In this chat, our CEO Paul Newnham, speaks with France’s Special Envoy on Nutrition and Secretary General of the Nutrition for Growth Summit, Brieuc Pont ahead of the Paris Summit.
Throughout his career, Brieuc has transitioned from traditional diplomatic roles to champion nutrition as a cornerstone of global development. Together, they explore how nutrition intersects with climate change, security, and economic resilience, impacting countries worldwide. They also discuss the challenges of maintaining momentum amid shifting political landscapes.
Listen to the full episode on Future Fork on Spotify and Apple podcast.
Paul: Brieuc, let’s start with your background. You’ve had an extensive diplomatic career before focusing on nutrition. How did your experiences shape your approach to global development?
Brieuc: Well, I’m very new to global development. In fact, I always say beware of diplomats and, above all, beware of diplomats who pretend to be experts. But the fact that I didn’t know much or anything at all about nutrition, I think helped me realize some basic problems.
Now the world of nutrition is not a, is not a world of conflict, but what I’ve met is a very fragmented community and that shocked me from the beginning, what I call the theology of nutrition. Many people claim their church was better than the others when in fact they all have a contribution to bring to the cause, the fight against malnutrition.
I think we’ve managed to create a sense of community between people of nutrition, and I’m quite happy about that.
How is it possible that such a powerful policy gets only 1% of ODA when it’s so impactful and it can actually help you bring the cost to the next level
Once you’ve built resilience among nations you have the basis to again play next level and implement more ambitious development policies that you could not if the population you’re dealing with is affected by malnutrition, by stunting, by cognitive delays, what we say that it’s actually the motto of N4G Paris: it all starts with nutrition. You can’t have anything at all without nutrition.
And I think that’s what shocked me at the beginning – instead of advocating for nutrition, they were quarreling about iron and, and, and zinc oxide and vitamins strategies instead of teaming up.
I’m happy that there are organizations or platforms like the SUN Movement who were trying to create this momentum and I think that along with SUN, with Afshan Khan and many others we’ve managed to give a common vision.
Paul: So for anyone that’s not heard of it, can you describe to us what is Nutrition for Growth?
Brieuc: Nutrition for Growth is one of those 21st century international relations unidentified objects. Is it a pledging summit? Is it a quest for funds? Is it a beauty contest where the organizer needs to beat the score achieved by the predecessor? I don’t think so. So, you know, we don’t really know. It’s like nutrition – do we have a definition of what nutrition is?
Nutrition is something very blurry, in fact, and that’s a strength and a weakness at the same time. It’s a strength because it allows you to include a lot of stuff inside nutrition. You can be designing a transportation infrastructure like roads and say this is nutrition sensitive because it will give the producers access to local markets. But you can also define nutrition as a sort of fortifier in baby bottles.
N4G is a global gathering of supporters of nutrition organized by the Olympic host nation and basically N4G is what you do with it. What we want is to make it become a tradition, and that’s the idea, to enshrine it in the Olympic cycle and allow this legacy to live on.
Paul: As the Special Envoy, you’ve made a great effort to communicate that nutrition policies aren’t just about nutrition, and you just shared a little bit. On this. Can you explain what you mean when you say this?
Brieuc: Well, you know, when I started advocating for nutrition, it was a reality shock when one colleague told me, “oh yeah, your summit about baby bottles”. Of course, that was intentionally provocative but it helped me actually because I realized that there’s a problem with the branding.
Just try to go out there in the street and ask anyone what nutrition is. Some will say, well, that’s, you know, the products that you use at the fitness club. Others will say that’s what I put in my baby’s baby bottle or it’s eating well, when in fact it’s way wider than that.
It’s about the consequences of climate change, on pregnancies, on health, on what we eat. It’s the consequences of urbanization. It’s about the way we find innovative ways to fund development, it’s about innovation and technology. So it’s about plenty of things that all bring us to something that is called nutrition.
I don’t think it is good branding. I think we should call it super development.
Listen to the full episode on Future Fork on Spotify and Apple podcast.
