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Distinguished guest panelists and all participants, once again, a very warm welcome to all of you if to the presentation of the Asia and Pacific Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition for 2022. This is a joint flagship report, and it's published by the regional offices of the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, the World Food Program, WFP, and the World Health Organization, WHO. Well, this is the fifth annual report on the region's progress towards the sustainable development goals, and in particular, SDG2 on ending hunger. And also the World Health Assembly's 2030 targets on food security and nutrition in Asia and the Pacific. This latest report focuses particular attention on urban food security and nutrition in this, the world's most populous and fastest growing region. Following a presentation of the report's key findings, there will be a discussion featuring a lineup of distinguished panelists. But to begin the event today, may I now invite Mr. Jeongjin Kim, the Assistant Director General and FAO Regional Representative, to share his opening remarks. Mr. Kim, please. Thank you, Alan. Excellencies, regional directors of UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, distinguished panelists, and ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of our four United Nations Specialized Agencies, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the joint launch of Asia Pacific Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2022. While we look forward to year 2023 as being the year when the world and the Asia Pacific in particular will get back fully recovered after nearly three years of pandemic-linked restrictions or constraints, it is difficult to escape from the sense of deja vu about food insecurity and malnutrition. I regret to say that the picture in Asia and the Pacific continues to deteriorate. This is the fifth year when FAO UNICEF, WFP, and WHO have collaborated to produce this flagship report, and the numbers of the malnourished do not make for encouraging reading. Soon after the SDGs were declared in 2015, we were storing in our progress in the fight against hunger. We then started to regress, going off track towards achieving SVG2, the zero hunger target. And now we look like to completely lose our way unless urgent systemic multi-sectoral actions are taken. Today, we'll hear from the authors of the report. So I will not go into the details of the report itself. You will have the opportunity to see the highlights today and then study the report yourself soon. As Asia and the Pacific is the world's most populous region, the numbers involved are very big. Nearly 400 million people are malnourished. Slightly over a billion are food insecure. And almost 2 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. This region has the highest level of stunting and wasting among children under five. We have made some progress on one indicator. That is just about the only good news. Let me also add that the numbers in this report do not capture the impacts of the 5F crisis I've had on hunger and poverty. As the data in this report precedes the war between Russia and Ukraine, but we'll include that in the report this year, 2023. One of the key factors is the rapidly increasing cost of healthy diet. This region had the maximum rise. It is indeed ironic that a healthy diet in the world's fastest growing economic region, Asia Pacific, and the largest producer of staple food and key commodities, this region, is unaffordable for so many on average. The cost is almost four US dollars per person per day. Ladies and gentlemen, this picture is not the root causes of increasing hunger and malnutrition. But it is a symptom of the deeper problem. Our current food systems and the policies driving them are not fit to reduce hunger and promote nutrition, and they need to be overhauled. This year's joint report dives deep into the urban food security and nutrition from a very obvious region. This region is urbanizing very rapidly. Nearly 55% of the population is expected to reside in urban areas by 2030. And there are already at least 18 megacities with a population of 10 million or more. So it is reasonable to say that leading up to 2030, the achievements of SDG-2 will be determined by the progress achieved in the urban area. Urban areas have their own set of challenges, including food supply chains, housing, sanitation, health facilities, education, employment, waste management, and host of other factors that affect food security and nutrition. For too long, urban development has been associated only with the development of physical infrastructure and civic amenities. But food has now become a part of that process. And we are now working in several countries to develop their urban food agenda. Over the last three years in particular, cities have been under immense pressure to ensure adequate food at affordable prices to everyone. The pandemic may be receding, but the 5F crisis is already having a serious negative effect on food price, livelihood, and the consequently healthy diet. There are encouraging developments as well. Some cities have rolled out many interesting nutrition interventions in a customized and contextualized way. And these are covered in this report. Challenges such as these also bring opportunities. And world leaders have recognized that they cannot be tackled piecemeal. The UN Food Systems Summit and the Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2021 placed the food at the center of the global development agenda. In summary, it is not just about providing enough food. It needs to be nutritious, produced with the optimal use of natural resources, accessible and affordable to all, and to assure livelihood to those who are bringing us our next meal. That is the core of the principle of agri-food system transformation and the leaving no one behind. All of you watching today have signed up for it, whether you are from the government, public sector, the private sector, academia, or civil society. We hope that this report will inform better policies, sustainable actions by all of you. Our organizations will support you all the way. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kim, for those insightful remarks, which set the tone for the presentation of the SOFI report today. Well, as mentioned already, the Asia and Pacific Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition is published as a joint effort by four UN agencies. It reflects and is indeed emblematic of our shared values and strong partnership to help our member nations achieve the sustainable development goals, and particularly SDG2 to end hunger in all its forms. Now to officially present the findings of this report, I invite Mr. Shridhar Dharmapuri, Senior Food Safety and Nutrition Officer at the FAO Regional Office, to take the floor. Mr. Dharmapuri will be presenting the report on behalf of all four UN agencies. Mr. Dharmapuri, the floor is yours. Thank you, Alan. Good morning to everyone from Bangkok. And good day to all of you wherever you are. Thank you all for joining in many numbers today. And this is the level of interest that we have been able to generate in this report, because clearly this is a work which is part of the mandate of all the four agencies who are involved here today. And it presents a very important picture as we go forward and we try to achieve the SDGs by 2030. So we will just give you a brief overview of what's in the report, give you some of the highlights which we are presenting today. The full report will soon be available online. But let me first start off by acknowledging my colleagues from the other agencies, Roland Kupkar from UNICEF, Anusara Singumarwong from the World Food Program, and Julianne Toro, and Angela De Silva from the World Health Organization. Thank you for collaborating with us and bringing out this important report, which will hopefully inform all the policymakers, governments, and the civil society in this region on what are the key priorities going forward in achieving food security and nutrition, or in other words, ending hunger by the year 2030. So just to give you a brief idea of what's in the report, the key messages are as follows. Overall, hunger in the Asia-Pacific region rose further in 2021. We have followed this trajectory for quite a few years now. This report is the fifth joint report by all four agencies. And we have seen how the situation continues to deteriorate since 2015 when the SDGs were actually announced. We have 85 million more hungry people since 2019, which was before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. And over the last two years, so 2020 and 2021, we've actually added 40 million more per year to the number of the undernourished. We also have more than a billion people who are moderately or severely food insecure. So it's not good enough just to think that we do have only about 50% of the food insecure people in the globe here, but the numbers are much more bigger than what we are actually talking about. Second, this region is not on track to achieve the SDGs or the global nutrition targets which are set under the World Health Assembly. The progress has been made only in one indicator, which is the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding. Now that's encouraging definitely, but in all the others such as stunting, wasting, childhood, overweight, and adult obesity, and as well as anemia in women, we are falling behind and we're actually moving in the wrong direction. There is some amount of decent progress made in the case of low birth weight of children. Importantly, what Mr. Kim also pointed out, almost 1.9 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. And the healthy diet in this region costs almost $4 a day per person, which is a huge amount of income which goes into supporting healthy diets for families. And you can imagine this is quite ironical in a region which otherwise counts among its countries the highest producers of key commodities, rice, fish, pork, pulses, millets, milk, and many others. And yet we fail to provide sufficient food or nutritious food to all the citizens living in this region. So that's the larger problem that the problem that the agri-food systems that we have do not provide sufficient nutritious food to all the citizens living in this region. So if you go deeper into this report, you will actually see that, just give me a minute, look at the trend over the last, since the beginning of this century. Effectively from the year 2000, the numbers of the malnourished have actually begun to steadily decline. And that you can see in the orange curve, the purple line is for the rest of the world, for the whole world. And the red line on top is actually the numbers in millions. So these numbers began to decrease in the early part of this century. And they did actually continue up to around 2015, 2016. And that was those were the times when the economic growth was very strong. So all the economies were