Top donors to nutrition programs

In 2012, the World Health Assembly endorsed global targets to improve maternal and child nutrition by 2025. These targets were integrated into the Sustainable Development Goals, where nutrition feeds into 12 of the 17 SDGs, as well as dozens of indicators used to track them. Even before the SDGs were finalized, the international development community pursued several key initiatives on nutrition. The 2013 Nutrition for Growth event, or N4G, held in London was a major step toward supporting country-owned efforts to improve child nutrition. During the event, donors pledged $4.15 billion for nutrition-specific and $19 billion for nutrition-sensitive programs. The Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, a global drive to emphasize the importance of nutrition to a child's first 1,000 days, is a prominent campaign to facilitate collective action between donors, civil society, the private sector and developing countries. The Global Nutrition Report is a multi-partner initiative that holds donors and stakeholders accountable for the successes and failures at meeting intergovernmental nutrition targets. As the first-ever comprehensive tool that documents progress on commitments made on the global scale, the report relies on figures reported by donors themselves using a shared methodology The Global Nutrition Report for 2017 will be launched in November, having recently moved hosts from International Food Policy Research Institute to Development Initiatives, a U.K.-based independent international development organization that focuses on the role of data in driving poverty eradication and sustainable development. While these initiatives have helped coordinate programs and investments, tracking actual donor spending on nutrition can be difficult as solutions for improving nutrition outcomes are often cross-cutting and multisectoral. Some nutrition-specific interventions are tracked by the basic nutrition code by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, but it is much more challenging to quantify donor support for nutrition-sensitive interventions due to their multisectoral nature in addressing the underlying causes of malnutrition (such as food security, adequate caregiving resources and access to health services). Nutrition-sensitive programs typically serve as delivery platforms for nutrition-specific interventions, potentially increasing their scale and effectiveness. Most donor aid for nutrition is channeled via sectoral programs with objectives that are broader than just improved nutrition, making these programs vital to charting investments toward meeting SDG targets. As revealed in the 2016 Nutrition Growth Report, spending for both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs is lacking, with only 61 percent of 2013 N4G donor commitments met. The report indicates a $70 billion gap to meet milestones for stunting, severe acute malnutrition, breastfeeding and anemia, but concludes that reversing this trend is possible. The report focuses on the theme of making and measuring commitments to nutrition and identifying what it will take to meet the 2030 target to end all forms of malnutrition. Despite the challenges in tracking donor funding to nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs, Devex has identified and assessed a few of the primary donors to these programs. These donors were chosen based not only on their funding commitments, but also their progress on achieving funding targets to date. World Bank A major proponent for funding increases to bridge the resource gap of nutrition, the World Bank Group pledged to scale up support for global nutrition programs by tripling direct financing for maternal and early childhood nutrition programs in 2013 and 2014 to $600 million. The projected increase is in addition to nutrition-sensitive investments the bank is making in other sectors beyond health, such as agriculture, education, social protection, and water and sanitation. During the period July 1, 2013, to June 30, 2015, the World Bank approved $355.39 million in nutrition-specific programs and $1.27 billion in nutrition-sensitive initiatives. The Global Nutrition Report assessed that the bank reached its financial commitments made at the summit, owing to a revision to the methodology applied to calculate nutrition-specific investments. The bank surpassed its goal of increasing its technical and analytical support to countries with the greatest prevalence of stunting or underweight children. The bank added stunting as a new indicator on its Corporate Scorecard and pledged to review every agriculture project for its effect on nutrition outcomes. Upon review, the bank increased the share of nutrition-sensitive agriculture projects from 12 percent in 2012 to 27 percent in 2015. Some current initiatives being led by the World Bank in the area of nutrition include analytical work on WASH-Poverty Diagnostics in 17 countries and a new global analytical work on policy implications for obesity prevention. Additionally, the bank — in partnership with Results for Development, 1,000 Days, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation — is conducting analytics on the costs, impacts and financing scenarios for achieving the WHA/SDG targets for nutrition. European Union At the Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2013, the European Commission made one of the largest commitments at $4.03 billion to fight malnutrition through nutrition-sensitive projects in the agriculture, education, water and social protection sectors between 2014 and 2020 — an increase of $442 million from baseline spending. Meanwhile, $533 million will be spent on nutrition-specific programs. The 2016 Global Nutrition Report places the EU as currently on track to meet its pledges, with $110.36 million spent on nutrition-specific programs and nutrition-sensitive disbursements $570.89 million in 2014, although it must aim to increase spending levels to make up for losses in the previous year. The 2014 Action Plan on Nutrition guides the implementation of the pledges made and, together with its Communication on Maternal and Child Nutrition, forms the EU policy framework for nutrition. Strategic priorities include nutrition interventions at the country-level that are targeted to facilitate sustainable improvements in nutrition. Nutrition Country Fiches have been developed for each of the 40 focus countries of the EU nutrition action plan, describing how the EU intends to implement its action plan strategic priorities in the particular context of each of these countries within the period 2014-2020. Additionally, the EU intends to invest in research and to support information systems, as well as provide technical support for the