Over the past three years, the World Bank has made a concerted effort to scale-up work in nutrition and is strongly committed to increasing the multisectorality of its investments by supporting nutrition through other relevant sectors, such as agriculture, social protection and education. The Bank's work on nutrition is based on the scale-up of evidence-based interventions, targeted at the most vulnerable populations. The World Bank looks forward to learning about other initiatives and approaches that focus on improving nutrition among vulnerable populations through both regional and national impact pathways. Visit the conference site for more information: http://www.egfar.org/gcard-2012 Au cours des trois dernières années, la Banque Mondiale a fait un effort concerté pour intensifier ses activités dans le domaine de la nutrition et s’est fermement engagée pour accroitre la dimension multisectorielle de ses investissements en soutenant la nutrition à travers d’autres secteurs pertinents tels que l’agriculture, la protection sociale et l’éducation. Le travail de la banque mondiale dans le domaine de la nutrition est basée sur l’intensification des interventions fondées sur des preuves et ciblant les populations les plus vulnérables. La Banque Mondiale a hâte de connaitre et d’apprendre sur d’autres initiatives et approches qui mettent l’accent sur l’amélioration de la nutrition au sein des plus vulnerables à travers des mécanismes d’impact à la fois régionaux et nationaux. Visitez le site de la GCARD2 pour plus d'information: http://www.egfar.org/gcard-2012

1. DRAFT
Breakout Session P1.2 Household Nutrition Security: Speaker Brief
South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI) - Secure Nutrition
Knowledge Platform
Yurie Tanimichi Hoberg (World Bank)
Context – the problems being addressed
1. In several countries with robust economic and agricultural growth, malnutrition rates remain
surprisingly high. Children who are malnourished in early life (from conception to 24 months) often
suffer from irreparable physical and cognitive damage, with evidence of impacts on adult productivity,
particularly in rural, agricultural settings by lowering stature and physical strength, and indirectly by
increasing the burden of disease and morbidity. In addition, malnutrition retards cognitive
development in children, undermining the development of human capital critical for economic growth
in the longer-term.
2.
3. In general, nutrition outcomes have improved more quickly in countries with more equitable economic
growth and pro-poor agricultural growth policies.1 However, while economic growth, poverty
reduction and agricultural productivity all contribute to better nutrition; in most countries gains in
economic growth or agricultural productivity alone have been insufficient to improve child nutrition
outcomes.2
4.
15. There are major opportunities to incorporate small adjustments to investments across sectors to make
them more nutrition sensitive with a potentially impressive impact on nutrition outcomes. Based on
experience to-date, five steps are necessary for transforming new operations across several sectors to
be more nutrition-sensitive:
a. Explicitly incorporate nutritional considerations into initial design of projects/policies;
b. Integrate nutritional considerations as elements of investments, not necessarily as the primary
objective;
c. Modify the design/consider alternatives to minimize unintended negative consequences and
maximize positive impacts;
d. Support nutritional objectives with technical capacity within countries;
e. Monitor and evaluate nutrition impacts with appropriate indicators.
5.
Current activities presented and discussed in the session
Over the past three years, the World Bank has made a concerted effort to scale-up work in nutrition
and is strongly committed to increasing the multisectorality of its investments by supporting nutrition
through other relevant sectors, such as agriculture, social protection and education. The Bank's work
on nutrition is based on the scale-up of evidence-based interventions, targeted at the most vulnerable
populations. This translates into a particular focus on the critical window of opportunity in the first
1
Webb, P. and Block, S. 2010. Support for agriculture during economic transformation: Impacts on poverty and
undernutrition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
2
See Module B on poverty and nutrition for more details and discussion on this issue.
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2. 1 000 days (pregnancy through two years) during which undernutrition has been shown to have often
irreversible consequences. Increased attention has shifted towards agriculture and rural development
for the implementation of nutrition sensitive activities that can accelerate progress towards nutrition
objectives in high burden countries. The following activities highlight some of the work that the Bank
is doing to address nutrition through agriculture and rural development initiatives.
 The South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI): Financed by DfID and
AusAID, SAFANSI was formed to foster the cross-cutting actions that will lead to measurable
improvements in food and nutrition security in South Asia. To this end, SAFANSI is enabling
stakeholder platforms that can operationalize cross-sectoral action and enable more effective
domestic stewardship of the food and nutrition security agenda. The ultimate objective of
SAFANSI is to increase the commitment of governments and development partners to more
effective and integrated food and nutrition-related policies and investments. To date, SAFANSI
has supported the South Asia Region (SAR) (the region with the highest levels of undernutrition)
to build demand for the Bank's engagement in nutrition.
