 Everybody, thank you for joining us today. If you've tuned in, you've joined us for the official launching of the 2020 regional overview of food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia. Just please note that we do have English-Russian interpretation, so please go to the interpretation button now if you need to switch the language. I'm very pleased to be able to moderate and facilitate this launching today of such an imminent panel of experts. My name is Mary Kenny. I'm a Food Safety Consumer Protection Officer at FAO. I work at the FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia in Budapest. Today it's a great pleasure for us, partners from the UN, to be able to launch the sixth regional report, which really gives an overview of the state of food and food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia. The report is very much focused on monitoring trends and progress made towards reaching SDG2, ending hunger, and the related food security and nutrition targets in the region. The report also has the special theme in the 2020 edition of looking at the affordability of sustainable healthy diets. The report really has a quantitative analysis on the cost and affordability of healthy diets at national and sub-national levels. We have a very distinguished panel of experts today from the UN agencies who jointly prepared this report. There are six UN members of the issue-based Coalition on Sustainable Food Systems for Europe and Central Asia who have jointly prepared the report. This includes FAO, WFP, UNECE, UNICEF, WHO, and WMO, the World Meteorological Organization. Before we move now to the opening panel and the welcome from the different UN agencies, I would like just to remind you once again that we do have English-Russian interpretation and you are also free to use the chat button if you want to share any information or make any comments throughout the session. Or if you have any specific questions, we'd ask you to put them in the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. You can also follow us live streaming on YouTube as well. Okay, so thank you again. Let us now move to the introductory remarks from the partner agencies. I'm very pleased that we have an excellent panel. We have Vladimir Rachmanin from the FAO representative for Europe and Central Asia. We're also joined by Olga Algeirova, UNECE Executive Secretary, Afshan Khan from UNICEF. Ms Khan is the Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia Special Coordinator on Refugee and Migrant Response in Europe. We also have Mr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. In addition, we have Mr Milan Dachic, WMO representative. So this is an overview of the partner agencies and we look forward very much to the introductory remarks from all the panel members. I would like now to hand to Mr Vladimir Rachmanin who opened to start the welcoming address. Thank you very much Vladimir Legevich, over to you. Thank you very much, Maria. Good morning, good afternoon, good morning, good morning, dear colleagues, dear friends. It's an honor for me at the moment to have an overview of security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia. Since 2015, FAO Regional Office has been publishing annually this type of regional overviews and we are proud that they are recognized as an important source of valuable information for our partners and the public. This year it is a special report. First time it is prepared jointly by six UN agencies as partners and I am happy to welcome them here today and to express my gratitude for their excellent cooperation. It goes without saying that joint efforts made this issue of regional reports more comprehensive and complete. It is also a good example of how joint work in the region of Europe and Central Asia on sustainable development goals implementation in our case particularly related to food security. Despite the fact that the hunger is not a major issue in the countries of our region, triple burden of malnutrition, undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition such as overweight and obesity remains the problem and not only in low or middle income countries but also in the developed countries. New analysis in this report also shows so to say hidden health and climate change costs associated with current food consumption patterns. It also shows the cost savings that we can make if we shift towards sustainable healthy diets. COVID-19 had dramatic negative impact on our lives. The report is covering various impacts of pandemic on every business food supply chains markets. Regional overview offers policy recommendations to transform current food systems and make them able to deliver affordable healthy diets for all. Our actions need to be bolder not only in scale but also in terms of multi-sectoral collaboration involving the agriculture, food, health, water and sanitation, education and other relevant sectors. For example, one health approach which we are committed to promoting the region together with WHO World Animal Health Organization and potentially UN environment program requests good cooperation on the national level between agriculture, health and the territory services. We hope that this regional overview will provide additional background for ongoing in the region national dialogues in preparation to UN food systems summit to be held this fall and I'm looking forward to our regional dialogue on food systems scheduled for May 25. In conclusion, I want to thank my FAO colleagues in the region who work tirelessly preparing this report. I want to thank FAO colleagues in the room for their valuable advice and of course once again I want to express my special gratitude for our partners from the UN family. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you Vladimir Olegovich for those first opening welcome and some deeper insights also into the into the report. Let me hand now to the floor to Ms Olga Yarova the executive secretary of the UN ECE. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Marie. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates, colleagues, their participants. Good morning. It's my great pleasure to join this opening for the launch of the regional overview on food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia for 2020 together with our partners in our issue-based coalition on sustainable food systems. UN ECE is a member of several issue-based coalitions and I'm particularly proud of our active involvement in this one. UN ECE has a lot of technical expertise to contribute for instance from our work on sustainable value chains on trade facilitation on agriculture quality standards or on innovation. This expertise is critical for aligning sustainable development goal two with the rest of the 2030 agenda including goals such as sustained and inclusive economic growth and productive employment or sustainable consumption and production. The regional overview on food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia for 2020 shows that both food insecurity and malnutrition continue to be significant challenges in our region. The COVID-19 pandemic has made matters even worse and the effects disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. To give but one example, UN ECE recently carried out study on the impact of the pandemic on micro small and medium sized enterprises in Georgia. The findings of this study are included in the 2020 regional overview. They show that rural communities have been severely affected and small-scale farmers are struggling to survive despite relatively generous government support. The regional review calls for policy reforms on both the supply and demand side to achieve food security and makes healthy diets affordable everywhere. I believe it's a very timely document that deserves the attention of all policymakers in our region. Let me draw your attention to one particular issue avoiding food waste and food loss. It is abundantly clear that we will not achieve food security until we tackle the problem of food waste and food loss. Globally one third of food produced for human consumption is lost and wasted every year. Over 820 million people go hungry or suffer from malnutrition. About 14% of the world's food is lost on its way from the farm to a shop and this is the cause of 8% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions. The economic cause of lost and wasted food amounts to 1.2 trillion US dollars annually and this is an addition to continuous ways of precious environmental and human resources to produce this invisible food. To help fight this problem UNICN partners developed an innovative app solution called FeedUp at UN. It is a centralized online marketplace to enable trade at a faster pace to reduce food loss and food waste. Our blockchain enabled app quantifies and tracks monitors and reports the food waste impact annually at all levels. It can help achieve fully traceable system that brings trust and confidence to buyers, additional income possibilities, employment for women and youth and increased food security. These benefits contribute to achievement of SDGs 2, 8, 11 and 12. To achieve food security and nutrition we need to produce, distribute and consume food more sustainably and systematically reduce food loss and waste along the way. One of the ways of making our food systems more sustainable without compromising economic growth is the circular economy, closing material loops, optimizing recycling opportunities, designing ways out of the system. Promoting circular economy and sustainable use of natural resources in the EC region was the theme of the 69th session of UNEC which took place just two weeks ago. I'm very happy to say that our member states committed to step up efforts to promote circular economy approaches and the sustainable use of natural resources. We also heard of national initiatives in several countries for reducing food waste and loss and UNEC space committed to supporting such efforts and I believe the UN system as a whole can play an important role here. I look forward to working with colleagues from the IBC on our joint efforts to including circularity in the agri-food sector. Thank you all for your attention. Thank you very much Ms. Algar Jerova for a very impassioned insight into many of the additional important aspects of dealing with aspects of productive employment, preventing food loss and waste and indeed sustainable use of our natural resources as we produce food and as we continue to provide and ensure food security and good nutrition. Please let me give the floor now to Ms. Afshan Khan. As mentioned, Ms Khan is the UNICEF regional director for Europe and Central Asia and also special coordinator on refugee and migrant response in Europe. Ms Khan, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and good morning and good afternoon colleagues and distinguished guests. Allow me first to acknowledge the leadership of FAO and the commitment of all UN agencies and partners here