A decade ago, the governance of the international nutrition system was found to be ‘fragmented and dysfunctional’ in one of several reviews in the seminal The Lancet Nutrition Series (Morris et al., 2008). A lot has happened since then, with global political attention to nutrition being greater now than at any time since the World Food Conference held by the United Nations in Rome in 1974.
This chapter first reviews the relationship between governance systems and processes (at various levels) and the nutrition sensitivity of agri-food systems, before reviewing the role of leadership in orienting such systems toward nutrition goals.