Interlinkages with other SDGs The road to the SDGs calls for a more integrated approach to secure their achievement. The quest for ending hunger globally is likewise inextricably related to several other goals. Besides those already mentioned, food security strategies also affect the over 1 billion people that perform farming and fishing activities in urban contexts, meaning that 15% to 20% of the world’s food supply comes from urban agglomerations.71 As a matter of fact, 33 of the world’s megacities and about 40% of the urban population in intermediary cities are settled in coastal zones of 100km to 150km.72 Local and regional governments are also committed to end infancy nutritional stunting. In these cases, “school feeding supply chains and nutrition education programs”73 aim at achieving Goal 2 while also targeting the goal of quality education (SDG 4) for all. In federal states like Argentina, Brazil, India or Nigeria, education is a key competence of sub-national governments – and all these countries have implemented school meal policies.
Banana and plantain market at Ikire, Osun State of Nigeria (photo: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture/ Flickr.com)
In Nigeria, the State of Osun applies a decentralized model with diversified menus, and counters storage risks with limited storage periods. In primary school, health services assist in the identification of child malnutrition. These programmes also foster job creation in small farming and cookery, drastically reducing the distance between food production and the market where it is sold, also reducing costs. In Benin, school meal supplies are a priority in rural areas, as reported in the country’s VNR in 2017. The national association of municipalities (ANCB), moreover, has promised to support all local governments to include nutrition in the Communal Development Plan (PCD) that will be defined in 2017. The ANCB is a key stakeholder in a national initiative to put hunger and health, and their inherent connection, at the heart of local development.
71 UCLG (2016) Co-creating the Urban Future. The Agenda of Metropolises, Cities and Territories – GOLD IV. 72 Ibid.
50
73 “Drake et al. (2016) Global School Feeding Sourcebook: Lessons from 14 Countries. London: Imperial College Press. The document is available online and can be accessed at this address: http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp284904.pdf