today in working towards the eradication of all forms of malnutrition by 2030. Nutrition is a fundamental component of a child's right to grow, learn and be healthy. Without healthy, well-nourished children, we will not have healthy functioning and contributing adults. The regional overview of food security and nutrition that we're launching today warns us that Europe and Central Asia is lagging compared to the global average and is not on track to meet childhood targets in childhood overweight, anemia and in some countries, exclusive breastfeeding. In fact, the most significant nutrition issue amongst children and adolescents between the ages of seven and 18 throughout the region is overweight and obesity. In at least seven countries, overweight and obesity prevalence is over 20%. In three countries, the prevalence is over 30% among boys. Micronutrient deficiencies, particularly anemia, is also a problem. Indeed, in all countries in the region, there are exhibit gaps in the policy framework for the prevention of obesity and iron deficiency anemia. And we are all acutely aware that the work ahead will not be easier in the immediate term, given the impact of COVID. In some countries, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more families are undernourished and food insecure. For the poorest children who depend on nutritious school meals, school closures have had an impact well beyond education alone. Yet the pandemic must not be an excuse to lower our collective ambition for the region's children. Instead, we have to use it as a catalyst for progress. In order to meet the remaining targets, we need to accelerate our regional efforts to drive down cost and accelerate access to nutritious, safe, affordable, and sustainable diets for children wherever they live. UNICEF intends to play its part through our nutrition strategy 2030, which supports ending child malnutrition in both development and humanitarian settings. All UNICEF nutrition programs across regions and countries share a universal premise, prevention comes first, because if prevention fails, treatment becomes necessary. We also emphasize a multi-systems approach to nutrition that strengthens the ability of five critical systems, food, health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection, to improve diets, services, and practices that support adequate maternal and child nutrition. These integrated approaches are part of the pivotal element of the joint work that's being done through the issue-based coalition. I want to acknowledge the leadership of governments in Central Asia, the caucuses, and the collaboration of many of the agencies, UNICEF, FAO, WHO, and WFP in enabling nutrition governance and enhancing multi-sectoral work through the regional nutrition partnership. This systematic multi-country partnership oriented mechanism has been instrumental in equipping countries to better tackle the multiple burden of malnutrition in the time of the pandemic. Colleagues, distinguished guests, this report reminds us that action springs not from thought, but from our readiness to be accountable for delivering results. In this we also count on collaboration with the food industry, on the support of health, education, and other government departments to protect children and adolescents from harmful marketing and advertising. Eliminating all forms of child malnutrition by 2030 is more than a goal. For UN agencies, for the governments, for the food industry, this goal is also our responsibility. UNICEF looks forward to reaffirming our partnership on nutrition for all children and for all people in the region. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Kan, and thank you for really keeping the spotlight on the issues around child nutrition. As you say, we really need to have preventive approaches to ensure good nutrition for children and all in our population, but also very much a multi-systems approach. These words really resonate, I think, right across our work. You've highlighted a number of challenges that are included in the report related to childhood nutritional issues, and we will be picking up on those as we go through our session today. Thank you very much for your presence with us this morning. Let me now turn to Mr. Hans Kluge. We are pleased that Mr. Kluge can join us from WHO. Mr. Kluge is the WHO Regional Director for Europe. Kluge, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Kluge, and dear UN colleagues, dear friends, it is indeed with a great pleasure that I participate in today's launch of the publication on the state of food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia 2020. As you heard, jointly prepared by the issue-based coalition on sustainable food systems and my particular appreciation to Mr. Vladimir Rachmanin, the Region Representative and Assistant Director General. Our Region Office for Europe is effectively proud to be a member of the IBC. It's a coalition that plays a key role in advocating, facilitating support for strengthening sustainable food systems in the European and Central Asian region. Food and nutrition security is the ultimate outcome of sustainable food systems, and it exists when old people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their nutritional needs and dietary preferences for an active, healthy life. But the food security in our region is concerning. COVID-19 has impacted livelihoods and economies, revealing the innate inequalities within and between countries. More people now suffer from hunger, malnutrition, risk of obesity, diseases and poverty, and the numbers speak for themselves. With more than 50% of the population living with overweight or obesity, in 46 out of the 53 WHO European member states, the prevalence in this region is among the highest in the world. At the same time, over 23 million people get in and 5,000 people die from consuming unsafe food every year. Although progress has been made by some countries, unfortunately, our region is not on track to achieve the voluntary target to hold the rise of obesity. Changing mindsets and comprehensive interventions across various sectors and stakeholders are needed. If we will not act fast, the gains we have made in recent years under the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition are at risk. Today's report focuses on COVID-19 and its impact on food systems. But the pandemic presents an unprecedented challenge with deep social and economic consequences, including compromised food security, food safety and nutrition. The COVID-19 has shown us how fragile food systems can be and how important it is to ensure that all people, no matter where and how they live, have access to safe foods and healthy sustainable diets. For the WHO European region, this is key, giving the alarming levels of obesity as Ms Afshankan was highlighting. Evidence does show that patients living with obesity have significantly higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes, such as requiring ventilation or even death. The pandemic has also put one health at the top of the agenda. Last month, together with our tripartite partners, we promoted the One Health approach by launching the regional One Health coordination mechanism to define a strategic direction, convene stakeholders and partners, and coordinate action across the region. And thank you to FAO and IOE and soon also UNEP. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals and WHO's European Programme of Work 2020-2025, WHO has launched a package of tools to support member states to promote sustainable healthy diets. As we prepare for the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, WHO continues to support its member states with technical assistance and the latest evidence to promote safe healthy and sustainable diets. In its recent call to action, the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, established by me and led by Professor Mario Monti, also called for One Health to be fully implemented in all settings where health policies are developed. COVID-19 has brought on a reckoning, a reckoning that I believe will lead to a renewed commitment and eventually help double down on our efforts in achieving our food security and nutrition goals. Today, we are taking a very important step in that direction. Congratulations to everyone on today's launch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Kluge. I think you've added a number of really important points. I think inequalities in our systems and ensuring that all people at all times have access to safe and nutritious food was definitely a strong and key message from you. And also, thank you for also adding the words on One Health together with Vladimir Legovitch. This is really an important issue in the region as well as we move forward. And also, as you said, keeping One Health at the top of the agenda. And as we build back better and try to deal with the additional severe challenges also that the COVID-19 pandemic is having in our region. Thank you very much. We will have now our last but not least opening statement from Mr Milan Dacic from WMO, World Meteorological Organization. Dacic, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair, distinguished participants, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed privileged to be here today and to address you on the launch of the Food and Agriculture Organization 2020 regional overview of the food security and nutrition in Europe and Central Asia. As part of the regional UN system and our joint efforts from diverse UN organizations to act as one and deliver as one for the benefit of millions of citizens in Europe and Central Asia, the World Meteorological Organization is dealing with numerous technical, scientific and operational aspects of weather, climate, water, and environmental issues, forecasts, analysis, and studies relevant to our member states. Long ago, the predecessor of WMO, the International Meteorological Organization, IMO, worked together with its partners to provide the framework for international cooperation on climate matters and did that for more than 70 years. Since 1951, as a specialist agency of the United Nations, WMO has a mandate in the areas of meteorology, weather, and climate, operational hydrology, and related geophysical sciences. It has successfully collaborated within other UN organizations and programs and with the broad international scientific community. Our joint success under the UN system and with the scientific community are related to the early adoption of the World Weather Watch Program and Global Atmospheric Research Program. In 1979, the First World Climate Conference was convened by WMO in collaboration with UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO and the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Program together with the International Council of Science and other scientific partners as a world conference of experts on climate and mankind. The conference invited nations to foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well being of humanity. Its declaration called on all nations to strongly support the proposed World Climate Program and suggested immediate strategies to assist countries to make better use of climate information in planning for social and economic development. In 1985, UNEP WMO and International Council for Science EXO convened an international assessment of the role of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in climate variations associated impacts, now widely referred to as the Villa Conference. Later in 1987, the World Meteorological Congress considered both the outcome of the Villa Conference and the advanced briefing on the conclusions of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Non-Bruntland Commission in highlighting global warming as a major threat to sustainable development. The World Meteorological Congress also agreed with the Villa recommendations for periodic assessment of scientific knowledge, but considered that the assessment mechanism should operate under the overall guidance of governments rather than scholarly through scientists serving in their personal capacities. Therefore, WMO Executive Council authorized the WMO Secretary General to consult with the Executive Director of UNEP to establish what was soon to become the joint WMO UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Coming back to present, the global mean temperature in 2020 was one of the three warmest on record. The past six years, including 2020, are the sixth warmest years on record. Western Europe experienced a significant heat wave in late July and early August, and according to Copernicus Climate Change Services, 2020 was Europe's warmest year on record. The next four warmest years for Europe also happened during the past decade. According to the World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate 2020 Report and the United in Science 2020, a multi-organization high-level compilation of the latest climate science information, climate change is affecting all pillars of food security, availability, access, utilization, and stability. Climate extremes, variability, and change contributed to increasing trends in the number of undernourished people globally in 2019, along with other drivers such as COVID-19 and conflicts. Presently about 85 million tons of wheat grain are lost annually due to a zone exposure and a zone damage causes economic losses in the range of 10 to 20 billion US dollars due to its diverse effects. Today, we experience that the impacts of climate and environmental changes increasingly challenge current governance efforts to develop and implement adaptation policies and responses. Global warming is projected to increase the number of water stressed regions and to exacerbate storage shortages in regions already dealing with water difficulties. Policies are therefore needed that support sustainable land management, reduce air pollution, ensure the supply of food for vulnerable populations, reduce crop loss, and limit greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture. Sustained long-term monitoring, the sharing of data, information, and knowledge, and improved context-specific forecasts including early warning systems and analysis help manage the negative impacts of climate changes on food production. Climate services for agriculture and food security have been shown to be highly effective in managing climate-related risks and there is a potential for expanding these services to support adaptation and to deliver increased cost-effective socio-economic benefits. In closing, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say that the World Meteorological Organization remains committed to work closely with all partners of the UN and outside of the UN on those issues under the regional collaborative platform and issue-based coalitions. And in particular, we look forward to contributing to the next food and agriculture organization report. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr Dadić. Thank you for really again bringing another key dimension, focusing on weather, climate, and water of multiple dimensions that need to be considered and are key as part of ensuring we have sustainable agriculture, sustainable food production in order to meet SGG2, in order to provide ensure food security and nutrition for all. So thank you very much. I would like to thank all of our partner agencies for your really detailed and complementary opening statements, which really help us to launch the publication of the 2020 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition in Europe and Central Asia. I think this joint publication and I'm sure everyone will agree once they read the report that it really has made, as Vladimir Olegovich mentioned in his opening remarks, a very detailed and rich publication that can be a flagship publication for the region. So thank you once again to all of our distinguished guests and experts for the opening remarks session. If you can stay with us, please do. But if you also need to leave, we thank you once again. As many of you have said, we continue our collaboration and our work on sustainable food systems in the region through the issue-based coalition and many other fora as well. So thank you. Thank you once again. Let us move now. We are going to, in the next part of the program, we're going to take a deeper dive, as they say, to look at the content and the findings in the report. And we will do this in two ways. We will start with a presentation now from Mr. Raimand Yele, regional program leader in FAO's Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. Raimand will start with the presentation and then we will have a technical panel discussion where we have experts to discuss some of the key issues in more detail and we may be able to take some of your questions and answers to if you have specific issues you want to raise in the Q&A button. But first, let me hand over now to you, Raimand. Thanks for joining us today and we look forward now to the presentation, going into more detail on the report. Raimand, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mary. Good morning. Good afternoon, dear colleagues. It's a great pleasure for you, for me to be present here and to present the key findings of the 2020 regional overview of food security and nutrition. It's already the sixth regional report monitoring the trends and assessing the progress made towards reaching the SDG to the zero hunger. I really have the pleasure to announce that with the presentation the report is also available online so everybody is going to be able to access the report and going to look into more details. Being, of course, a product of the IBC the first time, it has been mentioned already by our distinguished regional directors of the IBC on sustainable food systems, so it's been the product really jointly. I would also like to thank the teams and the colleagues in each of the agencies and the experts in really preparing this important document and we are looking certainly forward to produce also further of these monitoring documents in the future. Let's go to slide number two. Nick is going to move the slides for me so thank you for this. Traditionally, the report has two parts as it has been already mentioned and as usual in the first part in the 2020 edition, we are covering the status of malnutrition and undernourishment in the region. The report offers a more in-depth analysis of the food security and nutrition situation in Europe and Central Asia. The second part, as also usual, we are doing a very specific deep dive and as it has been mentioned already in the opening, it explores really the tradition to healthy diets by examining their costs and affordability in the fight to end hunger and malnutrition in the ECA region. Sorry for this. Healthy diets are important to protect against the effects of malnutrition in all its form and against non-communicable diseases. This has been already mentioned so however access to this is based on affordability. The report is really trying to provide, wait with the slide Nick please, the report is really trying to provide detailed quantitative technical review and an analysis on the costs and the affordability of healthy diets. The implications of the development of healthy diets on food related costs and environmental costs and the main policy drivers for promoting an affordable of healthy diets in the region. Of course, I can only give you a snapshot of this report today. The report has many interesting aspects and I'm definitely inviting you to look at it and also to read some of these aspects. Let's get to slide number three in the first part of the report. As usual, and as a tradition, we're looking at the trends in the region and we are using for this two key indicators to measure the situation of food security or how the trend and the decreasing of food insecurity is looking like and we are using the indicator of the prevalence of undernutrition and also as a new one, the prevalence of severe food insecurity based on the food insecurity experience scale. So the difference between the two is the prevalence of undernutrition is an estimation of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and a healthy life. This is usually expressed as a percentage and these indicators will really measure the progress towards the STG target specifically to one. On the other hand, we have the fears. It's food insecurity severity experience metrics that relies on the immediate response of respondents to questions about their access to adequate food to see the ability to access and to obtain also food. So we can really say the prevalence of undernutrition is more a national indicator while we're looking with the fears how it is called more at the person and the people situation. So overall undernourishment or hunger is not a major issue in the ECA region which has been already mentioned but we of course have quite a number of severe issues. So let's look as we can see this in the slide number four at the prevalence of undernourishment particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia. As you can see in the slide there was Nick the previous slide please. As you can see in the slide there was an enormous progress over time in the last two decades. You see the purple line for the world and the orange line for Central Asia and the green line also for the Caucasus. So the progress has been made in really reducing hunger in Central Asia and the Caucasus overall. But if we're looking at the next slide and this is going to provide us with the fears we can really see that in terms of prevalence of severe food insecurity measured in the percentage of the population based on the fears about 1.7 percent of the region's population are affected by severe level of food insecurity. So if we are speaking in absolute numbers we're talking about 16 million and the figure here is the green bar on the slide. While this is far lower than the