growing well. We had high rates of GDP growth. Let's not forget the Asia Pacific region is the economic engine of the world and has been there for some time. So during those times, the percentage of undernourishment actually began to decrease. So it went down, it's about 9% now, but it came down from 14% at the beginning of the century. But in the last few years, it has again begun to rise and somewhat that coincides also with soon after the SDGs were announced. So, and then of course, there has been a steep increase in the last two years during the pandemic. And this again goes to show that during good times we do well in terms of reducing the percentage of undernourishment. But when we are challenged as it happened over the last couple of years, our food systems are not resilient enough and shock resistant enough to continue the progress. And you will see this is reflected in the hardcore numbers as well of the nearly 400 million who are undernourished here. The maximum are in Southern Asia around 330 million. There was a small dip. If you look at the table, the numbers will be a little small, but you will have the opportunity to go through the whole report. There was a small dip leading up to 29 in 2015. And leading up to 2019, but then it began to rise again. So some of these increases precede the pandemic. So the problems that are there in ensuring the ending of hunger and malnutrition are systemic and they've existed before the pandemic actually took hold. And of course now we also have the crisis which has been brought on because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. But just important always to understand the problems are systemic and they have been there right from three or four years ago. At the same time, South Eastern Asia which has seemed to be progressing well up to 2019 is also now showing an uptick in the numbers of the malnourished. The other part of malnourishment is moderate or severe food insecurity. So moderate food insecurity means that people or households at certain times in the year have not been able to buy enough food or have had to make decisions because of constrained budgets. And severe food insecurity refers to long periods of people or families going without food because they have not been able to afford it. That number is now one more than a billion and this is an increase of over 344 million in over the last eight years. And of this number nearly 460 million are severely food insecure. And that's a massive increase since 2014, almost 60%. So this is a serious sign that we are not only backsliding from the SDG targets but we are actually seriously off track. Let's also just keep in mind, we are halfway. It's 2022 has passed. So we are like exactly halfway between the time the SDGs were announced and we are supposed to achieve by 2030. So we are seriously off track in achieving any of these targets. Likewise for stunting. And here we're talking of low height for age for children under five years of age. This region has the highest number in terms of we have 23% of children or 75 million of them who are stunted. And you can again see that Southern Asia has the maximum. It's actually Oceania has the maximum at about 41% and Southern Asia at 30%. 10 countries have a very high prevalence. So above 30%, that's by WHO criteria. And another eight have a very high prevalence of 20 to 30%. So overall 18 countries in the region have a high prevalence at least of stunting. And this again causes problems that low growth leads to lesser cognitive ability that then affects the productivity of the population as in when these children grow up and become adults and want to contribute to the economy. So this particular figure is not only looking at the present but also looking at some part of the future which we need to improve. If you look at wasting which is on low weight for height almost 10% of children under five in this region are wasted. And the graph or the figure on the right actually tells you the story that it's common across all regions except for Eastern Asia, it's much lesser but definitely Southern Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of Oceania, these numbers are severely high. And again, a reason to start thinking about healthy diets and how agri-food systems need to be reshaped and reimagined to ensure that children are not stunted or wasted in the road ahead. Paradoxically, while we speak of child stunting we also speak of child wasting we are also talking of child overweight. And this region is no exception to the global trend of increasing childhood obesity with 5% of the children being overweight. And this number particularly in Southeast Asia is concerning because it has doubled in the last 13 years. It was about 3.7% in 2007 and reaching 7.5% by 2020. So a doubling is very significant and is a sign of the diets which are actually available to the children probably very highly processed high in salt, sugar and fat and probably other things too. Eight countries in Oceania also showed an increase in childhood obesity. There's also a small rise in Southern Asia but while it's lesser than the other regions let's not forget that this actually goes together with a 30% rate in stunting and about a 15% rate in wasting. So clearly there is a double or a triple burden which is shaped up in Southern Asia and again an issue for all policymakers and all of us to address. We spoke about children so let's not talk about women and mothers. Anemia is extremely common particularly in Southern Asia every second woman is anemic and no country is on course to reach the World Health Assembly target of a 50% reduction. And if you look at the figure on the right you will see high bars all through and almost probably the minimum figure here is about 10 to 12%. So no country has less than 10% of its women being anemic. So and this if you consider women as constituting at least 50% of the population or even more then we are in very serious trouble. Even relatively richer countries who are listed in this figure also are struggling to reach the target. So again a sign that the food our food supply and our food production does not seem to focus enough on supplying micronutrients because as all of you would know anemia is caused by deficiency of iron in the diet. So the failure even to supply the simplest of micronutrients is a sign that our food systems need serious reform. The one couple of indicators where we have better news to convey is one is on exclusive breastfeeding of infants from 0 to 5 months of age this indicator has an encouraging trend. 21 countries are above the target of achieving 50% of more exclusive breastfeeding by 2025. Southern Asia and Oceania are definitely on track so this is good news for Southern Asia who have moved from 47% to 57% in about 8 years whereas the other two regions southeastern Asia and eastern Asia need to increase the rate of progress but nevertheless this is one encouraging slide that we are happy to show all of you. The other encouraging indicator although we won't still call it anywhere close to a success story yet is on low birth weight. Low birth weight is an indicator or a risk factor for neonatal mortality stunting and illness. The World Health Assembly target is to achieve a 30% reduction by 2025 and let's remember that's only two years away and the prevalence again here is highest in Southern Asia at about 26%. Most countries have made notable progress since 2000 with several reducing it by more than 10%. So let's just say again to be more encouraging we are on the right track here but we could definitely accelerate our progress at this end. We then come to adult obesity so we've spoken a lot so far about more on under nutrition and lack of nutrients in the diet. So what happens if we go in the other direction and especially if you have unhealthy food or much richer food then it's actually required and that becomes overweight and obesity and that's a risk factor for noncommunicable diseases and we clearly do know that many countries in Asia have high incidence of NCDs such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiac troubles. Privilege in the region obesity is half the global average which is sort of the good news but nevertheless it's rising and the target of the World Health Assembly was not to have any increase or to have zero increase and that is something again countries here are not meeting. Clearly the countries in the Oceania region in the Pacific have high rates of adult obesity and this is again a well known problem a lot of it linked to diets which we will come to in a moment. So here comes now what is here we now start to look into what are the kind of things that we can do to ameliorate the situation and the first thing that we would all probably say is to increase the availability and affordability of healthy diets and the news on that front again is not great. This table on the slide has very small numbers just focus on the 5 numbers on top. These are the numbers as the average cost of a healthy diet first the first box is for the Asia and Pacific region followed by eastern Asia, followed by Oceania followed by south eastern Asia and then by southern Asia. So across the region the average cost of a healthy diet is almost $4 per person per day and of course it ranges slightly between the four sub regions but suffice to say this is a very high cost if you were to do a simple calculation and look at a family as consisting of four members that would make $16 a day as the minimum cost of a healthy diet for all four members for a month it will be $480 or $500 and if you look at the average income across the region for most countries let's leave out the richer ones or the developed economies here you are actually looking at an income where the share of food is now approaching 50% or even higher. So this again makes it very difficult for families and households to ensure healthy diets for their children and for themselves because then it doesn't leave room for other essential things such as housing, healthcare and education. So overall the fact again coming back to what we were saying all along that our food systems do not provide affordable healthy diets and instead are forcing households to spend the major part of their income on feeding themselves is in itself an issue that we need to strongly address that's where all the issues related to policy, programming and implementation on the field and comes into the picture and here's where everyone has a role whether it's the government or the private sector or all of us who are working behind the scenes to look to provide the evidence on the kind of policies that are actually necessary. So the high cost of a healthy diet actually has resulted in an overall increase of 78 million people in the region who cannot afford such a diet and as you can see it's a huge number and it's almost approaching 50% of the population in this region. So what can be done here given the setbacks over the last two years because of the pandemic and the decline in this region in the fight against hunger