Multiple bridges connecting the water-nutrition divide: what’s new?

This was the question discussed by experts at a session during this year’s World Water Week. One message of the session was clear: water and nutrition security are closely intertwined—there is no nutrition security without water security and there is no water security without emphasizing the sustainability of water resources in food security and nutrition security strategies—as most water withdrawals are used within agriculture and primarily to produce food.

While water and nutrition are deeply interdependent, there remain significant knowledge gaps in understanding not only many of the linkages between water and nutrition security, but also the interlinkages across, say, climate change, water pollution and nutrition or across watershed degradation and nutrition outcomes, as documented in the WLE Research for Development brief.

Experts from the United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN),…