Archana Sinha, health and nutrition initiative associate director, Ashoka India, Bangalore, India
Be honest from the start: Any partnership requires that the parties are clear about their priorities and their deal-breakers. There should also be clarity on what each partner is hoping to get out of the collaboration and their respective strengths.
Present the economic argument: We need to build the business case for improving nutrition. This gets the private sector as well as various government departments on board. As long as nutrition is seen as beneficial but not as essential for economic progress, we will make little headway in tackling it.
Leith Greenslade, vice chair, MDG Health Alliance, New York, USA,@MDGHealthEnvoy
Don’t let ideology hold us back: We need to go well beyond the tired and often ideologically driven disputes between NGOs and the food and beverage industry. It is holding back gains for children. Nutrition is everybody’s business. Individuals and families decide what they eat, governments need to set standards for what is healthy and safe, farmers need to grow nutritious crops and businesses process these crops to put food on our tables.
Start afresh: We need to base nutrition discussions firmly on evidence and not on ideology. The 2013 Lancet Nutrition Series warned us that failure to engage the private sector in nutrition is a “missed opportunity” and that the troubled history between the traditional players has made it “more difficult for the private sector to be a major contributor”. Let’s invite fresh faces and new approaches – from the public and private sectors – into the conversation and chart a new course for nutrition.
Biraj Patnaik, principal adviser, Office of the Supreme Court Commissioners, New Delhi, India
Ask questions: Does the business subscribe to human rights? Is there a conflict of interest? Do they pay their taxes and provide decent wages for workers? These really are the key questions that need to be asked about partnerships to impact on poverty and malnutrition.
Don’t let the public sector off the hook: There is no short cut to increased public investments not just in food and nutrition but also in health, education, housing and social protection. There isn’t a single example of a society which has developed in the absence of this.
Stefan Germann, executive director, One Goal, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, @stefanatonegoal
Collect the evidence: One of the weaknesses is that a solid evidence base that looks at the impact of partnerships does not exist yet. A key area is to document collaborations better, including the challenges and failures to ensure that there is clear positive public health impact.
Lobby governments need to keep agreements in check: On accountability, the role of parliaments and parliamentarians is critical. We have seen that by working with parliaments, multi-stakeholder commitments have improved accountability in the delivery.
Natalie Africa, private sector engagement director, Every Woman Every Child, United Nations Foundation, @UnfEWEC, New York, USA
Stop debating, start doing: Currently, the world is off track to meet all six of the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets. We cannot afford to debate over who should be responsible for helping to meet these targets. Everyone has to come to the table, and with the immense expertise and resources within the private sector, we need to include them in this journey and find creative ways for them to contribute.
Allow the villains to become heroes: If the “big bad wolves” are capable of creating negative impact on a large scale they are also capable of creating positive impact on a large scale. Passing up this opportunity would be a shame.
Stephan Tanda, managing board member, Royal DSM, Heerlen, Netherlands, @dsm
Take advantage of business’ expertise: DSM has shown that making our technical and scientific nutrition expertise available has increased the World Food Programme’s nutrition-related knowledge base.
Roselilian Andanje, nutrition technical adviser, Phillips Healthcare Services, Nairobi, Kenya, @andanjero1
Target employers of women: Most of the women in our communities work for the private sector. We should introduce campaigns at work to encourage mothers to exclusively breastfeed and introduce micronutrient supplementation.
Steve Godfrey, chief investment officer, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, London, UK, @GAINAlliance
Look at the whole picture: When we engage with the private sector it needs to be in a holistic way that looks at their overall impact. It doesn’t help if large companies do one or two good things but overall their impact is negative. We know that irresponsible marketing practices exist around breastmilk substitutes, and in some cases around land use. Everyone worries about the epidemic of overweight and obesity driven by changing diets. But we can’t solve any of these problems by refusing to engage.
Engage with the small local businesses: This isn’t just about large companies or multinationals. We need to focus our efforts at the country level, where markets are dominated by small and medium food producers and the majority of food is unpackaged. We need to help the SMEs, entrepreneurs and smallholders that are so crucial to the food system in developing countries, to build markets for nutritious products.
Lucie Klarsfeld, project manager, Hystra, Paris, France
Don’t forget the government: The government has a key role to play in supporting initiatives that align with their goals in fighting malnutrition. But each of these their actors (government, NGO, private sector) has to stick to what they do best.
Let bygones be bygones: Danone and Nestlé both have people strongly committed to making a difference in nutrition. The issue is that with all the bad things that these companies did before, they are now pretty much forbidden to try anything in that space. The question is how to get over the ideologies that make some people refuse to even talk to these companies, while it should be recognised that they have assets that could help solve these issues.
Marije Boomsma, senior programme manager, Access to Nutrition Foundation, Utrecht, The Netherlands, @MarijeBoomsma
It doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment: Sometimes it helps not to work in partnership, but just to feed each other through stakeholder consultations and realise change by giving each other new insights.
Read the rest of the discussion on the live Q&A here.
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