which as we said precedes the pandemic. These issues started way before the pandemic actually took hold. We need to look at how we can reshape our food systems to make them efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable leaving no one behind which we all know is the mantra of the SDGs. So the key steps here is to step up investment in agriculture both public and private and we need to keep our eyes on the smallholders and family farmers who make up more than 60 or 70% of the workforce in this region particularly in the farm sector. Second is to fine tune and not implementing a food system transformation pathways which were fostered through the process of the UN food system summit as well as the nutrition for growth summit in 2021. So we have those plans, we have analysis to back it up and they are being developed further as we speak but this is the time to put those into action. Implementing the all important plan on global action plan on child wasting is a serious problem in this region as we have outlined and again all our agencies have collaborated to develop this global action plan persisting with social protection programs especially for women and children and this was many of the countries had excellent experiences during the pandemic and these need to be persisted with. This is not an area for cost cutting but in fact an area for expansion and finally to repurpose agriculture policies to reduce the cost of healthy diets. Now this comes with a caveat and that is that when we try to reduce the cost of healthy diets and improve their affordability there could be, there are tradeoffs which need to be managed and this particular figure which we have taken from the global report on the state of food security and nutrition you can look it up later when you want to because I know it's very small but the point that's being made is it has to be a combination of measures it needs to be about physical subsidies for consumers for producers as well as price incentives. Just one or two of them won't work because they will have negative effects either on the consumer or on the producer so there are ways and means on which to achieve synergies between these measures to reduce the cost of healthy diets and improve their affordability. Finally what are recommendations for repurposing these policies one is of course as to repurpose them to ensure that farmers can actually specialize in the production of nutritious foods to avoid tradeoffs so that it may be necessary to have physical subsidies for consumers and where agriculture is the key to the economy and let's remember in Asia the agriculture sector while economically not contributing lower and lower to the GDP of every country it still has huge numbers of the population or majorities of the population still dependent so increasing incomes in agriculture farmers incomes and job generation is very much what the government needs to be focusing on and then of course international development finance will be needed for lower and middle income countries which lower middle income countries which FURO has been particularly been very vocal about in all the international forum I now just shift briefly to the special topic of this report so every two years when we publish the flagship report we have a special topic in the past we have focused on issues such as food safety value chains, food loss and waste social protection, maternal diets and child diets and this time it's urban food security and nutrition and why are we doing that well for I think the reason is very straightforward Asia is urbanizing rapidly even as we speak the population of the urban population of many countries is approaching 50% or probably has crossed that and many other countries will be getting to that level by towards the end of the decade so when we actually get around to publishing our flagship reports let's say around 2026 2027 we'll actually be looking at the urban population making a huge contribution to the progress of the SDG indicators that we have talked about today and therefore we need to look at what are the constraints and challenges in urban environments what are the cost effective and scalable solutions adapted for city dwellers especially for food security and nutrition and what are the nutrition interventions that we need to scale up so that they also take care of double duties such as sanitation healthcare and education and the key players we all know it's local government, private sector and schools so in this report where we would like to hear first I'd like to thank Decoda which is represented by Sophie Gouda who did the bulk of the work in providing us the analysis here and what the report actually shows that cities across the region will need to accommodate a billion more people by 2050 this will have huge resource implications impacting the water, energy and food systems and while urbanization has not occurred uniformly the region is already home to 18 mega cities so cities which have a population of more than 10 million and what the figure on the right actually will show you is that urbanization is rapidly if you were to actually plot this graph on a time scale you would actually look at this as a rapidly rising curve so this is clearly the next frontier in terms of ensuring food security and nutrition for all going towards the SDGs now about 40% of this population in the urban regions lives in informal settlements or slums and slums typically lack governance, planning and investment in infrastructure and they lead to conditions which perpetuate poor food security and nutrition outcomes and again here on the figure you see it's a selection of countries it's not all the countries in the region but you can actually see that most of them have a significant population living in informal settlements and in the slums so tackling food insecurity and malnutrition here will really be key to having better numbers in the reports that we will be publishing ahead so this particular report on urban food security nutrition covers the current trends in urban settings for example that of the growth of supermarkets of online retail which actually translates into easy availability of processed food and less availability of healthy food the nutritional advantages and system determinants that are based by the urban poor so weaker food supply chains we saw that happen in covid because of the impact on transportation and of bringing food into the cities there were definite pressures on the access of food for urban poor inferior wash health and education systems individual factors and behavior this volume will also give you a number of case studies very interesting case studies and discussions and analysis drawn from multiple cities and urban areas which cover the nutrition status of mothers and children the marketing intensity of unhealthy foods, the impact of covid-19 and the coping mechanisms adopted by local administration now after I finish speaking we will have a very interesting panel discussion where we will actually have three panelists who will share some of these experiences and we hope that you will find very interesting for you to also share with us and share with others so what are the recommendations coming out of the urban part of this report, one is to expand outreach based on evidence so we need more data on urban poor, second to support and enabling environment there are several measures that can be put in so I don't need to go through all of them but let's just say it's important to have initiatives on nutritious food on having a better food environment and initiatives such as urban farming and reducing food loss and waste important to just to point out urban agriculture is not just something which happens on rooftops of multi-storied buildings it happens in gardens it happens in the slums it happens in many places so here's a way to actually have local production and healthier food for all in the cities itself supporting SMEs so supporting the local ecosystem of food wending whether it's SMEs or street food wending and fresh markets to improve quality and food safety is another important aspect that actually is brought out in this report and lastly just to one final set of recommendations that the study makes is to protect the most vulnerable and we have said that before social protection programs are vital and social and behavioral change interventions which will inform consumers of the healthy foods that they should eat and what is to be avoided particularly in terms of processed food foods which are rich in salt, sugar and fat and policies which will promote those and also promote practices such as exclusive breastfeeding and infant nutrition, complementary feeding are all important to follow up on so and then of course all important items of washing infrastructure and services so I hope you will find this particular black shape report which will soon put online interesting to read to gather all the experiences that have been shared from all the urban areas many urban areas in the Asia and the Pacific region and also give everyone here food for thought on how we can make healthy diets more affordable and accessible so we can really shape our food systems as part of the UNFSS process so I thank you all for your attention and I thank everybody for being online and listening here today so back to you Alan I'll thank you Mr. Dharma Puri for sharing the main findings of this really vitally important report this year the gravity of it is clearly evident this is a global story and indeed the Associated Press has already filed a story just a few moments ago I see it's already in the Washington Post so this will be I'm sure trending now globally in the coming hours for you at home or in your offices joining us today if you wish to obtain a PDF copy of the report you may contact FAO by sending an email to my colleague Ms. Liu her contact details are currently there on the screen and we'll share them with you note although the chat function has been disabled for the Zoom webinar you can still join the discussion by inserting your questions in the Q&A function of Zoom and our colleagues are monitoring that well with that let's now move on to our panel discussion that will deliberate on the theme of this year's Sophie report which is urban food security and nutrition as Shridhar was mentioning and it's my pleasure to now introduce the moderator of this panel discussion Mr. John Aleph the Regional Director of the World Food Program at the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific Mr. Aleph, over to you I think you might be on mute we're just trying to figure that out yes yes I think we can hear you now okay thank you thank you Alan thank you to the Region Representative of FAO but thank you in particular to Mr. Damapuri for the outstanding presentation of the very sobering results of this year's Sophie report it's really a great pleasure to be with you this morning and to have the opportunity to moderate a discussion with prominent figures and experts who I'm sure will not only inspire you