No more missed opportunities: Advancing public-private partnership to achieve the global nutrition goals
This report (PDF) by GAIN is the outcome of a dialogue between 40 representatives from governments, food industry, UN agencies and NGO’s to lay a stronger foundation for public-private engagement (PPE) in nutrition. The knowledge revolution – the revolution of data technology – has the potential to close vast gaps in our knowledge about nutrition. New PPE and partnerships around food consumption data collection could add information to existing sources to generate a fuller picture of food consumption levels and changes. Many innovation, for example robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain have the potential to transform the supply, distribution and consumption of nutritious food in every setting. However, companies generating these technologies are not engaged with governments, resulting in limited impact of the innovations. Engagement between companies and governments to leverage these technologies. Incentives for government-business partnerships are missing. There is potential for governments to shape food and beverage markets, for example by cash transfer or vouchers for specific, nutritious foods. This could provide a strong incentive for private sector partnership, since companies are sensitive to behaviour of consumers. Greater efforts are needed to engage governments and businesses at the scale required to have a significant impact on nutrition. New platforms are emerging to engage governments and businesses directly in the pursuit of specific nutrition goals. A number of recommendations are given to advance PPE. Many stakeholders thought that the absence of guiding principles was a barrier to greater collaboration. Therefore, seven guiding principles were designed: 1) Open debate and mutual accountability in surfacing interests and evolving policy, within which engagements should be developed; 2) Prioritize actions that advances Sustainable Development Goals and Global Nutrition Targets; 3) Base investment decisions on peer-reviewed scientific evidence; 4) Generate and share relevant data; 5) Increase efforts to invest in new technologies; 6) Demonstrate accountability by measuring impact of efforts; 7) Processes should be transparent, open and inclusive.