active · Health

Building a South Asian coalition for food systems transformation through fiscal and trade policy

Trade measures, taxes and subsidies are an important means of enabling access to healthy dietary choices. Ensuring policy coherence, such as aligning domestic agricultural subsidies, taxes and trade policies with interventions for better nutrition, is a complex undertaking. This project will address the research gap on how fiscal and trade policies interact with dietary patterns and consumption choices to impact nutrition and health outcomes. This project aims to develop a South Asian research, policy and practice network for deploying fiscal and trade policies to improve access and affordability of healthy diets. The project team will use scoping reviews and exploratory research techniques to develop country-specific analysis to identify and use fiscal and trade measures to overcome the triple burden of wasting, stunting and obesity, and to promote healthy diets. This analysis will include an assessment on how national food safety requirements are connected to trade policies. The research team will focus on understanding how policy reform can address gender disparities, which are one of the most pervasive forms of inequality and a major cause of poor health and nutrition outcomes in South Asia. This project is part of a cohort supporting diverse and multi-actor coalitions that take on a leadership role to influence policies and transform food systems at the country and regional level in Central and South America, South Asia and Southeast Asia. These coalitions combine collaborative learning networks and communities of practice, operating at multiple scales, to collectively support the production and consumption of, and access to, healthy diets for all, particularly the most vulnerable, emphasizing sustainable systems that contribute to the health of people and ecosystems.