Biodiversity and nutrition

Malnutrition remains one of the greatest global health challenges we face and women and children are its most visible and vulnerable victims. Agricultural production is theoretically able to feed the world’s population in terms of calories (FAOSTAT, 2014), yet it is estimated that half the world’s population still suffers from one or more forms of malnutrition. In all its forms, malnutrition is closely linked to disease – as both a cause and effect – and it is the single largest contributor to the global burden of disease (WHO 2012a).Countries are increasingly facing complex multiple burdens of malnutrition, with undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies coexisting with overweight and obesity in many parts of the world, often even within the same population or family (Shrimpton 2013). Based on data released in 2014, 161 million children under the age of five are estimated to be stunted, almost 1.5 billion people are estimated to be overweight, over 600 million to be obese (Ng et al. 2014) and two billion are estimated to be deficient in one or more micronutrients, a phenomenon referred to by some as “hidden hunger”. These conditions all have severe consequences for survival, for morbidity, and for the ability of individuals, the economy and society to thrive (IFPRI 2014)

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