Transcript
BAKHODIR BURKHANOV - His ultimate role is to promote sustainable development specifically focusing on the food systems. I think we should mention here that the food systems play a key role on both human health and the health of the planet. Healthier diets have the potential to reduce both the burden of non-communicable diseases as well as emissions that cause climate change, while at the same time creating sustainable jobs locally, so his involvement in media, culture and social entrepreneurship, Robert can help us focus public's attention on transforming the food landscape.
SELA JANE HOPGOOD - Could you explain why this role was established?
BB - Robert has been our collaborator for many years. He's advised a number of our projects on the ground, working on local entrepreneurship development, engaging rural youth and women, linking them to business opportunities in Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu. His works link to our other initiatives in private sector development, sustainable growth and our policy work on engaging non-health sector in better addressing socio-economic determinant of health. By leveraging his influence, particularly in the food and media space around the region, we believe that he can help us shine a spotlight on the links between these social, economic, environmental damage of sustainable development particularly the linkages that exist within different sustainable development calls. As you may know the SDG agenda is incredibly interconnected. There are lots of linkages between addressing poverty for example, which is SDG1 and good health and wellbeing, which is SDG3 between sustainable citizen communities goal number eleven and responsible consumption and production, which is goal number twelve, so he is going to be the connector that will bring all of these different pieces together in a coherent strategy.
SJH - Just following up from that, how important is it to have someone guide people in the Pacific?
BB - Well that's actually a very important and complex question and one that we've been thinking about a lot in the U.N system. On the one hand, availability of information and knowledge on what essentially constitutes a healthier lifestyle is not optimum, but we reckon that it's not the main problem. There is in fact a lot of people out there who desire to be in better health, but the means, the ability and the environment to do so are lacking. This is not a uniquely Pacific island issue, but the situation in our region is a bit more acute and complex with NCDs, the non-communicable diseases having reached the crisis level. We believe that fundamentally the issues about the economics, surveys after survey show that determinants of food choices are number one, cost. Two, availability and three, convenience. People especially the poor have very limited access to healthy diets. They basically cannot make healthy choices because cost largely determines their choices and we see a dominance on the shelves of hyper process, very cheap, very convenient and heavily marketed food products such as noodles, tinned meats and sugary drinks that have essentially long displaced local produce food items, which are comparatively more expensive, less available and more difficult to store, so it's not really about telling people what to do and guiding them. I think there's a lot of information about it and increasing number of partners really conscious and working on it, but it's about creating opportunities and making healthy food choices more affordable and accessible.