 SecureNutrition: The SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform is focused on taking a multi-sectoral
approach to improved nutrition outcomes through investments in the agriculture and rural
development sector. SecureNutrition is dedicated to expanding and disseminating the evidence
base of operational knowledge focused on the intersection of agriculture, food security and
nutrition and is collaborating with a number of partners from academia, NGOs, research centers,
and UN and bilateral agencies to bridge the knowledge gap between these sectors. The main
objective of the SecureNutrition is to create an active community of practice - both virtual and
physical - where information and operational knowledge can be shared on how to increase the
nutritional impact of agriculture and food security investments and interventions.
 Agriculture Action Plan: The World Bank is currently finalizing the new Agriculture Action Plan
for FY13-15 that builds on the first action plan for FY10-12. The new plan shows a greater
commitment to maximizing nutrition impacts through agricultural investments. The Agriculture
Action Plan FY13-15 will contribute to the objectives and results of our clients through projected
IDA/IBRD/IFC/MIGA support at between US$7 billion and US$9 billion a year. With regards to
nutrition, the new plan proposes to better monitor nutrition outcomes of agricultural projects
through gender analysis on women’s discretionary income and women’s time use as well as
through incorporating explicit nutrition objectives and indicators into project design, such as direct
nutrition indicators like child anthropometrics or body mass index, or more intermediate level
indicators such as those reflecting level of food consumption (of certain nutritious food groups) or
dietary diversity.
 Involvement in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Global Movement: The Bank actively engages
with governments, CSOs, and international partners in the SUN movement with a particular focus
on the reduction of stunting in high burden countries. Recently, the Bank has emphasized the need
to improve nutrition outcomes through its investments in agriculture (which are increasing from
$7 to $9 billion/year by 2015) and through global partnerships such as GAFSP and the CGIAR.
 Improving Nutrition Through Multisectoral Approaches Guidance Note: The World Bank has
recently completed a report, or set of “guidance notes” that respond to the global development
community’s request for operational guidance to maximize the impact of investments on nutrition
outcomes for women and young children. The authors' aim is to provide guidance for World Bank
Task Team Leaders (TTLs), international financial partners and country-level implementers to
mainstream nutrition activities into agriculture, social protection and health by adjusting the
design of existing or future operations in their respective sector to be more nutrition sensitive.
Intended outcomes
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3. The World Bank looks forward to learning about other initiatives and approaches that focus on
improving nutrition among vulnerable populations through both regional and national impact
pathways. In addition, the World Bank will continue working towards a better understanding of such
pathways through collaboration with external partners (particularly through the SecureNutrition
knowledge platform) to more effectively bring the food security and nutrition agendas closer together
so that investments in one will have positive impacts on the other. Through the above-mentioned
initiatives, the Bank essentially intends to increase the number of projects and programs that
mainstream nutrition considerations into their agriculture investments, and/or reduce unintended harm
to nutrition.
Commitments to collective actions in 2012-2014 (national, regional or international)
i. With existing resources
The Bank’s agriculture portfolio is extensive, with large potential for the integration of nutrition
sensitive activities. However, to date, only a small proportion of these have explicitly attempted to
address nutrition through their operations. It is expected that in the coming years, more task team
leaders in the agriculture sector will integrate nutrition into their programs.
Some examples of current activities (2012-2014) that explicitly include activities to improve nutrition
include:
(i) Haiti’s RESEPAG II Project has a matching grant mechanism that prioritizes nutrition;
(ii) Nepal’s Agriculture and Food Security Project will support the integration of nutrition into
traditional agriculture activities;
(iii) Nepal’s Social Safety Nets Project focuses on nutritious foods as inputs for the food for work
programs, as well distribution of micronutrient powders to children 6-24 months;
(iv) India’s National Rural Livelihood project has integrated food security activities and targeted
support to nutritional interventions;
(v) India’s BIHAR Pangchayat Strengthening Project has incorporated nutrition actions into its
design and results framework.
ii. With additional support
The World Bank will continue to seek interest and resources to scale-up nutrition sensitive agriculture,
particularly in countries with high undernutrition burden. A better understanding of impact pathways
for agriculture and nutrition will be critical to successfully implement and scale-up such interventions
and measure impact.
iii. With specific large scale programme investment
The World Bank is engaged in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme
(CAADP) Compact process. Specifically, both agriculture and nutrition teams from the World Bank
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4. are collaborating and engaging on Pillar 3 of the CAADP, which is focused on increasing the food
supply and reducing hunger across the region by raising smallholder productivity and improved
responses in emergency situations.
4