Founding Partner Christopher Egerton-Warburton contributed to a key piece of scientific research on innovative financing for nutrition published in the Nature Food Journal.
The paper highlights the critical urgency to address malnutrition, which remains severely underfunded, falling far short of the estimated required annual budget of USD 39 to 50 billion. Solving food systems’ problems will need a comprehensive approach that tackles undernutrition and diet-related diseases in addition to climate change, as these are intrinsically linked.
There is significant untapped potential to better use existing grants, concessional and private capital to increase resources for addressing malnutrition. The first proposal is to leverage the rise in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing to channel funds towards nutrition. The second solution involves innovative nutrition financing, including donation aggregation, pay-for-results, market guarantees, insurance instruments, and nutrition-focused social bonds.
However, the success of innovative financing and ESG investing schemes to benefit nutrition is contingent on the following:
1. Development of bespoke innovative financing mechanisms addressing the specific needs of nutrition interventions to deploy capital mobilised by donors, private and public sectors.
2. The creation of nutrition data collection methods and a holistic, transparent framework for reporting data to prevent ‘nutri-washing.’
3. Strong advocacy to encourage adoption and increase accountability
To read full published paper: Innovative financing for nutrition | Nature Food
Contributing Authors:
Christopher Egerton-Warburton; @Meera Shekar; Meghan O’Hearn, PhD; Ellina K.; Kenji Shibuya; Simon Bishop; Hélène van Berchem; Kyoko Okamura Shibata; Dariush Mozaffaria