but also motivate you to bring change and to drive progress in your respective countries and now having heard the presentation that as we meet here today many of you may feel frustrated or disheartened because we've been we've had a setback let's admit it in the past few years a reversal of the progress that we've seen in food security nutrition in the Region an erosion in many senses of our heard and development gains over one billion people in the Region experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity is really a chilling number in a way we shouldn't be surprised the structural barriers to better food insecurity nutrition have been known for decades and they've been well studied and governments have been working steadily to address them stark inequalities, healthy diets being out of reach for a staggering 1.9 billion people is some insufficient coverage of social protection programs particularly for those working in the informal sectors low levels of education and their correlation with high rates of malnutrition and what the Sophie report shows us clearly that in spite of many efforts progress made in removing these barriers has been too modest the report shows us that in the past few years were multiple shocks at food systems households and individuals they didn't fare as well as we would have hoped or expected there was much less resilience in the system than we had led ourselves to believe and the report shows as has been highlighted the problem was not just rural it was acutely urban that our investments in urban food security have been deficient but my intention today is not to depress the audience in fact far from it my intention is to point out and to bring in our panelists to prove that there is much to inspire us there is much to be proud of and optimistic about looking across our region there are many visionary governments with the right policies making the right investments investments which are creating that long term resilience and bringing marked progress in reducing hunger and malnutrition and there are many visionary individuals who through their success are inspiring us and shining a light on the innovative solutions which can shape our tomorrow it's my immense pleasure this morning to introduce you to three such individuals people who are leading lights in their countries but also have insights programs which can enrich our understanding and practical examples of how we can get this right examples of how we can bring sustainable change so this morning I have the great honor to introduce Dr Azucena Dayang Hirang Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health of the Philippines and Executive Director of the National Nutrition Council Dr Azucena is the lead on the Philippines National Action Plan for Nutrition but also she is the country's focal point for the scaling up nutrition movement and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Sun Movement representing Asia likewise I have the honor to introduce Dr H Moldoko Chief of Staff in the Executive Office of the President of the Republic of Indonesia Dr Moldoko is Advisor to the President on Food Security and is one of the key priorities for the country and also one of the top policy priorities of the President and I have the honor to introduce Brigadier General Muhammad Zabaidu Ar-Rakman Chief Medical Officer of Dakar North City Corporation Bangladesh Brigadier General Rakhman has an inspiring vision for creating safe, sustainable and resilient food systems in urban areas and he has helped highlight how critical it is to work with street food vendors in the city promoting better food and promoting better food safety if I may first turn to you Dr Moldoko the pandemic and some subsequent high price crises the 5Fs they're having a major impact but we know that we were seeing regression even before the pandemic hit what do you see Dr Moldoko as the principal reasons for the lack of progress in food security and nutrition since 2015 Thank you John as a moderator and all speakers I'm very sorry I have to speak in Indonesia because my English is very good so don't worry I have my best interpreter so I'm sorry I have to talk to in Indonesian language Yes as what's your question how many global nutrition and climate support indicators show stagnation in the end how many countries of this country experienced worse situations the current crisis due to the conflict and global economy the impact of COVID19 significantly because of stagnation conditions. Other than the crisis, I mean, other than the global crisis, there are other factors that also cause stagnation from the economy and the economy. That is, the change of climate change, the lack of investment in the development sector of agriculture and agriculture, the main structural income related to the access to land and land. The land that is land. In fact, during the pandemic, the Indonesian government not only managed to eliminate foreign companies from the pandemic with stable macroeconomic conditions, but Indonesia also managed to keep the demand for 275 million of its residents. The plant sector is the most resilient sector in terms of improving the development in the pandemic. The plant sector, which was positive in 2020, 2021, and 2022, domestic product or PDOB, plant in the fourth quarter of 2020, has increased by 2.59 percent, as of the year-on-year. 2.28 percent in 2021, 1.65 percent in the third quarter of 2022, and it will contribute 12.91 percent to the PDOB. The government has also increased the demand for export by 10.52 percent from 4.24 million US dollars in 2021 to 4.69 million in 2022. The government has given various plant sector subsidies, plant subsidies, plant products, plant resources, and the price of daily expenses for the plants. That's why we have a good support for the crisis. Thank you so much, Dr. Motoko. Interesting to hear how Indonesia was so successful in keeping its agricultural sector vibrant during the crisis, providing subsidies, fertilizers, and seeds. To the extent that you managed to increase exports and in addition to sustaining the food supplies for such a staggering number of people, 275 million. May I ask you, there have been some successful initiatives to mitigate hunger and poverty in urban areas, and some of these are quoted in our SOFI report. Could you tell us about one or more of the initiatives that have been taken in Indonesia in this regard? Yes, Indonesia's food supply has increased in 2022, after a long two-year pandemic. According to the World Food Security Index, Indonesia's food supply index in 2022 is at a level of 60.2, which is higher than that in the period of 2021. The World Food Security Index has raised the prices in Indonesia quite high compared to other countries. From the affordability score in Indonesia that reached 81.4%, it is quite far from the Pacific Ocean, which has a 73.4%. Indeed, Indonesia's food supply is still less than 2 points from the global market. To be honest, the government has given easy access to farming, as I mentioned before. Indonesia also has access to farming, with the concept of agrarian reform that has reached 9 million hectares from the re-distribution and legalization of farming assets for farmers. We have prepared the farming organization with a millenial farming program, which is currently reaching 222,000 people. Next, the development of alternative farms, such as sorghum, which is in accordance with the Low Conditions and Low Conditions in Indonesia. In 2022, the government has developed a total production of 4,600 hectares in total production of 525 tons and is expected to be 150,000 hectares. The next year, and finally in 2024, it will reach more than 200,000 hectares for 2024. According to the aglain reform, the government has an adaptation action program to anticipate the development and the development. Including the use of sustainable varieties that are expensive to farm and for those who are forced to farm. Next, the development of the water supply by building a dam. As long as the President of the Republic of Indonesia, there have been many dams built and the development of the water supply or the water supply. In front of the local parietas, we have also the development of the dam with this development system So that the government can be absolutely aware of this to anticipate the change in climate change. Thank you, Dr. Moldoko. So it seems that agrarian reforms, investments in farmers and measures to reduce the impact of climate change were among the measures which drove better availability of food in Indonesia coupled with an early warning system to allow the government to intervene were required when climate factors were coming into play. Thank you for sharing those examples with us. If I may turn now to you, Dr. Azucena, and let me focus the discussion now a bit more on nutrition, if I may. One of the reasons there's been insufficient progress on nutrition in the region is that tackling malnutrition has been seen too much and perhaps for far too long as a health intervention to be dealt with exclusively by health services. I know, Dr. Azucena, that you've been instrumental in introducing a multi-sectoral approach to tackling malnutrition in the Philippines. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you've achieved that and what lessons you would share from the Philippines with other countries? Thank you. Thank you very much, John, and a pleasant morning and afternoon to all. Actually, here in the Philippines, as a scaling up nutrition focal point or coordinator, and at the same time, the executive director of the National Nutrition Council, Philippines, starting off with my organization, the National Nutrition Council, as the country's sun coordinator, our main objective really is to promote nutrition and healthy diets through a multi-sectoral and intersectoral approach. Now, this is our main goal for really pushing nutrition programs from the national down to the subnational as well as the local government units here in the Philippines. Actually, to add further, the scaling up nutrition here in the Philippines, actually, we are the 61st country to join the sun movement. And our main goal for joining the movement is to further improve our existing multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral strategies to achieve our goals for nutrition, such as the Philippine plan of action for nutrition and the sustainable development goals being achieved by 2028 and 2038. Now, John, as a country coordinator at the NNC or the National Nutrition Council, my agency actually brings people together through the multi-stakeholder platform to work together across sectors using a unique approach that works for our country, the Philippines. Now, right now, the Philippines has already formed actually four networks who are now partners for nutrition. And these are the ABCD, and soon we will be organizing the Y. So the A stands for the Academe, the Business, the Civil Society Alliance, and the D for the Development Partners of the UN Networks. And soon to be organized is