Farming First to Co-Host SDG Side Event at United Nations in New York

Farming First is joining forces with the International Coalition for Advocating Nutrition (ICAN) and WaterAid to hold a side event on how the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), nutrition and agricultural sectors can partner to deliver a comprehensive Post 2015 Development Framework and explore the feasibility of collaborative implementation, monitoring, and measurement of progress. The event will be titled “Multipurpose indicators: Linking WASH, Nutrition and Agriculture to Achieve a Comprehensive and Sustainable Post 2015 Development Agenda”. Event details are:

Multipurpose indicators: Linking WASH, Nutrition and Agriculture to Achieve a Comprehensive and Sustainable Post 2015 Development Agenda
23rd April 2015, 1:15 – 2:30 PM
Room 13, UNHQ Conference Building
New York, NY, U.S.A

Nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions address both hunger and nutrition, and failure to address WASH issues can undermine both nutrition and food security. Worldwide, 748 million people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion people don’t have adequate sanitation. Poor nutrition during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life – from conception to a child’s second birthday – can result in irreversible damage to one’s physical and cognitive development as well as consequences at the community and national level. These WASH and nutrition factors – among many other issues – are root causes of why nearly half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. This is unnecessary human suffering caused by a cycle of poverty.

This side event will be carried out as a participatory follow-up to ICAN’s recent Inter-Governmental Negotiations side event titled Indicators with Impact: How to Measure Nutrition in the Post 2015 Development Agenda due to requests for a more technical discussion focusing on nutrition’s linkages to the to WASH and agricultural sectors.

This technical discussion will address effective, integrated approaches – including monitoring and indicators for measurement – for a post-2015 framework that will ambitiously tackle complex development problems. Case studies, reflections and opportunities for implementing such indicators will be discussed and assessed in terms of national ownership of the SDGs and increasing capacity through strategic multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder partnerships.