world average of 9.7 percent as it has been mentioned already in the opening it's really still of concern for some of the countries. And as estimated 10.5 percent of the region's population so more than 98 million or almost 100 million are experiencing either moderate or severe levels of food insecurity and in this context the region has in fact a larger share of people affected by this moderate food insecurity compared to the world. What does moderate in that sense mean? The moderate level means that people do not have regular access to nutritious and sufficient food even if they do not necessarily suffer from hunger. So let's go to the next slide and quickly recap what we have put in the report overall. The decrease of food insecurity is now going to slow down already since several years. In some countries it has even started to increase particularly in Central Asia and the Caucasus and the Covid has caused a serious threat of the overall economic activity and the pandemic is also really contributing to these challenges. What is also important to mention here is that among women the prevalence of food insecurity at moderate or severe levels is higher than amongst the men. So the difference has been reduced in the past six years but as of 2019 for example women still had about 11 percent greater chance than men to experience moderate or severe food insecurity. In particular the likelihood in 2019 of women experience food insecurity was 22 percent higher than for men in the Caucasus region. Let's go to the next slide and look in terms of the progress for the SDGs as it has been already mentioned and that we have on one hand achieved already positive signs but on the other hand we have areas where we really need to pay attention to and so the data available regarding the 680 SDG targets for 2012 baseline review in the region show that we are in a good position or in a better position compared to the world in three targets and this is the prevalence of stunting amongst children younger than five it's the prevalence of low birth weight and it's the anemia amongst women of reproductive age. On the other hand and Afshan has already mentioned one of them also in her opening remark the prevalence of childhood overweight amongst children younger than five is certainly an issue. The ECA 15 region has a prevalence more than double the global average. The region is strongly affected also by the challenges imposed by childhood overweight and obesity according to the WHO state data the prevalence of overweight amongst children aged six to nine has been severe in many countries in the region. Exclusive breastfeeding during the first month of life we have here also again the ECA 15 countries 29 percent lower than the world at large and last but not least and it has been already mentioned before the adult obesity. The obesity rate in the ECA region overall is 82 percent higher than the world average. So let me quickly illustrate out of the four two elements with the next slide. The slide number eight shows the prevalence amongst children younger than five in selected countries of the region and as you can see the global prevalence of overweight amongst children in the 2012 baseline year was 5.3 percent this is the purple color this has not improved instead it increased slightly to 5.6 percent in 2019. In the yellow line you can see the prevalence of overweight amongst children younger than five in the 15 ECA countries where the data was available and on average it was estimated at 11.1 so it's more than double the average of the world. Next slide let's look at the adult obesity. In the 2012 baseline year again here also the purple line the prevalence of adult obesity in the ECA region was much higher than the world average of 11.8 percent the prevalence in the region which shows here again also the yellow line was 82 percent higher for the adult obesity on the average in some of the countries had a prevalence more than twice the world average. All countries in the European unions have a very high rate of adult obesity and all were 50 percent above the world average. The prevalence of adult obesity rose between 2012 and 2016 at an average percentage of 8 percent point per annum and therefore no country at the moment are on track to meet the 2030 targets so where where does this come from it is very much related in our views not exclusively but quite important to the composition of the diet. We noted that in most of the countries the availability for example of vegetable is above standards which is positive on the other hand there is still a large gap in the availability of fruits for consumption in half of the countries of the region and a significant gap in the availability also of pulses so overall the region has a much higher level of consumption also of animal-based food compared to the rest of the world and particularly the European Union it's more than double compared to the rest of the world so the consumption of red meat and milk is above the standards of the optimal intake on the other hand the availability of fish products for consumption has fallen short of the recommended level in the past year so these are some of the factors which definitely are contributing to overweight and the risks of NCDs non-communicable diseases so if the diet is an issue let's have a look as we have certainly also said we want to do a deep dive in the second part let's have a look at the affordability of the healthy diets in the region and let's look at the costs of affordability of the diets in this region of course and this is slide number 10 Nick if we can move to this in order to change food consumption and production systems it's really important to understand the prices paid by the consumers and the hidden cost this has been already mentioned by Vladimir at the beginning that this is part of the report but the problem here is of course also the data it's not yet readily available and at the same time we also need to define what is the healthy diet we still have discussions what is exactly the composition and there are different dietary guidelines also in the countries if you look at the global report you can see also the different dietary guidelines across the world so in addition we need also to find the monetary costs comparing these costs with the population's ability to pay and assessing direct and indirect hidden costs so part two of the report covers these topics in addition to various cost drivers and the policy actions related to improving the affordability of healthy diets social protection and safety net programs let's look with the next slide at three example diets which we are using so evidence suggests that high costs and unaffordability of healthy diets is strongly associated with increased food security and malnutrition so the graph shows three types of diets we can simply distinguish the energy sufficient diet this is the red bar and this diet provides adequate calories but it does not look in this case at the nutritionist's composition of the of the diet the second bar is the orange one which is the nutrient adequate diet this is in principle providing adequate calories but also relevant nutrient intake values and then we have the healthy diets and this diet provides adequate calories and nutrition but also includes a more diverse intake of food from several different groups we have analyzed this in the report from data of 14 countries in the region where it was available unfortunately the data was only available up to 2017 but the data in the regional report is consistent with the information in the global report so let's look at the next slide regarding the results in the region and I'm presenting you two slides the first one is regarding the costs which in is in terms of a dollar figure purchase parity purchasing power parity and it shows the required costs per person per day I said the figures are coming from 14 countries of the ECA region in the the Caucasus the Central Asia as well as also the western Balkans the colors as you can see are the same what we used before so red for nutrient for energy sufficient diet the orange for the nutrient adequate diet and the green for the healthy diet so what we can see here is the lowest costs in the regions are with the EU countries with 44 US dollar cents per persons per day foreign energy sufficient diet the highest costs on the other hand we can see are in the Central Asian countries so there is a huge cost difference amongst the countries and of course amongst the region let's look at the next slide which shows the number of people in absolute terms so what does it mean for the region and again the colors are the same we have the red one for the lowest one orange for nutrient adequate and the green one for the healthy diets and if we're looking at this one there seem to be no problem with the energy sufficient diet in terms of absolute terms across the region but if we are looking at the healthy diets and this is the green bar on the very right of the graph nearly 19 million people or 80 percent in the ECA 14 could really not afford a healthy diet in 2017 and even in high-income countries there is a sizable portion of the population which has really difficulties to have access to the healthy diets and you can see this it includes seven million in the EU let's take the next slide and we have of course also looked at the countries and at the sub region and so I want to show you also in this slide the situation how it can vary inside of the country and we have used here information from the world food program field the nutrition gap statistics in three of the countries so in the report you can find also besides Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and there are really large differences in the affordability of nutritional diets amongst the regions and you can see that for example the highest rate of affordability in the other region in Armenia was 72 percent and the lowest 26 percent in the other one so the conclusion out of this is that there is really a need for targeted interventions based on geographical difference but this is not something which is only in between the region the report is going to also give more information about the seasonality issues this implies really that regions with high unaffordability rates need assistance with either nutrient dense food or relevant social protection schemes to strengthen also the income. Let's go to the next slide so a key lesson of this part of the report in this context is that we are looking from east to west we have a decrease in the income moving from high income countries to middle and to low income countries on the other hand the costs of food go the opposite we have the income countries having the lowest costs for food in the low income countries we have the highest costs for food particularly for the healthy diets so that is really a contradiction in that case of the trends and it implies that policy measures need to be created or need to create an enabling