the Y, what we call the Youth Network. So the Sun Academic Network focuses on initiatives to capacitate nutrition workers along policy and program formulation as well as nutrition promotion. And the Sun Business Network is composed of members of the food and then food big companies in the Philippines, as well as micro, small and medium enterprises while making it inclusive for all our private sector partners. Now, there initially includes food participation, food development, production and marketing of healthy diets, corporate social responsibility and research on food and nutrition and financial assistance to government and among others. Now, the Sun Civil Society Alliance and the most mature network here convened by the World Vision Development Foundation, please actually move forward in our fight against malnutrition and their initiatives include nutrition advocacy and promotion, policy development and localization of policies, capacity building and strengthening links between networks and the government. Now, the last is the fourth is the Sun Development Partners Network, which is composed of the United Nations organizations of the donors, which focus on providing technical and financial assistance for nutrition and as well as traditional related projects in the Philippines. Actually, UNICEF has always been providing technical and financial assistance to the Philippines since the early 1990s under their country program for children. On the other hand, F8O and the World Food Program have also provided technical assistance to NSE along with security projects. So that would be all for now, John. Back to you. Thank you so much, Dr. Azizena. First of all, I think your vision for a National Nutrition Council, which sits at high level above ministers and coordinates across those ministries and across the various actors is an excellent one. It's not peculiar to the Philippines, but it has worked particularly well in the Philippines, and I'm sure will inspire others to think through how that mechanism could bring more multisexual approaches. Secondly, I really lured you for the ABCD-Y and just underlined how critical it is to bring together academia, business network, civil society, development networks and very importantly, youth, increasingly important for our region. And so again, something really to look to the Philippines for and to be inspired by. And thank you so much for sharing that vision with us. We'll come back to you later in the proceedings. I'd like to turn now to you, Brigadier General Rakhman, and I'd like to bring us to this critical theme of urban contexts and how they require different approaches. The SOFI report shows us clearly that unsafe food is a major threat to adequate nutrition in urban areas. Could you tell us more, Brigadier General, how you have approached this problem in Dhaka North and in particular, how your work with street food vendors is bringing change, such positive change? Thank you very much. That is, you know, in our country, that is food security, food safety. This is for the developing countries. This ensured very efficiently, undoubtedly. But, you know, for Bangladesh, that is in our perspective, we are having some sort of unique problems. You know, that is in our country, that is in Dhaka city, that is a total population is there is more than 20 million, 20 million people residing in Dhaka city. And in Dhaka North city, it is population is 12 million. So it's a huge number of people, population residing. And, you know, there is for in each square kilometer of Dhaka city, more than 49,000 people are residing in each square kilometer. So and this is a big problem that is highly crowded. And another thing that is the almost about 30 percent of the people they reside in the slums and, you know, in our Dhaka North city, we are having about 500 slums. And many people are residing in these slum areas. Many are the floating people. They are staying in railway stations in the platform, in the bus terminals, or in the launch terminal. They are staying. So this is a big challenge for ensuring the food supply chain, food safety and nutrition for this population. At the same time, that is, you know, urban food, that is, we are having many food, street food vendors and many people are having their food from these street food vendors. But main challenge is there is the proper sanitation and hygienic measures are not taken. And people are also not aware of that is how to maintain the hygiene of the food. So our prime responsibility is to train them. That is how to make the food healthy, how to serve it healthy way. And another problem we are having that is food adulteration. You know, this is also checked by our legislation. Sometimes we conduct some of the mobile courts for these street food vendors for the hotels and restaurants. There is those who are providing the food which is safe for human consumption or not, and these are healthy or not. These are checked. At the same time, as we are another problem we are having for providing the fresh food supply to the people, that is the farmers or the growers, what they are producing. That is the vegetables or meat or fish, that is our poultry. They are not getting the actual price because what they are getting may be the consumers in the city, they are purchasing it in much higher price, maybe double or at times in triple price. They have to pay for getting those fresh vegetables or the fish or meat. For that, we are having some initiative for farmers market. And this farmers market, there is directly the growers can market those. They are produces in this market and the consumers can buy directly from the growers. So, very fresh food and in a very cheaper rate they are getting. This is popular amongst the people, but the thing is, this not in all the areas we could yet implement, but we are trying to implement in all the areas of Dhaka city. And, you know, at present we are affected by 3 C's, that is climate, COVID and conflict. And after COVID we are having, we had to suffer a lot for the dengue situation in our Dhaka city and so we had to combine the health issues also at the same time we have to combat and for the providing the nutrition for the people, we are having some of the maternity centers where we can provide the nutritional support and nutritional advice and counseling and also education for the mothers and the adolescent girls or boys, we are providing that. At the same time, government is also providing some sort of subsidy in the agriculture sector so that the farmers get benefited and the consumers can also get in the right price or cheaper lower price, they can get it and we are having some programs of food fortification we are having and some of the food are fortified and we have added iodine in our salt marketing. So, the problem of goiter or the iodine deficiency is eliminated from the tree so by this, only by addition this iodine in the food, in the salt. And by that, we are trying to provide the safe food for our citizens and what our, that is Dhaka Food Agenda, we are having Dhaka Food Agenda 2041, we are heading towards goal for that goal for a healthy, resilient and urban food system we are heading towards that. That is, you know, every day we are in different areas, we are going to the sellers, that is for the fish traders, meat traders, for the live bird market that is poultry traders and other vegetable traders, we are teaching them how to, educating them how they will be ensuring the safe food, how they can minimize the wastage of their products or the food, you know, in our country there is due to transportation and marketing almost 25 to 30 percent of the vegetables or fruits which are produced, these are wasted. So, if this wastage could be prevented, then this 30 percent value could be added and the prices would be much lesser and this could definitely keep a good role in elimination of hunger and poverty and also nutrition for those terminally poor people. So, this way we are working and I hope that by the educating the people, by training and by the other campaigns and slogans, we can ensure the safe food for the city dwellers and this regards, we are working for a quite long period and we could achieve definitely certain targets we could achieve and we are heading towards Dhaka safe food for the Dhaka people by 2041. Thank you. Thank you very much, General. Thank you for sharing with us the array of measures you're taking and the government of Bangladesh is taking to assure resilient urban food systems. Thank you for talking about urban informal settlements which are critical and pointing out that food is cooked less often in those settlements, more often sourced from vendors, small scale vendors and thank you for telling us some of the things that you're leading and spearheading in working with local vendors to ensure food safety. Thank you for also mentioning how critical it is to get rural to urban supply chains working properly and that we need to work at both ends of that chain, the demand side but also at the supply side reducing food waste and food losses post harvest but also looking at the transports from rural rather to urban areas and the price incentives that may be needed for smallholder farmers. Excellent, thank you. That was so rich. I'm going to turn now back to Dr Moldoko if I may and I want to steer us a little bit towards a critical factor which is financing of these initiatives, financing of food security nutrition initiatives. Dr Moldoko governments have clearly done the heavy lifting in financing nutrition often matching development partner resources through co-investment and co-financing. How is Indonesia investing in nutrition and food security and what message would you have for our audience of partners who may be listening in today. Thank you. Yeah, thank you John. In 2024, the government has increased the number of stuntings down to 14% and the amount of malnutrition down to 7%. In this case, the government has changed the national strategy to speed up the decrease of stuntings which is to pressure the government of rural and rural areas together to coordinate and do sensitive and specific interventions to decrease the number of stuntings down. How much development has been seen? Based on the survey, 1 nutrition in 2022, the number of stuntings in Indonesia decreased from 30.8% to 24.4% in 2022. Other than that, the government also measures the reduction of extreme stuntings in 2024. The protection and social protection programs, infrastructure management, nutrition intervention, and other programs are targeted and prioritized to minimize extreme stuntings, including the series of stuntings. The government has also developed comprehensive data on the individual stage of stuntings to ensure that all interventions or programs that are given can be targeted properly, minimizing the inclusion and exclusion errors. As a donor, as a member of the Global Nutrition and Nutrition Protection Committee, we need to do collaboration between the key volunteers to unite the strength not only in the country, but