Research-Policy Nexus Workshop
Nutrition for ALL: What can we learn from communities in Mountain and Hill Region?
Date: October 14th, 2023
Venue: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
Registration is for invited participants only
Concept note
An estimated 821 million people are currently undernourished while 2 billion adults are overweight or obese signalling an urgency for addressing the issue of food and nutrition security. The IPCC AR6 has reported climate change as one of the critical factors affecting food and nutrition security and will continue to affect it in future too.
Hill and mountain regions have been reported to be highly climate-vulnerable and food insecure. At the same time, they are home to many indigenous communities across the world and host a wide range of crop biodiversity. These societies, cut off from the mainstream population primarily due to complex topography and limited mobility, have evolved their own traditional techniques of producing and meeting their nutritional requirements. Efforts to address food and nutrition security among indigenous people should be grounded in a deep understanding of each community’s specific challenges and opportunities. Collaborative approaches that involve indigenous leaders, organizations, and traditional knowledge holders are essential for developing effective strategies that respect cultural values and indigenous knowledge. However, the academic literature on the indigenous food system and its potential for better food and nutrition security remains opaque and provides the rationale for this research-policy nexus workshop.
The workshop will be divided into two parts. The inaugural session will bring out perspectives, gaps, and needs for evaluating the indigenous food system for an inclusive food value chain. The welcome speech (TBA) from Jawaharlal Nehru University will be followed by two online presentations from the Centre of Excellence for Transformative Agribusiness (CETA), Lincoln University, to set the context of the workshop:
1. Global value chain and disruption
Prof. Alan Renwick, Co-Director, CETA and
2. Maori Values and Agricultural Value Chain
Hiraina Tangiora.
Session II will highlight the unique conditions the communities in the North-Eastern States' face in ensuring food and nutrition security. In Part A, we will have two keynote presentations:
1 What can we learn from the indigenous food system?:
Dr. Chubbamenla Jamir, Project Director, Climate Studies and Knowledge Solutions Centre, Government of Nagaland; Co-Lead, Mountain Agriculture, Himalayan Universities Consortium.
2. Are the existing food and nutrition indices able to capture the nuances of the traditional food system?:
Prof. Usha Mina, School of Environmental Sciences, JNU.
In Part B, the workshop participants will be divided into groups for a facilitated discussion on the factors influencing inclusion of indigenous food in the local and global value chain. This session moderated by Assoc. Prof. Nazmun N. Ratna, Lincoln University, will have presentation from each group followed by concluding remarks from Prof. P.K. Joshi, JNU.
Registration is for invited participants only
Co-organizers
School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is one of the leading universities in India, which has played a key role in mentoring academics and thought leaders in various fields for several decades. It continues to be a leader in Research outputs in the region.
The Centre of Excellence in Transformative Agribusiness, Lincoln University New Zealand aims to be at the international forefront of solutions that will enhance the sustainability of the food and fibre sectors. Its role is to support the development of new products and new ways of working that increase economic and social value while reducing the environmental impacts of agribusinesses. Lincoln University is a specialist land-based university that spans more than 140 years and provides excellent research and education to grow the knowledge of students and help shape a world that benefits from a greater understanding of the relationships between land, food and ecosystems.
Himalayan Universities Consortium (HUC) [Thematic Working Group on Mountain Agriculture], hosted at ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal is a collaborative network of universities and academic institutions from the HKH and outside of it working on strengthening research and scholarship on issues from and relevant to the region.