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Coherence or cross-purposes? Building national coalitions for transformative evidence-based policies
Thursday, 2022/03/10 | 08:14:37
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CGIAR, March 4 2022
Despite well-intentioned policies and economic growth over the last decade, major inequalities persist within many low- and middle-income countries. Approximately 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, and poor and disadvantaged people face heightened risks from food and nutrition insecurity and inadequate access to clean water and sanitation. Rising poverty, rapid urbanization, and political conflicts continue to exacerbate systemic inequities in access to food, water, and land — particularly for women and youth. The degradation of natural systems and broader climate change impacts compound the risks to people’s livelihoods and vital food systems.
Achieving transformations that lead to food security, healthy diets, poverty reduction, climate resilience, and gender equality for all will require better integration of food, land, and water systems and the policies that shape them. Yet policies remain fragmented and uncoordinated across sectors. Successful transformation requires policies that optimize benefits and synergies while navigating complex trade-offs among interlinked systems. It also requires coordination, cooperation, and accountability among diverse stakeholders. Without coherent, evidence-driven planning, future policies for food, land, and water systems could lead to poor investment decisions, ineffective national programming, and growing inequalities.
A lack of policy coherence can heighten existing vulnerabilities, as happened when the health crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic rapidly became a wider crisis of poverty and inequity. Governments quickly implemented lockdowns to prevent contagion and save lives, but the focus on health worked at cross-purposes to other welfare and environmental goals.
n many African countries, for example, movement restrictions and market closures limited access to income, especially for informal sector workers and food traders, many of whom are women[1]. When schools closed, children lost access to nutritious school meals and safe water supplies as well as educational opportunities. While restrictions were necessary, better coordination of trade and movement policies within and across countries could have helped ensure livelihoods and reduce health risks.
To meet this challenge, CGIAR offers a wide range of expertise on food, land, and water systems at country and regional levels, and a strong body of evidence on policy design, implementation, and evaluation for impact. CGIAR also has developed analytic tools and built evidence on pathways to benefiting and empowering vulnerable people, including women and youth, in diverse places and contexts. The proposed CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies for Food, Land, and Water Systems Transformation will build coalitions with governments, the private sector, funding organizations, and civil society groups to champion and strengthen capacity for more collaborative, evidence-based, and coordinated strategizing, policy development, and implementation — to ensure more sustainable and equitable outcomes.
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