also globally, so that, according to the SUGS, no one is left with the rapid change of this world. Thank you, John. Thank you so much, Dr, and I appreciate in particular your sharing with us the vision for reducing extreme poverty in Indonesia. The fact that stunting plays, reducing stunting plays such a big and important role in that, and for mentioning your national strategy, which involves not only central government, but also engages very strongly the regional governments as well. I appreciate also your reference to the importance of data to drive both better policy, but also in particular targeting and how our efficiency gains, which can be which can be reaped through better targeting, are so important to these programs. So my thanks to you. Staying on this subject of financing and the challenges of getting enough funding and financing for nutrition and food security, in particular nutrition governments across the region struggle to give sufficient prominence to nutrition in national budgeting processes, not because there's a lack of will, but quite simply because they are inundated with so many legitimate priorities. And at the same time, the dilemma is governments understand more than in any time in the past, the implications of not investing sufficiently in nutrition. They understand that chronically malnourished children live less healthy lives, stay less time in formal education, grow up to be less productive. Governments understand the linkages between stunting in particular and a country's future GDP. There is no simple answer to this very real dilemma that governments face. But Dr Azuzena, I know you've been a strong advocate for putting nutrition in particular at the center. And I wanted to ask you, Dr Azuzena, how you've gone about raising the prominence of nutrition in the Philippines, raising awareness, raising the debate, bringing the debate to decision makers, and particularly at the time of budget in the right moments in the budget cycles and during budgeting processes. So over to you, Dr Azuzena, if I may pass you the floor. All right. Thank you very much, John, for that question. Actually, there are lots of challenges here in the Philippines as regards to really putting investments on nutrition. Year by year on the National Nutrition Council, my agency has always been at the forefront in advocating for increased investments, especially among our local government units or the subnational level. Now, because we see and we realize that the local government units are really the ones who are tasked to really ensure that nutrition program will be at the core of their development program per local government units. Now, advocating day by day, whenever I have talks, especially when I am invited to be a keynote speaker in Alfora here in the Philippines, be at the national level down to the local government units, I see it as an opportunity to advocate the local chief executives that indeed, good nutrition is good governance. Now, year by year, there are lots of increasing investments, especially in local government units. Now, because of our campaign of increasing investments, we have conducted to all our local government units, we have 81 provinces all over the Philippines, and we started the initiative of providing them with technical assistance, especially in the conduct of local nutrition action planning workshop. And because we see this as a very important, it's a basic requirement that without a plan, a local nutrition action plan, you cannot just provide yearly or annual budgets for nutrition program in every local government units. That's one. And second, here at the national level, we really see the need to promote and to advocate to our local legislators, our national legislators. And we see some progress as far as advocating to congressmen, and to lawmakers, senators here in the Philippines. And in fact, we have lots of pending bills at the Congress. And we know for a fact that it is our job, my job, to really push for lawmakers that indeed, nutrition is very important so that the nutritional situation of the country will be solved, especially so that during the advent of COVID-19 pandemic, as well as today, we are experiencing inflation, higher inflation rate, rising inflation rate. So there are less or more and more people who can afford to buy nutritious diets, more so with, you know, here at the urban setting, lack of supply of nutritious food coming from the rural areas. And so, second is, the third one is really to also assess why local government units, all local government units have not been able to steadily increase their investments on nutrition. So yesterday, I have been in one of the year-end evaluation with the UNICEF Philippines, and I close the program. In my closing statement, I said that all we have to do right now are three points. One is assess the local government units, the capacities, institutional capacities, teaching the local level nutrition workers, the planners themselves, the indeed nutrition is very important. So invest more investments on nutrition, more money for nutrition and more nutrition for the money. And the second is, we must also involve the youth. The youth are very particularly because we have pricing, adolescent pregnancy. So pregnancy among our adolescent girls. So we must always involve the youth, not just in, you know, sports, but also in nutrition. They themselves realize that nutritious diets are very important for them and for them to take on the responsibility of being adults in the near future. And third is we must never be working anymore in silos. So we must take a concerted effort, commitment. All of us should have commitment. And then all the sectors involved, multi-stakeholders, everybody was allowed and cared for nutrition. We must work hand in hand with government. And together we shall be, you know, we will be reaching our targets, improving nutrition at all costs. Back to you, Jaan. Thank you so much, Dr. Zucena. And I really, again, appreciate you sharing with us the power, I think, of having this multi-stakeholder engagement. You mentioned lawmakers, congressmen, senators, but also taking that all the way down to their local government units at the most decentralized level of government. And as you said, involving youth being so critical. I appreciate also your notion that the budgeting can't be down on a short-term basis. We need a longer-term vision in the form of nutrition action plans, which go multiple year. And we need to think beyond government budgeting cycles and look long-term as we consider our national investments into nutrition. Thank you, Dr. Zucena. We're a little bit short of time, but I would like to ask my last question to Brigadier General Rachman. And it's on the subject of coordination. It's another strong challenge. If we don't have enough money, the benefits of being coordinated suddenly become amplified. They're amplified anyway. But getting those synergies between the actions in nutrition of different actors is always a challenge, but can bring immense benefits. Brigadier General Rachman, how do you, as Chief Medical Officer in Duck and North, how do you go about coordinating government, bilateral, and NGO programs, ensuring this complementarity, avoiding overlap, and making sure that each investment is giving us the best return? Yeah. Thank you, because for any sort of sustainable development or anything to be successful for a quite long period, we need to have the concerted effort and the coordination amongst all the stakeholders. That's why what we do, that is, we conduct regular meeting with the concerned ministry. There is ministry of food, ministry of agriculture, ministry of livestock, and the ministry of local government, and ministry of health. There is all these are the stakeholder ministries. So we do coordinate with these ministries and actually any type of meeting we are conducting always are any sort of training program we do conduct for the vendors or for the food sellers or the restaurant owners training program. In that case, always there is a representative from the ministry of livestock, ministry of agriculture, ministry of food, and our development partners like UNICEF, FAO, always they are working with us in these regards regarding food and nutrition. Moreover, all the NGOs, many of the NGOs they are working in Dhaka city and in Bangladesh, many of the NGOs are working and most of the NGOs, they are working in nutrition sector, they are working in the health sector and for the maternal and child health matters, they are working. So and you know in all the health outlets, we are having the nutrition counselors, we are having some sort of nutritional package program. So we do provide the nutrition food support to the terminally poor people for the weekly basis for monthly basis, we do provide them some type of food like egg, then meal for then some cereals so that they get the proper nutrition and you know there is we are having the some severely malnourished children, they are assessed, the moderately malnourished children, they are assessed and they are treated in close supervision so that they can these children's can recover from this malnutrition. So by that we could get a very good success in these regards and now actually we are trying to improve the our market condition, that is food sellers, hygiene and sanitation and food safety we are trying to ensure for that we are having the food safety authority, this is a government organization, they are always working with collaboration with the city corporation and the FAO they are working and we are having the BSTI that is Bangladesh Standard Testing Institute, that is they are searching for the food adulteration or anything which is detrimental to the health of the people, they are searching, they are finding and they are taking the legislative measures and our city corporation also we are implementing the law and sometimes we are filing cases or we are imposing fine to the people those who are not maintaining the standard by that with the collaboration of the food safety authority, FAO, other NGOs, our local government ministry and the Ministry of Health, Agriculture, Fisheries and other livestock, all the ministries are working together and that's the way we are proceeding heading forward. Thank you. Thank you so much and I think we've heard today about the how critical that central level coordination is but what you've helped us to understand Brigadier General is how critical, even more so perhaps, is the coordination which happens at the grassroots level, at the implementation level and how steering all actors around a common goal there can be so very powerful. Time is unfortunately out, I would like to very sincerely thank our amazing panelists for giving us those, that inspiration, their insights, sharing their experience and giving us some very practical and real examples of how we can do better coming out of this challenging Sophie report and the the rather sobering results that it gives us it shows us that there is a forward direction and some