environment to reduce the costs for food production in the middle and low income countries so we need to facilitate the countries need to facilitate investment to support efficient and functioning supply chains to drive the cost downs and just to mention some of them hard infrastructure but of course also soft infrastructure but if we are taking a food systems lens a food systems approach it is much more than just looking at the food supply chains so finally it should be really mentioned to ensure that there is a necessary transition the countries of the regions will need to tackle many and unique challenges of the design promoting and implementing also national food security strategies which need to really take into consideration the issues of healthy diets for all next slide please so I was presenting the snapshot on the on the costs of the diet but of course as I mentioned at the beginning I was only able to cover some of the elements and the report has certainly much more to offer and amongst them it's also the hidden costs which has been certainly also mentioned already at the beginning you can find more information on this you can find more details on the food cost drivers and the policies to ensure the affordability of healthy diets and of course what is also important for the 2020 edition is the impact of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition in the region so with this and the last slide in this context I would like to thank you for your attention and the interest let me use the opportunity particularly to thank Cheng Fan the economist in the regional office for Europe and Central Asia who is the main author of this report but of course also the colleagues from the other agencies contributing to this edition and I'm looking forward to the next edition and any questions and comments to this report thank you very much back to you Mary thank you thank you very much Ryman for a really comprehensive overview and deeper insights into what the publication is really shedding light on in terms of the status of food security nutrition in 2020 in our region and you really gave us a summary of where the region is is progressing well but also what are these these really key and challenges that the region still faces and I'm going to we do want to go a bit deeper now through our technical panel to discuss some of the aspects of the report in a little bit more detail I'm really pleased that we have representatives from UNICEF WHO and WMO Amir Yair Parvar health and nutrition specialist from UNICEF we can see Amir there on the on the screen very welcome we also have Claire Farrand a technical officer nutrition officer an expert from WHO and also Natalia Berge a program officer at the world mythological organization so we really thank you for turning on your cameras and letting us see you this is excellent thanks very much and look I'm going to we wanted to start with maybe looking in a bit deeper at some of the the issues around child nutrition and for this clearly the report shows that there are persistent challenges and even worsening of situation in terms of the nutrition status for young children in Central Asia and the Balkans in particular Amir I wanted to to bring you in on this from UNICEF's perspective and we know that you have that complementary feeding is a very important part of improving the nutritional status for children a lot of work has been done in this area in the last decade and so I really want to get your insights into why we are not making the desired progress in improving young children's diets in our region Amir please you have the floor thank you thank you very much Mary for this very good question also greetings to all my colleagues across the region and participants and audience let me once again congratulate FAO and all partners for this great report on the lunch Mary just reminding ourselves first of all refreshing our minds that you know the best food for our children from zero to six is the exclusive breastfeeding means that the best milk is going to be the best food and drink for the children for the first six months of life followed by a proper introduction of complementary feeding which is recommended during the complementary feeding period young children's needs to be fed new with nutritious safe and age-appropriate foods while providing her with nurturing care and continued breastfeeding and complementary feeding is actually beyond only food because in addition to meeting the nutritional needs of the child this process is extremely important to prepare the appetite of the children for their whole life so it's extremely important to follow healthy nutrition patterns started by the proper complementary feeding responding to your question let me start with a dream that all of us we share I think we all share a dream where and when every bite a young child eats a count for all children and this is of critical importance for children's to grow develop and learn but also to prevent all forms of malnutrition but as you rightly mentioned this dream is far from being realized globally but also in our region if you look into the data and also our reports globally and in some part of region fewer than one in three children its nutritious and diverse diets they need to grow and survive and thrive and the situation varies widely actually across regions and within the regions and between countries and at times it gets worse as per child's place of residence wealth status of the household and etc. Now we've been implementing programs on complementary feeding for several decades so the question that why still we are not making the desired progress on improving young children diets is there we have undertaken a review of programming evidence globally and the program on the programs to improve the young children's diet and we understood that these programs are not always designed or implemented effectively for some reason. First of all our efforts for improving young children's diet have been focused more on improving the complementary feeding practices through only counseling interventions and less on improving the quality of complementary foods and access to essential diets practices and services for young children through multiple systems. Often only health system is counted accountable to deliver results to improve the diets of young children while other systems have major roles to play lastly our efforts to deliver interventions to improve young children's diet have mostly been scattered sometimes standalone siloed and often not grounded in ground in sound situation analysis. For our region as it's also well captured in the report and I'm not gonna repeat a lot of those findings to understand these barriers and drivers enabling factors on young children's diets for Europe and Central Asia UNICEF Europe and Central Asia regional office we've undertaken a landscape analysis on enabling policymakers to have evidence-based recommendations to improve the complementary feeding diets and based on these findings we are looking into a number of factors and just summarizing few of them like food taboos, meats and perceptions regarding specific foods strongly influenced diets in our region specifically in parts of Balkans among the minorities like Roma population and Central Asia countries. In terms of availability and affordability although this might not be an issue for Balkans sub region but in Central Asia still we are seeing that that in many countries actually in the sub region the quality and the coverage of the counseling services is also an issue. In terms of availability and affordability of the food as it was not seen to be hindrance to the adequate diets in the Balkans but for Central Asia we've understood that complementary feeding practices could be affected by seasonal fluctuations in agriculture incomes inadequate diverse agricultural production and also dependence on imported food and their price fluctuation and climate change risk related issues so you see all really systems are impacting this and lastly convenience of the processed foods it's a growing concern across the region which pushes mothers towards choices of not always healthy industrial processed complementary food which are often based on the report published recently by WHO often they are exceeding their standards of the sugar salt and fat content which could be also a source of risks for the childhood obesity but also as I mentioned earlier it's not really letting the child to experience a natural process of getting introduced to different food groups and textures to be ready for the future healthy diet so then we give a pause here and give it back over to you Mary. Thank you very much Amir you've really stressed and focusing on the importance of early nutrition in particular for young children for their healthy growth now but also to prevent all forms of malnutrition in adult food as well. I want to switch now to bring in Claire Farrand I see you were you were really agreeing or a lot of what Amir was saying was resonating with you as well and in the report shows us that overweight and obesity in children is a growing challenge in our region but also adult obesity. The challenge is also an exclusive breastfeeding in our region it is still an ongoing issue to be continued to be addressed and I wanted to ask you Claire from a public health or from a WHO perspective what what can countries do to reverse these serious trends and what what available policies are there to promote healthy food consumption. Thank you Mary. Firstly thank you for inviting me to join the panel and I'd also like to echo Amir's sentiments so congratulations for the publication of this report this very important report. As you as you mentioned I'm a nutrition officer in the WHO European office for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases so that's the context that I'm bringing today and as we've heard good nutrition is one of the pillars of non-communicable disease prevention poor diets overweight and obesity are really major risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer which are the main the causes of death in in our region. We're very pleased to see this report published today and some of the the key findings which were highlighted in the in the report illustrate that whilst severe hunger has not really been a major issue in in the region in the past 20 years the region is facing an increase and being strongly affected by the challenges imposed by the overconsumption of foods that are high in salt fat and sugar and the underconsumption of fruits and vegetables. These unhealthy diets really account for a large share of the disease burden in the region. Overweight and obesity are really serious public health challenges in our region and we've heard a bit today about childhood overweight and obesity and how that threatens to undermine the future of health in children in our region as well. There's really been an increase in the intake of these energy dense foods and