Kathmandu, April 27

The South Asian Policy Leadership for Improved Nutrition and Growth held their second dialogue event in Kathmandu on improving agri-food systems on April 24 and 25.

The SAPLING initiative was launched in 2019 and aims to drive a 'food systems approach' to combat malnutrition in South Asia in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. The event spread over one-and-a-half days saw the participation of over 60 delegates from SAPLING member countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Bhutan. The event was co-hosted by the National Planning Commission, with BRAC Bangladesh, the current SAPLING Secretariat, the largest non-governmental development organisation in the world and IPE Global Limited, an Indian development sector think-anddo tank, and Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), Nepal, a not-for-profit think-tank headquartered in Kathmandu.

The first day of the event focused on setting the context. Senior Programme Officer at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Siddharth Chaturvedi highlighted the need and importance of having a regional platform for consensus building among various stakeholders for mainstreaming evidence-based policy, action and leadership to combat malnutrition in line with the policymakers' needs and priorities through an agri-food system lens. Secretary at Nepal Planning Commission Kewal Prasad Bhandari acknowledged the need for inter-government collaboration, while also bringing together private sector partners and other relevant stakeholders.

Member of National Planning Commission of the Government of Nepal Jay Kant Raut stated that this was the right time for collaboration and cooperation among South Asian countries. He shared that all countries in the region had been facing similar threats of climate change and post-harvest losses, adding, 'An initiative like SAPLING could play a key role to achieve this.'

The second day featured a policymakers' roundtable wherein high-level government dignitaries from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal discussed the priorities and agendas for regional collaboration for strengthening agri-food systems and the modalities for the same. The experts and government officials participating in the event endorsed the need of an initiative like SAPLING which could act as an agile regional platform to foster inter-governmental collaboration and perform the role of knowledge aggregator around the use of climate-smart technologies, reduce post-harvest losses. and improve food safety to pollinate learnings from member countries across the region.

A version of this article appears in the print on April 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.