examples to be to aspire to. Our panelists have highlighted some of the critical factors in any approach in tackling food insecurity and malnutrition and factors which will give us a better chance of success. Factors such as looking beyond the health sector when we deal with malnutrition and treating malnutrition as a multi-sectoral challenge such as the the realization that these standalone interventions in single sectors or looking just at one end of our food system either supply or demand end will not work effectively and that a blend of measures is needed which are carefully calibrated, coordinated and balanced. Ensuring collectively that as many government investments as possible contribute to better food security and nutrition outcomes we need to look across agricultural social social welfare education and health. The need to ensure stronger linkages between agriculture and nutrition making smallholder farmers part of the solution in both rural and urban areas looking at urban agriculture. They need to look across the whole food system if we're going to tackle this challenge particularly of urban food insecurity. I'm recognizing overall that urban areas where a growing proportion of the regions malnourished reside require a different approach and as part of that approach food safety is such a critical component. Finally then the importance of advocacy to all stakeholders and the engagement of all stakeholders from the lawmakers down to the grassroots and particularly involving the youth. As I said at the outset there are grounds to be optimistic a reason to be inspired but we do need quoting an earlier speaker we do need urgent systemic and multi-sectoral action. This is what the regional representative of FAO urged at the beginning and it's absolutely right. I would argue though that there's no better time for us to get this right than now when countries across the region are reeling with the impact of an economic and food security crisis which is intensifying daily and so I urge you let's go back to our respective jobs in countries across the region and let's use the roles that we play to deliver better solutions for those who need us most. Let's go back with renewed energy and resolve to deliver better food security and nutrition especially for the 1 billion people in our region today who have the potential to contribute so much more to the development of their countries and communities but are being held back by abject hunger and malnutrition. Thank you so much for listening today and with those final words allow me to hand back to our to our emcee. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Aleph and all the panelists for sharing your interesting insights on the importance of placing food and nutrition at the heart of the development agenda and as we've been discussing that's exactly where it needs to be. Well we have received we still have some time remaining and I'll open the floor now for questions that we've already received from some of our viewers who are joining us live on Zoom and on YouTube and indeed we've actually received quite a few so what the team here has done is we've tried to consolidate these into three or four questions and in the interest of time I'm going to bring it back to each of the four agencies that have contributed to this report. So I'd like to go to WFP first and so the colleague who can answer this we'd ask you to raise your hand so that we can identify you excuse me and then we'll spot let you. So the question is if you could comment on how the food and feed shortages due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict affected the Asia-Pacific region. We know we don't have the data yet as has already been explained by Shridhar but we do know that there's been an impact so if a colleague from WFP would like to take that question my colleagues are looking for the hands now. Just bear with us a minute. I can take that Alan. Sure go ahead please please. Yeah let me begin and if any other WFP colleague wants to come in that would be also fine. It's an excellent question and I just wanted to point out first of all that it's not just the Russia-Ukraine crisis which has driven up prices and what's obviously we faced is rising prices before the conflict. Rising prices on accounts of the trillions of dollars of stimulus that were pumped into global economies. So I wanted to make that point up front. The Russian-Ukraine crisis has exacerbated significantly and disrupted food supply chains and fertilizer supply chains but it wasn't the only driver here and we were facing problems before the war came along. I think as we've surveyed household food security across the region we've seen that more and more the poor are being priced out of the market and that's our biggest concern. I think the FEO representative regional representatives spoke about this at the beginning but our obviously playing out in different ways in different countries but more and more poor being priced out of the market is a fundamental concern and we're not over that yet. What we fear at WFP is that people's coping mechanisms and we've seen it are eroded. They're eroded in ways we've not seen for decades here. Coping is at an all-time low and it's particularly low in countries where you've got this combination of factors. Climate change impacts the high prices the impacts of coming out of COVID and so we have a number of countries on our watch list and we know governments do as well. I think what we look to FAO for is a sense of what's coming next. We know that fertilizer availability and prices have been an impediment to some of the harvests which we'll see in 2023 and so we fear that through those lower production the problem I've described will only be exacerbated and so we are bracing ourselves for 2023 which could be without wishing to strike a tone of doom and gloom 2023 which could potentially be worse. Thank you. All right thank you very much indeed. I'd like to direct the next question. Again these are consolidated from our viewers to UNICEF and then it's regarding overweight in children so what strategies are being put in place in this region that you're aware of to tackle the issues of child overweight if somebody from UNICEF could raise a hand? Yes hello this is Roland Kukka from UNICEF. No this is an excellent question and to me the overriding principle here is that we have to make it easier to eat well and what therefore many partners are doing in support of government actions is to specifically improve so-called food environments that is to help populations to make the right choices with regard to healthy eating to make it easier to make the right choices to work on the availability of healthy foods the affordability of healthy foods but also the desirability of healthy foods and to do so what we're specifically working on and supporting our government partners on is to put in place the right policies and those policies include for instance restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods to children to have adequate nutrition labeling in place but also work on the financial aspects of things and for instance to decrease the that desirability of unhealthy foods by specifically taxing them as in the case of sugar sweetened beverages so they're really a range of tools now that we have available and we're very you know interested in driving those forward in the region okay thank you very much indeed for that yeah sugary products they're they're hard to avoid aren't they these days and have been for some time okay the next question again consolidated for FAO so I guess Street are in this room as as we've all reported in in in the Sophie cities are growing and continuing to grow and lower income people are migrating to to these urban areas how can they access some of this urban agriculture for them to get a better diet Shridhar can you take that thank you Alan so I'll be brief on it I think we heard a good example today from Brigadier General Rehman in Dhaka on how they are actually going about it how the Dhaka North City Cooperation has focused on some of the slum areas and with assistance from agencies such as FAO as well as with a number of other international NGOs they're actually providing the tools and materials which are required to turn some of these spaces in near around the slums which otherwise would have been wasteland into growing areas for vegetables so those are that is one way of doing it and here's where it's very important that the policymaker or in fact the civic authority which Brigadier General represents they actually play a part because they are the ones who provide the enabling environment for such things to happen and particularly for low income groups who otherwise would not have had access so that's at the ground level that I can give you one example that we heard this the at the higher level what this is happening around the world now is there is what is called as the Milan urban food policy pact and so that is an umbrella that has brought together hundreds of cities across the globe into agreeing to on certain issues on how cities should be investing in making food a permanent part of their urban development agenda usually when we say urban development we talk about bridges and flyovers and metros and and other infrastructure we never talk about food infrastructure and that's what that particular pact has done and many cities now in Asia have signed up for it and so increasingly we will see that in the in the urban development plans going ahead cities will be making provision to ensure that there's more space available for urban agriculture thank you okay thank you very much the one more question I'd like to direct this to the World Health Organization WHO we just already heard from UNICEF about overweight children in urban areas and just in general but there's also other non-communicable diseases that are increasing in urban areas maybe due to the the increasing population but maybe for other reasons too what are your recommendations to to deal with this issue of I guess it also is unhealthy diets but that relates to these NCDs somebody from UNICEF sorry WHO please yes hi this is Angela De Silva from WHO Regional Office for Southeast Asia so yeah there's a strong link between unhealthy diets as well as other unhealthy risk behaviors and NCDs and the focus we promote is to have an overall healthy diet which includes the main components of nutrition plus also low salt sugar and fat now it's easier said than done to do this and we have several action areas one is of course consumer awareness and behaviors where consumers need to be made aware this part of this is done through regulatory actions and the other part through sort of things like food labeling promoting regulations for restriction restriction of trans fatty acids and things basically to improve the whole food environment on the other hand the awareness of NCD risks and the management in the management part of NCD risks also sorry I'm supposed to turn my camera on yeah I hope you can hear me so there are