening multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder engagement to ensure collaborative actions and accountability for good nutrition. Therefore, effective leadership of governments and multi-sectoral committees is extremely important in planning, budgeting and implementation of nutrition-specific and nutrition sensitive interventions at all levels. With our concerted efforts, the world will be free from malnutrition by 2030.

(Pandey is former Secretary, Government of Nepal and Bhandari is PhD research fellow in public health.)