A new report by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) reveals the crucial role the world’s drylands play in buffering the negative impacts of climate change, land degradation and drought. Drylands are absolutely key to global food security for the whole planet.

More and more people are becoming overweight and obese, with increasing diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Behind the global shifts in malnutrition and NCDs are unhealthy diets and a sedentary lifestyle. Our food systems and the food environments are not delivering on the diets needed to promote and sustain optimum health.

Egypt faces two nutritional challenges. The first is the “growth-nutrition disconnect.” High economic growth has not been accompanied by reduction in chronic child malnutrition, at least throughout the 2000s. Instead, the prevalence of child stunting increased during this decade—an atypical trend for a country outside wartime.

A major independent report emphasises that the Government of Bangladesh and its partners must rally to end hunger and improve nutrition to sustain the country’s remarkable economic trajectory.

Lesotho is losing 1.9 billion Maloti (US$200 million) a year to the effects of child undernutrition, according to a new, country-specific Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) study released. This amounts to more than 7 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Focusing the 2015 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) on nutrition will contribute to a broader understanding of the critical role of nutrition in achieving international, continental, and national economic growth targets through agriculture, food security, and nutrition.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development and the International Food Policy Research Institute joined forces to estimate what it would cost to end hunger, and the contribution that donors need to make.