an increase in physical activity so we can't forget that alongside of talking about good nutrition and we need to use data and policies that can really help us to address these conditions particularly when we're talking today about childhood obesity and overweight and also promoting these healthier diets and physical activity. In the region in in terms of adults overweight and obesity it's still greatly affecting our region we know that there are high rates of adults overweight and obesity and we are also collecting data on childhood obesity and that's being measured through many of you may already be aware of our childhood obesity surveillance initiative. The acronym for that is COSY which has measured trends in overweight and obesity amongst the primary school aged children the data of which we've shared in this report and this has provided us with a really large data set across across the region collected data collected from about 45 countries and publishing on this data has increased political attention to this issue and it's promoted a lot of countries to take decisive policy actions in some of the worst affected regions and I believe we heard before that some of the the worst affected regions are mainly in southern Europe where we've seen some of the prevalence amongst primary school aged children start to decline or you know even plateau so there's many lessons that we can learn from some of these countries some of their experiences that can be shared particularly in the eastern part of the region where childhood obesity is starting is an emerging problem really and there's a really key opportunity for these countries to learn from the experience of others and prevent some of the increases that we've seen in the western and southern Europe in recent decades. What we do at WHO is we aim to support member states to implement a range of policies to tackle both childhood obesity and also unhealthy diets and promote and increase physical activity we use the data that we collect to inform these policy options and we know that a really a systems approach is what's required we really need to include surveillance such as we have with COSY although that's for children over five and we need to start to look to collect data for for children under five as well and we're looking to collaborate to start to collect that data so we're looking to collect data on surveillance improve our food environments through improving or restricting marketing of these unhealthy foods so and Mia mentioned there some of the complementary foods that we're seeing in the region have are packaged and processed foods and they have high levels of sugar so we need to ensure that these types of foods aren't marketed as well as other foods which are targeted towards children so restricting those opportunities to encourage children towards eating those types of diets we have a number of activities underway promoting healthy and sustainable food environments which would be very welcome to share with you and I can put some details in the chat to share with colleagues as well so we're working with with member states really to to collect data develop guidelines and tools whilst also creating a platform for us all to share best practices and we we one of the illustrations of this that we have is we have a small network Mary you mentioned about breastfeeding rates in the region we know that breastfeeding rates are really low in our region and so it's you know it's the first food system that newborns and and infants are introduced to as we're really working with our member states to promote breastfeeding in the in the region and that is through networks that we have with countries and also with providing support and guidance in creating a breastfeeding a baby friendly sort of hospital initiative so supporting mothers and carers to to to implement best feeding practices in the region I will pause here Mary and hand the floor back to you for other questions and maybe bring you back in again later thank you Claire and and thanks for really stressing on explaining also the the important work that's ongoing on on data and evidence collection also your your proposal of or your ongoing work to share best practices this is really really key in in all of our works to ensure that we are we are also learning from each other and learning from perhaps maybe some mistakes that can be made as well in our in our food approaches Amir I wanted to bring you back in very briefly because I'm a bit looking at the clock as well um are you would you add anything in terms of policy or other approaches or options that to improve nutritional status of children Claire covered many aspects are you in agreement or are you would you add something else no thank you very much Mary and Claire I mean you made my job easy now basically perfect I think perhaps few words and in terms of what I think there are five key actions that UNICEF is calling or recommending for to reduce malnutrition and improve children's diet in early years first definitely is to empower families children and young people to demand nutritious food second is to drive food suppliers to do the right thing for children third is to build healthy food environment for all children starting from early years and fourth which resonates pretty well with what Claire says collect and analyze and use good quality data and evidence regularly to guide the action interventions in countries and also lastly to mobilize supportive systems as said the four or five other systems but in terms of also how which is very important programs need to address all key determinants and drivers of children's diet in their design and implementation and the programs need to also be evidence-based often we are just following a list of you know what we know but not really following the evidence from the ground to inform our interventions these evidence-based interventions for improving children's diet during complementary failure could include promoting access and use of nutritious and safe and diverse diets supporting the use and their appropriate of quality fortified food third is a strengthening the adoption and enforcement of legislations to regulate the marketing of unhealthy food but also marketing of the breast milk substitutes and the last one is to improve counselling to caregivers to and as service providers the key point here is that every country needs to study the context yeah based on the context and the evidence to design the right interventions but also having in mind that all determinants and all systems need to be involved and acted before sustainable results back to you Mary. Yeah thank you Amir no I was I was going to come in on that to say yes it has to be really context specific in order to understand the situation the challenges and then really see the best blend of tools and approaches as well that are needed to to address all forms of malnutrition in children women and in in our adult population and I wanted to switch now we we haven't we want to go a bit deeper into looking at some of the issues around cost and affordability Ryan and Yelle did give us a very deep insight into some of the materials that are in the in the report and we know that there's the direct cost of the cost of food but also the hidden costs are explored in the report and I want to ask Natalia Berge from World Meteorological Organization some for some insights in terms of policies that are available to countries to look at what can be done to reduce the cost and ensure the affordability and in order to have to ensure all people have access to healthy diets Natalia please you have the floor thank you Mary go ahead gentlemen good morning forecast early warning systems and effective national meteorological and hydrological services play an essential role in protecting local communities from water weather and climate impacts however there is a growing complexity of extreme weather events in areas affected by climate change poverty deforestation and limited institutional capacity for preventing and reducing disaster risks the losses from such events can be truly shocking these can be avoided by implementing the set of policy initiatives such as a european green deal with the overarching aim of making europe climate neutral in 2050 supporting the paris agreement first thing is recognition of the protective value of ecosystems such as forests and enforcement of legislation and regulations that protect them from being overexploited for lumber and crops forests help to regulate rainfall maintain soil quality and to absorb co2 forests are home to 80 percent of the world's terrestrial biodiversity the eu forest strategy as well as the biodiversity strategy commit to protecting the remaining forests and restoring forest ecosystems resilience secondly the growing population and the urbanization is another factor to be taken into account reducing risks also requires combinating actionable information delivered through forecasts and early warnings land use planning natural and artificial protective structures such as dams in case of floods or irrigation systems in case of droughts and contingency plans for minimizing losses when a hazardous event does occur this makes it possible to move away from the paradigm of keeping people and water separated and towards an integrated flood and drought management approach that maximizes the net benefits of living in flood plains thirdly a very significant effort is now underway to ramp up multi hazard early warning systems especially in low income countries many of these areas face high levels of climate risk caused by greenhouse gas emissions for which they bear the least responsibility rising sea levels warming land and sea temperatures are all contributing to the severity of extreme weather events in a variety of ways climate risk exacerbates the more general risk of disasters that humanity has always faced over the last 40 years there has been a doubling of extreme weather events which have caused huge loss of life disrupted billions of lives and caused tremendous economic losses fortunately thanks to the many great improvements and early warning systems which have taken place including as a result of the use of weather satellites the development of meteorological hydrological services at national level and the early action taken by civil protection systems to organize timely evacuations mortality numbers from weather related disasters have been on the decline further improving multi hazard early warning systems is high on the global agenda it is important to combine policies with early warning prevention and preparedness to address economic and social pressures in this way we can reduce human and economic losses as outlined in the sandai framework for disastrous reduction for the period 2015-2030 and supported by national food and nutrition security plans the framework calls for strengthening the use of science and technology in policymaking and clearly articulates the role of disastrous