Malnutrition is undermining development – ending it requires cooperation

Good nutrition is foundational for human development. It’s essential to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 (zero hunger) and 12 more of the 17 SDGs. Conversely, if we neglect it, the evidence is clear: we erode human capital and wellbeing both now and in the future, as the impact of poor nutrition is intergenerational.

Nutrition – especially during pregnancy and the first years of life – shapes human capital, fuels economic growth, and plays an important role in future-proofing societies against the impact of global challenges, from climate shocks to conflict. Malnutrition, in all its forms, has the opposite effect: stunting children’s physical and cognitive development, deepening inequality, and – in the worst case – undermining stability and fueling conflict.

The evidence is stark. The World Health Organization reports that anemia, affecting nearly one-third of women of reproductive age, impairs learning, productivity, and quality of life. The World Bank estimates show that just a 1% loss in adult height due to childhood stunting (low height for age) is linked to 20% lower earnings later in life. Childhood obesity – on the rise globally – affects school performance, increases the risk of early-onset chronic diseases, and shortens lives.

Yet in 2025, despite decades of progress (mostly on breastfeeding targets) and an increasing evidence base linking good nutrition with better health and socio-economic outcomes, hundreds of millions of people are experiencing malnutrition. The numbers should shock us. Globally, 150 million children under five are stunted, and 43 million are wasted (low weight for their height). Many face catastrophic levels of malnutrition. In 2024, over 295 million people in 53 countries and territories experienced acute malnutrition, an increase of almost 14 million from 2023.

In fragile states where climate change, conflict, and economic instability come together to create persistent crises of food insecurity, malnutrition is most severe and most overlooked. Interventions here are geared toward the management of acute malnutrition, with insufficient focus on prevention, driven largely by the firewall between humanitarian and development interventions. A review of humanitarian spending over the last eight years shows:

• only 12% of humanitarian food-sector aid has gone to nutrition
• just 10% of development food-sector funding (itself only 3% of total development spending) has gone to nutrition

This shows how interventions are saving lives, but the medium and longer-term impact of malnutrition on individuals, communities, and countries goes untreated.

Overweight and obesity are rising worldwide and are major drivers of disease. Nearly half of all adults globally are overweight or obese, along with 35.5 million children. Obesity greatly increases the risk of non-communicable diseases, which account for 74% of all deaths annually (41 million). Around 85% of these occur in low and middle-income countries, which are least equipped to manage the burden.

A significant driver of malnutrition is the dysfunction of our food systems. Globally, nutritious food is becoming less affordable, putting healthy diets increasingly out of reach for vulnerable communities. At every stage – production, storage, transportation, marketing, and retail – systemic issues limit access to nutritious diets. For example, ultra-processed, nutrient-poor foods are often cheaper and more accessible than fresh, healthy options. For a street vendor, a long-shelf-life packaged snack is a safer investment than produce that spoils in days. The result is a system skewed toward calories rather than nutrients. The crisis is compounded by misinformation. In an age where social media shapes diets more than public health campaigns, only 2% of nutrition content on platforms like TikTok is scientifically sound. Marketing of breast milk substitutes continues to undermine breastfeeding, despite overwhelming evidence of its benefits.

The evidence is there – but money and know-how often aren’t

We know what works. Evidence-based, “nutrition-specific” interventions like ready-to-use therapeutic foods, six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and micronutrient supplementation in pregnancy are tested and proven examples of interventions that save lives and build healthy populations.

We need to work better together across sectors. Integration of nutrition into other sectors is key. Nutrition-sensitive policies across agriculture, health, education, and social protection – when coordinated – could transform outcomes. For example, malnourished children are more likely to miss vaccines, and under-immunized children are more likely to be malnourished. Yet nutrition and immunization services are still delivered in silos. Closing the evidence gap on the benefits of joint delivery could unlock major efficiencies and save countless lives.

In general, however, more support needs to be in place for countries to identify and emulate best practice around nutrition integration. The “how” still needs unpacking, especially in relation to cross-cutting areas like climate – critical to long-term food and nutrition security. Here, more needs to happen to establish the co-benefits of linking climate and nutrition, and to identify practical program options, which remain too few on the ground.

The challenge is not always knowledge – it is also political will, scale, and money. Official development assistance (ODA) for nutrition is less than 1% of total aid – and it is shrinking. A projected 44% drop in aid to nutrition in 2025 could mean 2.3 million children losing access to treatment for severe acute malnutrition, resulting in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Some countries may be able to make up for ODA cuts through increases in domestic spending and by accessing other financing. Again, the fragile states, those most in need, often lack the fiscal space to increase domestic financing and do not meet the criteria for lending.

But overall, investing in nutrition remains one of the world’s best development buys – because it drives progress across many of the SDGs. Investing in nutrition offers substantial returns, with World Bank projections showing an estimated USD 2.4 trillion in economic benefits over a decade from scaling up interventions, and a return of USD 23 for every USD 1 invested in reducing undernutrition. Compare this with the costs of neglect: the total economic impact of malnutrition – undernutrition, overweight, and obesity – is estimated to be as high as USD 3.5 trillion per year. The longer the neglect, the greater the impact on nutrition, health, education, productivity, and resilience.

In a world of competing and dwindling resources, we need to work together to keep nutrition high on global, regional, and national agendas. To end on a positive note, the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris (March 2025) was a success in several ways. It:

• secured USD 29 billion in nutrition commitments
• gained support for nutrition integration through a compact between 80 countries and organizations
• brought philanthropies to the table at a time of declining ODA
• reinvigorated the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement as a strong multi-stakeholder convening platform

The challenge is to turn these commitments into action on the ground and sustain the momentum created by N4G. As a nutrition community, we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to work with other sectors and stakeholders to build the evidence and show how cross-sector collaboration delivers shared benefits. A win for nutrition can be a win for climate change. A win for health can be a win for nutrition, and for education too.

At a time of declining aid, outright famine, and increasing levels of malnutrition and health crises, cooperation – not competition – is the key to progress. We need to broaden the tent of stakeholders, bringing in new financiers and the private sector, while elevating country voices, if we are to rise to the challenge.