Without awareness of good nutrition, people may resort to unhealthy food practices and increase their disease burden. This will slow down crisis recovery and is likely to create additional environmental impacts.

• Training should be targeted at women in terms of accessing appropriate nutrition, but also targeted at men whose activities impact underlying drivers of nutrition such as land clearance, agriculture, mining, solid waste management, access to sanitation, and clean water.
• People who are most vulnerable should be prioritised for assistance.

Air pollution
Soil pollution
Water pollution
Deforestation
Desertification

Environmental drivers of malnutrition include floods, drought, over intensive farming and land clearance, pollution, disease, climate change and conflict over natural resources; as well as lack of effective sanitation, clean water and good practice hygiene.

Nutrition projects can have negative impacts on the environment:

• Potentially increased vulnerability to environmental hazards
• Diminished provisioning capacity of local ecosystems
• Public health risks from pollution from waste
• Unsustainable nutrition activities, exacerbating existing or creating new environmental impacts
• Loss of natural resources and biodiversity impeding recovery and diminishing community resilience
• Deforestation, and water and soil degradation.

There are environmental drivers that contribute to malnutrition. These include floods, drought, over-intensive farming, land clearance, pollution, disease, climate change, and conflict over natural resources. Malnutrition is also often exacerbated, or sometimes caused by lack of effective sanitation, lack of access to good quality clean water, and poor hygiene practices, all of which result in disease spread and diarrhoea, worms, or other water-borne disease-related sicknesses.

Poorly planned nutrition projects can have negative impacts on the environment including potentially increased vulnerability to environmental hazards, through allowing the root causes to continue or grow; diminished provisioning capacity of local ecosystems through solid waste pollution or leaving unsustainable natural resource consumption unaddressed; public health risks from pollution from dumped solid waste; unsustainable nutrition activities, exacerbating existing or creating new environmental impacts; loss natural resources and biodiversity impeding recovery and diminishing community resilience; deforestation, and water and soil degradation.

• Provide training in understanding and achieving good nutrition, followed by understanding and addressing the root causes of malnutrition, including environmental drivers. Provide support in growing nutritious and diverse food, and in food preparation, cooking, and cultural acceptance.
• Train in increasing local water resources; flood prevention; sustainable farming; stopping harmful land clearance; reducing solid waste pollution and disease spread; resilience to climate change impacts; effective sanitation; accessing clean water; good hygiene practices including food hygiene and storage; and therefore disease prevention.

• Affected populations should be supported in understanding and achieving good nutrition, and as they recover they should also be supported in understanding and addressing the root causes of malnutrition. This should include understanding and addressing environmental drivers of malnutrition.
• Support communities in understanding nutritional requirements and sources from locally produced food and from markets. Provide support in growing nutritious and diverse food, and in food preparation, cooking, and cultural acceptance.

An NGO working with rural communities in Uganda supported them in growing flood and drought-resilient root crops. However, uptake was low as people were hesitant to change their diets. This NGO changed its approach and supported farmers in exporting these crops as cash crops in local towns. As sales grew, the rural communities started adapting their diet to include these now increasingly familiar crops.

The number of targeted, contextualised nutrition training courses delivered that include addressing the underlying drivers of malnutrition, including environmental drivers.

• Prevention of environmental damage
• Mitigation of environmental damage

Time and budget to consult communities, assess their nutritional status, behaviours and underlying drivers of malnutrition and develop and deliver training.