governance with a strong emphasis on build back better during recovery rehabilitation and reconstruction specific innovative elements of the framework include the call for more coherent risk sensitive development policies for most vulnerable sectors including agriculture and food security and the role of social safety net mechanisms in the realm of food security and nutrition the need to protect agriculture and productive assets including livestock working animals tools and seeds are specifically referred the endorsement of this framework was a milestone in shaping the global resilience agenda local governments have an essential role to play in ensuring that strategies at the municipal level are aligned with the sandai framework and are implemented if development is sustainable then these losses are less likely to occur the majority of countries highlighted disastrous reduction as one of the top priority sectors for climate change adaptation moreover disastrous reduction is a top priority in all national plans for adaptation to climate change submitted today while covid-19 generated the large international health and economic crisis from which it will take years to recover it is crucial to remember that climate change will continue to pose an ongoing and increasing threat to human lives ecosystems economies and societies for centuries to come the covid-19 pandemic demonstrates how climate variability and change can interact with societal vulnerabilities to create new heightened levels of risk seamless climate services can help meet these challenges in both the short and the long term by giving decision makers enhanced tools and systems to analyze and manage risk and the current hydrometrological conditions as well as in face of climate variability and change early warning systems constitute a prerequisite for effective disastrous reduction the 2020 state of climate services report prepared by wmo and 17 partners organizations and initiatives highlights progress made in early warning system implementation globally and identifies where and how governments can invest in effective early warning systems to strengthen countries resilience to multiply weather climate and water related hazards to multiple sorry thank you very much thank you thank thank you natalia this thanks for for um raising again and mentioning some of the important issues around uh climate and natural resource aspects as well which are the beginning and the basis of our a key part of our food systems i think this is a really important useful uh segue into hearing from one of our we have two other panel members uh bringing perspectives from let's say more country level um i'm really pleased that we have the chief executive officer of agro inform asia and mr yovany rashanna novav sorry if i didn't get your pronunciation and mr yogenny is is focusing on developing it tools for agriculture and business development and i i think this is a really useful follow-up to some of the points that natalia was bringing to the discussion mr yovany if i can ask you in a few minutes to just give us a snapshot of some of the work you're doing that uh uh brings some digital solutions or aspects of some of your work uh in in in chikistan thank you dear ladies and gentlemen good afternoon thank you very much for this great opportunity to share our experience from private side from private business and let me show that it's uh what we are doing actually and how it can be used for uh food security and for nutrition first of all i'd like to say that it's uh what we are doing we are private company and we don't focus especially on those issues we are focused more on those how we can improve production and marketing of agricultural products and i'd like to say that it's we deal with small scale farmers and small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises they that don't have access to information they have lack of knowledge for business management and also low digital literacy among them for using of it tools and we also like to state that it's we face also with poor attention to the role of digitization in government and also in development organization for development of agricultural business so and when i talk that we i really like to say that it's i'm talking about three companies one of them is agro information in kyrgyzstan and two nixie gold navavara nixie gold musher we're in tajikistan and what we are doing we provide reliable information for farmers by expert we also make free access to necessary information through electronic trade board library maps which i will show to you quickly and also we try to make direct interactions between small and medium-sized enterprises please look at those screenshots which i did for two products one of them is fruit is apples in kyrgyzstan so you can see on those on the left side on those two screens that how was changed production of apples in kyrgyzstan it's the darker shape the higher production from one side maybe you can not see big changes and it's true and i will show later you some numbers but on the right side it's already information about food security so green means that it's in those districts there are surplus and red it means this deficit how it's calculated it's total production at the district level which are divided by a number of people living in the district and average consumption per head of apples for example then if you look at the next is carrot you can see that it's also that there are some districts only in the country which have surplus of the products and most of them they are color in red so that there is deficit of carrot in those districts and if you look at numbers here that it's i really like to say that what i heard from raimund for example that in case of central asian countries there are really the very high cost of fruits and vegetables compared with the income of those people but also i'd like to say that if you look at those numbers you can see that it's daily consumption is very low here because is really very low production of those fruits and vegetables and one more example is mobile application hustle where we share not only information for production but also how people they can use in to fit themselves so many women for example they don't know what they can cook from mash like this it's a piece green piece and we even provide some information which is related to how useful this product and it's even nutrition some numbers on nutrition thank you very much for your attention thank you thank you mr riaz zanov giving us an insight into some of the work that you and your companies are supporting in terms of tracking and and for seeing production trends and and related work in in this area i want to i'm conscious that we we will probably go another maybe five minutes i hope that you can you can stay with us i want to refer before we come to a consumer's perspective i want to pick up on a couple of the the points that are being raised in the in the q&a and thank you for the the comments i want to during our session just to say that the the publication is now available in english and in russian on the on the fao regional website and i last my colleagues to they can put the link in into the chat box as well so i think that some of you have asked some very specific questions on on for understanding further detail of the the economic analysis and the more detailed analysis in the report so please to say that you can go directly to the report now in english and in russian languages on the fao website i also fully agree with the comments from from mr or ms kush kuzhner rarov in terms of the need to disseminate the information and and also work with governments and other stakeholders the country level to to really build on the findings and the results and continue to take actions and implement policies to address the challenges that are persistent and ongoing in the region and and some of the initial nutritional challenges that are getting worse and and also trying to have a multi-sectoral across government agencies but also multi-stakeholder approaches to to working on these so i fully agree with you that this report is is really informative and we thank you all for for helping us also to disseminate the information let us let us turn now that the consumers all of us as consumers have a really important role to play a really important voice on one hand that needs to be brought in to continue to be included in in addressing food security nutrition challenges and we also have very much a role to play in the choices that we make in how we decide also on our food choices our food consumption patterns i'm really pleased that we are joined to have a perspective from the consumer organization viewpoint by miss sofia pereña and vice president of the hungarian association of conscious consumers and sofia is also involved in the agricultural network urgency as well sofia we would like to have to hear from you a little bit on on what are some of the consumer roles and also what are some of the policy options that governments and can work on in order to address to to influence let's say on one side food supply chains but also ensuring healthy diets are available to all sofia you have the floor thank you very much thank you thank you for you today i hope the voice is good yes we hear you very well thank you you could put your slides on screen show if you want to fill the screen okay so thank you for inviting me today and we also really appreciate your work and efforts for publishing this report this year and i try to be really short but i have some key messages for today the panel speakers and also the report mentioned that today covid pandemic showed us that transforming our food systems for effort they will have the diets are crucial and this is what we experienced this year hunger has became more visible than ever in europe higher unemployment greater job instability reduced incomes increased poverty food shortages rising food prices and higher diet costs were remarkable the demand for food aid has increased significantly in all countries and in addition to that children access to schools as well as to food counties were limited during the lockdowns this was really problematic for those for this is the only healthy food meal that they get the working group on global food governance of the civil society and indigenous people mechanism the csm covid report stated that incidences covid 19 infection is higher in cities than elsewhere due to social distancing public services have been interrupted and the planting site including for example school gardens were no longer maintained open and public markets were closed in many locations i took three photos which were taken in hangary last year and i think this shows as what happened this year you can see the empty shop as fast from the spring because of the panic buying of consumers also the importance of food aid programs which were really important not just the poor but also for elderly people or families