“Brazil (Vice-President Temer) and UK (Prime Minister David Cameron) co-hosted a Nutrition for Growth meeting in London on 8 June with the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). This was an important event on a neglected issue.
The event mobilised £2.7bn in funds and participants signed a Compact seeking by 2020 to extend effective nutrition to at least £500m people (pregnant mothers and children under two) and to prevent at least 20million children under five from becoming stunted. A series of specific actions were committed by governments, businesses and donors.
Vice-President Temer reaffirmed Brazil’s commitment to host a follow-up event around the Rio Olympics to check progress against the commitments made.
Embrapa President Lopes also spoke at both Nutrition for Growth and the subsequent G8 New Alliance meeting. He referred to the partnership with Brazil of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) on south-south cooperation and reinforced Brazil’s commitment to share expertise with developing countries. President Lopes will be a member of a new Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition – a new initiative announced by UK, which will provide leadership on science for nutrition over the next three years.
The event highlighted the strong UK-Brazil relationship on agriculture, food and nutrition – a key part of our global partnership on development.
The UK is working with Brazil on their international food security cooperation with low-income countries. The high-level partnership between London 2012 and Rio 2016 sets the framework. This is underpinned by strong programme work with 5 African countries. New ways are being considered to develop this further, including plans for support to an additional ten countries via the Brazil/WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger and options for trilateral UK-Brazil-Africa collaboration on agri-science.”