The official policy on climate change mocked: stick your head in the sand

As was Copenhagen in 2009, the 2010 Cancún Summit on climate change was deeply disappointing, though some small progress was made. The attitude of the plenipotentiaries charged to find ways sharply to reduce emissions was graphically summed up by environmentalists from many different countries as pictured here above on the Cancún beach. Yes, as stated in the SCN policy brief presented at Cancún, climate change is centrally relevant to our work. It will have a dramatic and sometimes devastating effect on food security and nutrition status of populations in all continents. Let us at least include this and other social, political and environmental impacts in our teaching and practice.

The UN committee on nutrition stands

Rome. This was the setting for yet another meeting of the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition, held on 14-15 December. I was there, invited in my capacity as Association president. I report on the meeting and its implications elsewhere on this month's home page. Yes, there is some good news. Also, the Association's position on the governance and structure of the SCN is published this month in World Nutrition, as an annex to our full position paper published last month.

What is 'the private sector'?

In our position paper we agree that the SCN should now include a group of representatives from 'the private sector', a term used by the UN which actually means industry. But! We also propose that members of the SCN governing body, concerned with harmonisation of UN nutrition policies and also food policies as these relate to nutrition, be solely from the relevant UN agencies themselves. Where we accept that industry companies fit in, is as members of an industry group that is one member of a subsidiary deliberative forum, concerned with discussing and developing UN policies. This is also where we think we fit in, as a member of a civil society group, and where nation states fit in, as members of a bilateral group. But! We propose that the UN group collectively form the majority of this forum - much as it does within the SCN as now constituted.

Now for the big 'but'. What we mean by 'industry' is what the word normally means. Thus we mean for instances the travel industry, the engineering industry, the insurance, energy, and yes banking industries. Very senior executives from such industries should be invited to represent their firms, as members of the SCN 'private sector' group. Would they accept invitations? We think so, yes. Would membership of the group burnish their image? Yes. But they are not in direct conflict with the purposes of the SCN, which include actual and real improvement and maintenance of population health. We also point out that there are businesses within the food, drink, allied and associated sectors whose policies and practices are not in conflict with the SCN's purposes. Which these are is a matter of judgement, and judgements need to be made and lines drawn. We agree that representatives from non-conflicted companies and enterprises can also be members of the 'private sector' group.

The issue is conflicted industry

We publish contributions on our website, and in World Nutrition, that are critical of conflicted industry. Our founding member Carlos Monteiro, a senior professor at the school of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, this month continues a series of commentaries in WN that make some trenchant remarks about transnational food and drink corporations and strongly criticise their ultra-processed products. Sometimes I am asked questions like: 'Barrie, why is the Association and your website anti-industry?' And my answer is, no, we are not. This is not the case. Improving and sustaining healthy nutrition absolutely depends on partnership with industry. We have never said or implied anything else.

Let's all stop using terms like 'the private sector' or 'industry' so loosely. The issue is conflicted industry. This means in our context, those transnational, national and other food, drink and allied and associated businesses and enterprises, whose profits depend on products that are bad for personal and population health, or which are set up to promote and protect conflicted industry. We recommend that representatives of conflicted businesses can be invited as guests and as observers of the SCN private sector group, but not be voting members. We also recommend that such representatives be limited in number. Those in conflict cannot be part of the governance of the SCN. That's our position, which I have stated at the Rome meeting.

When the snow lay round about...

Welcome to Martin Evans of Pewter, now our main manager on this website and WN. He succeeds Douglas Armstrong, who we have worked with since our first issue in October 2009. Douglas and Martin did wonders with our December issue. In late November, in the Scottish Grampian region where they are based, temperatures dropped close to zero Fahrenheit - close to minus 20 Centigrade. Blizzards raged, cars stuck in snowdrifts - and all over the region, broadband connections went phut. At the same time, a spectacular electric storm zapped the broadband where website editor Geoffrey Cannon is based in Brazil. He took off for Rio de Janeiro at the time the world's media were full of stories about civil war in the city, holed up in a hotel with reliable broadband and wifi, and turned the air conditioner on full blast, the outside temperature peaking at 42 Centigrade - approaching 110 Fahrenheit.