and also i took a photo from my csa community from where families could receive good quality nutritious food directly from a small-scale family farm so the pandemic showed us that the need for solidarity-based resilient food food systems became increasingly evident community-supported agriculture delivery to consumers has been authorized in all countries even where other forms of direct sales were stabbed mainly because the food is not packaged and is handled safely by producers and through well organized socially distanced pickups by consumer members of csa's or home deliveries by producers the crisis also also amplified the connection between production and access to local local food climate change and the potential of sustainable agroecological practices of small-scale family farms to provide healthy nutritious for food for all moreover csa enables producers to make a decent livelihood and also has an expassional low level of food loss and waste thanks to the triage exchange and the agroecological production regarding the policy recommendations shortly as the csm report also suggests it would be important to extend the practice of national policy framers with the delegation for implementation and local government level focusing on local authority support for socially excluded population those with difficulty to access for fresh food through schemes that enable direct provision and access to direct supplies of agroecological fresh fruit and vegetables we concluded in all urgency resilience report that policies should ensure specific protection of peri urban agricultural land to guarantee urban rural linkages for sustainable territorial production and consumption and sustainable food systems and these have proven to be by far the most resilient to the crisis also supporting the introduction of legislation for food safety nets and solidarity actions that connect producers to those most in need of supporting through existing structures such as LSPA could be a key policy recommendation and also association of conscious consumers and urgency believe that education could be a key tool in empowering consumers to support the solidarity based food systems and also to support them to do advocacy for their food communities thank you thank you thank you very much Shofia Perini from the conscious consumers bringing a focus highlighting you brought to the the discussion also the important role of municipalities and and local governments I think as driving policy and and this is clearly a really key part you also put a spotlight on local consumers interacting with the local food producers and some of the changes that we've also seen in Hungary and other countries across the region during the COVID-19 pandemic thank you very much for your intervention and insights and also showing us some of the work that you are involved in in your in your country of Hungary as well and also across the region and I want to we are going to wrap up now I I hope that you've taken a lot from this session I do want to we will close with hearing some very short take home message from the different issue-based coalition members and the the the contributors to the report I would like to start with Mr. Malin Milan Dadich from World Meteorological Organization just to give us a what was your take home message there were many many issues covered in the discussion but a very short take home message from you Mr. Dadich thank you thank you Madam Chair very much I think that first of all it's very important that we gather and that the FAO organized this launch event because it's a it's a matter it's like information day it's like bringing people together and exchanging the information very often in these times we are overwhelmed with the regular work with all of the things that we do and not really focused very much into the details of the so much important report that is the one that you that you submitted so I think these kind of events are very important for the for the future coordination also purposes because I I also believe that all UN agencies could do more when they collaborate so we are very good in collaboration for number of years decades even century we collaborate but I think that it's always possible to do more and to do better because we learn from each other we know each other and we know how do we really approach this this very complex problem from the side of the WMO of course very complex issues of the climate change and that is really covering so many different aspects of life and economy and production and also it changes also consumption patterns if you will so there's so many things that we have to do together and I'm really looking very much forward to do the next far report for the for the next year that my organization will contribute much more than than before and that we try to devise really a tangible contribution for each and every agency that actually exactly what it needs to be there be in the report and the activities that we actually shape in WMO realm that really responds to the needs of our other partner agencies so that's a kind of my preliminary thinking of course I can come back in a minute or two with more if I'm provoked with the other speakers but thank you very much Mary also for excellent leadership of this conference. Thank you, thank you Mr. Derichen and I really thank you for your energy and commitment to the current publication but also you're looking forward to the the next annual Sophie review regional review from our region so we thank you for that ongoing support and and and commitment and to bring the issues to the table from your organization's viewpoints as well. Peter, Peter Hoyskov has joined us from the World Health Organization. Peter what would be your take home message from a very rich dynamic discussion? Thanks Mary and thanks to to all the speakers our panelists representatives from industry and consumer I think it's been an excellent launch event and I've been following the questions and the discussion in the chat as well so thanks to everyone who has participated in that so as my colleagues have mentioned earlier we are very pleased to be part of the report and for participating in this launching event today I think we have had excellent discussion and we're looking forward to take this further and also as WMO now mentions the next Sophie report we're looking forward to also working with our partners in developing that one. So food safety and healthy diets are prerequisites for sustainable development and their key priorities for WHO in this region we are very committed to work with our partners including the members of the IBC on sustainable food systems to help improve food nutrition security using the one health approach that has been mentioned a couple of times during today's program and then the systems based approach and working also towards the UN Food Systems Summit later this year. Of course we stand ready to work with our member states to take appropriate action and to strengthen food safety to promote healthy and sustainable diets and in this regard just want to re-emphasize also and highlight what Claire mentioned in her talk about the guidelines and the package of tools that's available on our website and Claire has kind of shared the link also in the chat for the reference so thank you very much again for being part of this and we look forward to continue our collaboration back to you Mary. Thank you Peter. Thanks for those points being restressed and wrap up take home messages as well from the point of view of WHO and we look forward to the continuing and deep cooperation. Amir I'd like to give you the floor from UNICEF we've covered a lot on children today very important part of our community and our population what is your take home message please. Yeah sure Mary I will be very sure thank you very much for this my short message is that if we really want to accelerate the achievement of SDGs investment on nutrition during the childhood adolescents and motherhood are critical and for sustainable results on nutrition for this age group countries really need to activate the five systems which are food health water and sanitation education and social protection with the greatest potential to deliver nutritious diets essential nutrition services and positive nutrition practices for children adolescents and women. UNICEF Ikaro and its 22 country offices in the region are there to utilize their multi-sectoral country programs and partnerships to support governments to make these five system better equipped and more accountable for maternal and childhood nutrition. Once again I would like to congratulate FAO and all of the colleagues for this great report and launch and looking forward to our SOFI 2021 collaboration thank you. Thank you thank you very much Amir. Raymond from FAO's side I'd like to give you the microphone now to give us your take home message. A lot has been said thank you very much Mary we're already over time the first take home messages of course there will be a full report in 2022 though we are having changed in this case our schedule the 21 report will only focus on the data no additional information and the second take home message is of course we will need to focus more also on the consumer side I think the information and the analysis which we have in the 2020 report in terms of the healthy diets will require that we have to take more attention also on the consumer side to understand better how are we going to be able to address in this case also the issue of healthy diet thank you Mary over to you. Thank you thank you very much Raymond lots more to be worked on and to continue working on both within our agencies but clearly obviously firstly with our with our our member countries and with the different ministries and other stakeholder groups we work with also right across the region I do want to close I think it's it's just to remind you all that the the publication is online in English and in Russian this session has also been recorded so it will be available afterwards that you can share it through YouTube and really the last thing I want to say is really to thank everybody I in particular I want to thank obviously the technical teams who really contributed to the report and the the great leadership and and technical work from my colleague Cheng Fang who has worked a lot I'm sure he's happy that this publication is finally out and I also very much want to thank everybody who contributed all our communications team and colleagues who who contributed to preparing this launch event so thanks to all the teams in in our UN partner agencies for their preparation but also a very big thanks to our our colleagues in the communications team and in FAO's office in Budapest and all the colleagues who contributed to this to preparing and this successful event okay so I will wish you all a very good day and thanks again for the the excellent contributions from everybody and also to all of you for for joining bye bye now thank you