Stakeholders seek collaborations to tackle malnutrition, food insecurity

Amidst the devastating effects of climate change, the International Rescue Committee among other stakeholders have harped on the need for improved collaborations among development partners and government at all levels to tackle malnutrition and food insecurity in the country

The Country Director of IRC Nigeria Tunde Ojei while speaking at a seminar on climate change, malnutrition, and food insecurity in Abuja noted that the effect of climate change is taking a toll on food security and malnutrition hence the need for proactive measures by the government to tackle the problem.

Ojei maintained that the government needs to take the leadership role and support development partners to achieve their goal saying, they are merely international partners they cannot take the place of government

He said “Our appeal to government is to look into some of these issues and see how we can address the issue of malnutrition and the fear of insecurity. The President declared a state of emergency on food security on July 13, there is need to take concerted efforts to improve food security in the country ”

The Chief Executive Officer of IRC David Milliband in his remarks stated that the seminar is on climate crisis, food systems, and tackling malnutrition, saying these are big issues that Nigeria has a lot of experience, energy, and ideas.

“We are international NGO and we seek to work with the government at federal, state and local level. There is a big issue about the amount havest that enters the market as well as malnutrition that needs to be addressed.
There is also the issue about humanitarian and malnutrition effort” he pointed out.

The program leader from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)Paul Amdown stated that the program is to look into the recent work done on climate resilience most especially how anticipatory cash payment before climate related activities can benefit local communities more than palliatives after the crisis has occurred.

He said “When the cash payment is provided before the flooring instead of afterwards and it’s provided in relation to climate informations to farmers on how to engage on coping strategies, it increase the practice of the coping strategy as well as increase the outcomes from the farms in terms of food security and also increases their faming practices over a long term and not just short term ”

The Country Director of IRC further mentioned that the event was organized in collaboration with IFPRI was to bring experts together to discuss the linkage between climate change, malnutrition and food security. And to find a way to address this collectively as well as an organization who are interested in making sure we reduce cases of malnutrition, food insecurity .

He said “This issues must be looked at as climate crisis and not just climate change. As climate change make it sound subtle it is actually climate crisis.”