multi-pronged approaches being promoted one of course the regulatory part one population awareness and the other one through the NCD management and then again the risk behaviors now one of the biggest issues we face is when people have food under nutrition food insecurity it is pretty difficult for them to pick on say what they what we refer to as healthy diets and you heard from the report that healthy diets tend to be very expensive so governments need to find a way to improve the urban food security and improve the access of people to healthy diets and this is one way in which the NCD agenda also can be met and one more point that I would like to really highlight is the issue of commercial interests so for many of these regulatory efforts and trying to promote a healthy food environment there are many commercial determinants which get in the way and these need to be recognized and recently WHO is also developing a conflict of interest guide which countries can use to assist the commercial determinants and then take appropriate action against it thank you thank you very much thank you to our audience for those questions it's there it was very good to see so many questions coming in and again thank you to our panelists we didn't manage to respond to all the questions but you can always contact our offices for any follow-up well we all know good health starts with the food we eat this is what we were just talking about and good nutrition is our first defense against disease and our source of energy to live thrive and be active an inadequate diet can perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of malnutrition with severe consequences on both individuals and our member nations to deliver a commentary on the findings of the sophia report 2022 from a health perspective dr punam ketrapal sing the WHO regional director for southeast asia has sent this video message dr azucina dayangirad assassin secretary and executive director national nutrition council department of health philippines dr moel doko chief of staff to the president of indonesia and special advisor on food security related issues for the president brigadier general mohammed zubayda rehmann chief medical officer Dhaka north city corporation bangladesh dr john jinn kim f a o assistant director general and regional representative for asia and the pacific dr john a live regional director wfp regional bureau for asia and the pacific debora comany regional director unicef east asia and pacific regional office partners colleagues and friends my sincere gratitude for your insightful discussions i might thanks for the opportunity to address you today today ending hunger achieving food security and improving nutrition this is our mission embedded in sustainable development goal stg2 which is zero hunger and enshrined in stg3 that is good health and well-being it is a mission that is central to the southeast asia regions flagship priorities on preventing and controlling non-communicable diseases and on accelerating reductions of maternal neonatal and undefined mortality it is a mission that was central to last year's un food systems summit which aimed to not just improve but transform food systems globally and crucially it is a mission on which we in asia and the pacific have made important life-changing progress between 2000 and 2021 stunting in children under five years of age was reduced from 38 percent to 23 percent by 2021 the prevalence of undernourishment was 9.1 percent a five percent reduction from 2000 and below the global average of 9.8 percent since the turn of the millennium many countries in asia and the pacific have reduced the prevalence of low birth weight by three or more percentage points and almost all countries have increased the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding these are commendable achievements for which countries and partners need to be rightfully proud but let us be candid they are achievements that are increasingly threatened not least by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and other geopolitical crisis but also by inadequate progress in several key areas for example in 2021 the prevalence of severe food insecurity in asia and the pacific was 10.5 percent up from 7 percent in 2014 alarmingly in southern asia severe food insecurity was estimated to be 21 percent meaning that one in five people in the sub region had gone a day or more without eating moreover those stunting among children under five years of age has in recent years reduced it nevertheless remains above the global average as does the share of children under five who are affected by wasting at the same time between 2020 asia and the pacific witness an increase in the proportion of children who are overweight from 4.2 percent to 5 percent which in several sub regions is even higher needed be said if unaddressed this trend will increase the region's rising tide of entities exacerbating health social and economic costs today i have four messages to help countries across asia and the pacific not just sustain but accelerate progress towards stg's 2 and 3 on zero hunger and good health and well-being respectively first let us increase access to high quality disaggregated food systems data data that can inform city-level planning and which can prevent and respond to urban food security crisis second let us scale up the delivery of essential nutrition actions with a focus on strengthening primary health care programs ensuring maximum coverage for maximum benefit third let us develop implement and strengthen key regulations and policies that enable healthy food environments and which actively reduce the triple burden of malnutrition including overweight and obesity and fourth let us continue to advocate for and develop robust social protection programs that prevent and respond to national and global shocks protecting the poorest and the most vulnerable leaving no one behind in these and other areas i reiterate whos ongoing and unmitigated support to end hunger to achieve food security and to improve nutrition for everyone everywhere across asia and the pacific thank you well we uh we thank dr sing for her commentary and her contribution today well we're now approaching the end of this event once again organized jointly by fao unicef wfp and who for the asia and the pacific regional overview of food security and nutrition 2022 but before we conclude i'd like to invite the unicef regional director for east asia and the pacific miss debora kamini to deliver closing remarks on behalf of all four of our un agencies miss kamini you have the floor thank you all the excellencies distinguished participants the colleagues jim did very pleased to provide now the closing remarks on behalf of fao unicef wp and who we are launching this report on food security and nutrition at a very critical moment a moment that shows that the improvements in food security and nutrition through the asian pacific region can no longer be taken for granted a moment during which the ongoing multiple effects of cove 19 or climate shocks or conflicts are putting access to sufficient food and in particular to healthy diets beyond the reach of millions of households as we have heard in the presentations earlier today this is threatening to increase malnutrition among children and other vulnerable groups for the years to come with the effects that are potentially devastating for the region however we also see that previous investments in nutrition can protect the progress achieved even in difficult circumstances even through the pandemic for example the report shows that throughout asian the pacific reductions in childhood stunting in low birth weight and also improvements in breastfeeding have remained steady the report did not stop at analyzing regional trends in food security and nutrition it also put a spotlight on the diets of poor urban populations a spotlight that is timely given the rapid urbanization that we have heard about happening in asia and the pacific as well as the rise in poverty and inequalities caused by the pandemic and subsequent shocks through this spotlight the report shows that the opportunities offered by city's abundant resources and strong infrastructures the so-called urban advantage are too often denied to the most vulnerable with far-reaching effects on food insecurity and malnutrition clearly we must not leave unaddressed this burden of urban food insecurity and malnutrition especially now when more and more families are seeking a better life in the cities of asia and pacific it is so important that we as un partners are able to share today the crucial insights emerging from the report to which we have contributed together as un partners together we have also been able to support national actions to prevent and treat child wasting the form of malnutrition that is linked to poor child survival and development in eight countries in the region in the context of the global action plan on wasting and to conclude I would like to congratulate the governments of the Philippines and Indonesia and the city of Dhaka for all the actions highlighted in the panel discussion to improve food security and nutrition including during the most critical phase of the pandemic in policy in financing decisions at the national level at the subnational level this shows that progress is possible and we take efforts commitment intentionality let us continue to be motivated by and build on these examples on this commitment and use the results presented today to inspire action for nutrition safe affordable and sustainable diets everywhere for all people throughout their lives and to end malnutrition once and for all we look forward to working with our partners to achieve this and on behalf of FAO unison wfp wcho thank you for attending today's lunch event and to continue this battle to get thank you thank you miss community for sharing your observations and and the way forward for our organizations well as we've heard today during the presentation of the main findings of this report the situation is quite grim due to the increasing trends of nutritional deficiencies and the struggle for so many to access healthy diets which continues unfortunately we know that more recently this has been driven by the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic economic and environmental crises yet amidst the gloom there's always hope so today's event has been a clarion call to action for urgent coordinated efforts by member nations development partners civil society the private sector and all of us to improve the status of food security and nutrition in the asia pacific region as mentioned if you wish to obtain a pdf copy of the report you may contact FAO by sending an email to my colleague whose email address is there on the screen the full report will be available online in the coming days and a chinese version will be following shortly thereafter so once again thank you to our speakers our panelists and all of you who've joined virtually for this launch until our next meeting it's goodbye for now