We all finished the job just one day later than advertised, at 23.00 GMT on 1 December. Michael Pollan liked the issue of WN and said so on his website, twittering to that effect also. Whoosh! We finished 2 December on 3,615 page sessions, with close to a gigabyte downloaded. 'Told you' says young Council member Sabrina Ionata. 'It is time for us to commit to social media'. She is right. Once we have definite plans I will let you know

Impact: on who or what?

Are we as an organisation, of which this website and WN are parts, about quantity or quality? Both, I think, as long as we stay true to our mission and purpose. Perhaps the key word here is 'impact'. We now have a publishing and editorial Board for WN. One of the issues I would like our Board to consider, in relation to public health, nutrition and other specialist and scientific journals, is: What is the true meaning and purpose of 'impact'? Electronic page traffic measurement, mentioned above, is rather like the measurement of the readership of conventional printed publications. But publishers of specialist journals, that typically have very high subscription rates unless for members of linked learned societies, do not announce the numbers of copies that are printed, for what might be termed obvious reasons. Instead, importance is gauged by the 'impact factor' system. This awards Impact Factors to specific contributions, and thence to any journal as a whole, according to the number of times in a specified period contributions are cited in recognised registered journals. This includes the journal itself. The Lancet has a Factor of over 25, whereas most international nutrition journals range between 2 and 3.5. The electronic tracking systems used now make this process easy, and every year publishers and editors wait, breath bated, to learn if their Impact has gone up or down. For an academic, a consistent record of publishing in high impact factor journals is professionally important.

But this surely is a rather hermetic way of measuring impact in any normal sense of the word. Which has more impact in the wider world: to be cited by academic peers in five other academic journals, or to be the basis of a change in global policy that could, in the case of nutrition, affect the health, and even chances of survival, of millions of young children? The answer is obvious. But what could be the measure for such types of impact? I would like us to start thinking about this.

Rio 2012 - knowledge, policy, action

For me the event of this month, as shown on our site, is the first detailed news of our congress to be held in Rio in 2012, jointly with the Brazilian national public health organisation Abrasco. Its overall theme is as you see above - knowledge, policy, action. This month we set out the general principles that are governing and guiding the congress. These have been discussed in a series of meetings notably beginning during my visit to Rio last July, and then again at the Porto public health nutrition congress in September, as well as at and between successive Council meetings. We think the vision is exciting. Next month we publish the first formal announcement of Rio 2012, including an outline programme.

Becoming strong in 2011

'Nutrition is everybody's business and is our responsibility'. Association founder member Roger Shrimpton coined this variation on 'nutrition is everybody's business but nobody's responsibility' at the second world congress on public health nutrition in Porto last September. Yes, it is our job to lead, in the teaching and profession of nutrition focusing on population level health. I hereby here and now as president, commit the Association to fulfilling this responsibility. A report on the Porto pre-congress workshop organised by Roger, together with Roger Hughes, John Mason and others, is published below on this home page.

A central part of this work is to empower and enable local people within the community to implement simple interventions. But a well-trained and competent workforce is necessary but not sufficient. The system and structure within which they - we - work also has to function properly, and the work needs to be encouraged at all levels, from national government to local community.

Take Africa. The Landscape Analysis undertaken by WHO and led by Association founder member Chizuru Nishida (see http://apps.who.int/nutrition/landscape analysis/en/index.html ) shows that impediments to improving childhood nutrition include a general lack of understanding of what public health nutrition entails, and also lack of local capacity. South Africa, a country that I know pretty well, like many other African countries has good nutrition leadership at national level, but is forced to devolve responsibility down to provincial (state or county) level, and has few competent regional leaders. Local community staff, who are there to deliver the actual nutritional services in the community, have little or no guidance, because their advisors at regional level don't know. The result is that WHO guidance on best practice does not get disseminated, and there is virtually no monitoring or evaluation. Most nutrition training in universities is for hospital based clinical work. Few centres train people for community based public health work. The result is that 'nutrition guidance' often seeks to use individual treatment models when a population approach is required.

As a profession we must build up our own base. Over time we need to ensure that a suitably trained workforce provides the right guidance and support, monitors and evaluates programmes, and in turn informs and guides policy-makers and thus reinforces the political will to improve and maintain the quality of nutrition of the people. This task is a top priority for us now, beginning this year, 2011.