implementation of nutrition initiatives. To this end, the European Commission launched its National Information Platforms for Nutrition in 2015. United Kingdom At the N4G summit, the U.K. made an ambitious commitment to significantly scale up its nutrition investments over the period 2013-2020 by providing an additional 375 million pounds ($572 million) for nutrition-specific programs compared with 2010 spend, and unlocking up to 280 million pounds ($430 million) for direct nutrition programs to match new financial commitments by other donors (one pound for every two pounds in new funding for nutrition). To address the underlying causes of malnutrition, the U.K. pledged 604 million pounds ($763 million) for nutrition-sensitive programs over the same period. According to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, the U.K.’s nutrition-specific interventions amounted to $87 million in 2014, having disbursed $105 million in 2013. Additionally, 225 million pounds (roughly $345 million) has been unlocked from the 280 million pound matched fund, which was used to set up the Power of Nutrition catalytic fund. A further $780 million was spent on nutrition-sensitive interventions. In 2015, the U.K. committed to improve the nutrition of 50 million people by 2020, targeting children under 5 years old, breast-feeding women, women of childbearing age and adolescent girls. The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition was launched to provide global research and policy leadership on nutrition-sensitive agriculture, which has since released several technical and policy briefs and engaged in a number of high-level events. Other investments include a 9.95 million pounds ($15.6 million) program to strengthen nutrition-related data, the majority of which went to support of the European Commission-led National Information Platforms for Nutrition initiative. The Department for International Development refunded HarvestPlus, scaling up deployment of biofortified crops in current target countries and expanding into new countries in 2015. Other new business and science initiatives include the AgResults program, which has made steady progress on implementation of nutrition-sensitive pilots, as well as the program on Innovative Metrics and Methods for Agriculture and Nutrition and Health, which awards research grants and fellowships. DfID, which works in more than 15 countries to support the scale-up of nutrition programs, is set to publish a refreshed position paper setting out the range of DfID’s strategy on nutrition in 2017. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Between 2013 and 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged to invest $862.7 million in nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs. Of this, $492 million will be spent on nutrition-specific interventions, including a commitment of $100 million over and above 2010 spending levels for nutrition. Investment in nutrition-sensitive agriculture programs will total $370.7 million between 2013 and 2020, of which $308.3 million is over and above 2010 spending levels. The foundation kicked off their commitment with a $29.9 million grant for the Alive & Thrive initiative in 2013. At the end of 2015, grants were awarded to support the expansion of Alive & Thrive in India and Nigeria, totaling $32 million. The foundation invested $1.4 million in building the evidence base around breastfeeding through the Lancet Breastfeeding Series and an analysis on the economic value of breastfeeding, and granted the United Nations Children's Fund $7 million for several breastfeeding policy, advocacy and programming initiatives. Such initiatives address the foundation’s commitment to scale up investment in breastfeeding, by investing $20 million of its nutrition budget to support increases in coverage and impact of optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices over the next five years. As part of the foundation’s increased focus on nutrition, a new pledge of $776 million over the next six years was announced in June 2015. This also unlocks $180 million in additional matched funding from the U.K.’s DfID as part of their own pledge made at the N4G summit. A further $500,000 grant to the European Commission to support the NIPN initiative was also announced. The Gates Foundation is also a major donor to the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, which mobilizes public-private partnerships in support of nutrition-related programs. As part of its N4G commitment, in 2013 GAIN launched the Business Platform for Nutrition Research to channel new investment into research and development for nutrition. GAIN also serves as co-chair of the SUN Business Network, currently supporting 11 SUN countries to develop national business engagement strategies and brokering commitments from 187 companies to publicly commit to scaling up nutrition. Germany Signifying the growing importance of nutrition for the country’s development cooperation, Germany committed to a total of $260 million (200 million euros) additional funding for nutrition‐specific and nutrition‐sensitive interventions from 2013 to 2020, alongside committing to implement those funds for programs with a strong focus on women empowerment, as well as partnerships with business, science and foundations. Germany’s nutrition-specific disbursements of $50.57 million and nutrition-sensitive programming of $51.55 million in 2014 were above the average needed to deliver on their pledge, putting the country well on track to reach 2020 goals. Germany’s nutrition-sensitive support focuses on improving the quality and diversity of food and to improve access to nutritious food. Additional priorities related to nutrition include improving access to safe drinking water, to health care, to social protection, and to knowledge on food storage and preparation. Another commitment made at the N4G summit was a strong strategic framework for food and nutrition security. Under the One World, No Hunger initiative, Germany announced 1.5 billion euros annually to fight hunger by 2030, explicitly focused on tackling malnutrition, especially in pregnant women, mothers and young children. The initiative has become one of Germany’s key development priorities, as part of its larger focus on agricultural and rural development for food and nutrition security, further realized through the G7’s Broad Food Security and Nutrition Development Approach, of which Germany was the driving force. With German official development assistance on the rise, the country is considering topping up its N4G pledge. Devex delivers cutting-edge insights and analysis to the leaders shaping and innovating the business of development. Make sure you don't miss out. Become a Devex Executive Member today.