{"id":15228,"date":"2013-06-08T16:40:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T16:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=a7834bd1c50e91d5b990ae61dad469d6"},"modified":"2013-06-08T16:40:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T16:40:14","slug":"speech-justine-greenings-closing-speech-at-nutrition-for-growth-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=15228","title":{"rendered":"Speech: Justine Greening’s closing speech at Nutrition for Growth event"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Thanks very much Henry. I now have the pleasure of drawing this morning\u2019s session to a close. A hugely important session, and can I just start by saying a massive thank you to everybody who\u2019s contributed to what I think, we can all agree, was an incredibly successful day.<\/p>\n

On behalf of the Prime Minister David Cameron, who was here earlier this morning, and the UK government, I want to express my sincere gratitude for the commitments that you\u2019ve made here today. <\/p>\n

Thank you also to Vice President Temer, from the Government of Brazil, and to Jamie and Chris Cooper-Hohn for your partnership in this fantastic work. And of course to Paul Polman of Unilever for donating the use of what has been a wonderful space to hold such an important event. And finally can I just say thank you to my ministerial team at the Department for International Development, Lynne Featherstone and Alan Duncan, and also officials at the Department for all their work in pulling together today\u2019s programme. <\/p>\n

Twenty-five years ago if you\u2019d asked most people what they thought about aid, what they thought aid was, they might have said it was food parcels to famine hit regions, and it\u2019s easy to see why. <\/p>\n

I remember when I was growing up at secondary school in Rotherham, Yorkshire. When Live Aid and Band Aid woke us up to that dreadful famine in Ethiopia and it was really for me the first time, I think, I became aware of some of the challenges that other countries face in the world. <\/p>\n

It was an incredibly powerful moment that I\u2019ll never forget. It brought the problem of hunger right to the top of the political and global agenda. But the truth is that while the international community has been great at responding to emergencies, I think we perhaps have been less successful at tackling the root causes of some of these problems. I think we now understand that challenge better. <\/p>\n

We understand that the visible signs of hunger are just the tip of the iceberg and that the crisis of undernutrition may be unseen, but it is often just as devastating. If children don\u2019t have the right nutrition they can\u2019t develop properly and that harms not just their health and personal development in later life, but when you add it all together it harms their countries\u2019 economic development prospects too. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said that I want to see an end to aid dependency through jobs and growth. Ending hunger and undernutrition is the first step in securing self- sufficiency. But I don\u2019t believe that hunger and nutrition can be solved by governments and donors alone, and we\u2019ve seen that today. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important that we have the input of business, including Unilever, today. And I\u2019d like to pay tribute to Paul Polman for the commitment that he has shown, not just here but on the high level panel to business leaders across the world, about what steps companies can take to be part of the development push. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had business and we\u2019ve also had science and academia. All have shown their willingness to be part of the solution today. The Global Nutrition for Growth Compact shows not just commitment of resource to improve nutrition, but commitment of political will too. Ninety-one countries and organisations have signed up to it and I\u2019m aiming for more by the time of the Compact\u2019s first report at the UN General Assembly later this year. <\/p>\n

Businesses have signed up to provide nutritional support for their workforces and their families including breastfeeding mothers. The Compact sets out an ambitious timetable for change and I\u2019m absolutely delighted that Brazil will bring us back together again at the Rio Olympics where we can demonstrate what we\u2019ve achieved in the thousand days between now and then. <\/p>\n

The UK will play its part too. We are committing ourselves to up to an additional \u00a3655 million for direct nutrition that will go on programmes between now and 2020. Of this, around \u00a3280 million will be used to leverage new extra contributions from others, in order to help raise a further \u00a3500 million plus. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re also really delighted that part of that is a \u00a332 million funding allocated to a new catalytic financing facility for nutrition that we\u2019re launching today with CIFF. It\u2019s really aiming to pull-in more philanthropic investments into this area than we\u2019ve ever seen before. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m also committing to make sure that a greater proportion of our work is nutrition sensitive; worth around \u00a3604 million of our planned future investments in agriculture, social protection, sanitation, hygiene and humanitarian response that will deliver an even more long-term impact on nutrition.<\/p>\n

This of course sits alongside the fantastic, ongoing huge nutrition commitments already being made by countries like the US and Canada. And I\u2019m absolutely delighted to see that Julian Fantino [Canadian Minister of International Co-operation] and Rajiv Shah from USAID are here today. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also heard some outstanding new commitments. President Banda, earlier today, talking about increasing Malawi\u2019s domestic financing for her national plan to 0.3% of annual Government funding. This is a fantastic commitment. <\/p>\n

From business, British company Del Agua planning to reach nine million people in Rwanda with advanced water sources. <\/p>\n

Together, donors, philanthropic foundations and CSOs have announced new commitments today, which including potential leverage funding, is up to $4.1 billion. And for those UK people here, that\u2019s \u00a32.7 billion. <\/p>\n

A further $19 billion has been announced for investments in agriculture, hygiene, social protection and other nutrition sensitive programmes that can help deliver even more results. <\/p>\n

In conclusion, we can all take huge pride today in having secured what I think is a truly historic pledge to find long-lasting solutions in order to end undernutrition in our lifetime. <\/p>\n

Thank you so much for your contributions today, but it\u2019s only a start, now the work begins. Today we have set the ambition, but let\u2019s use that ambition, the promises that we\u2019ve made today, to make that pledge a reality in the future. <\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary of commitments made at Nutrition for Growth event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}