Читать книгу Hidden Hunger: Strategies to Improve Nutrition Quality - Группа авторов - Страница 24

It is a complex task. Therefore, you need partners to move forward. Before describing more concretely the role of public partners, let me discuss a bit more in detail, who the partners are and what talking about a multi-actor approach actually means. It does not mean that all the partners have to do everything together. The roadmap to success rather asks us to identify different tasks and to attribute specific responsibilities to different partners. And at the same time – and this is the essence of a multi-actor approach – the roadmap to success asks us to create platforms which encourage dialogue and stimulate innovative energies that derive from this exchange among different actors at equal levels.

The actors are manifold. Among them are producers, processors, and trading companies acting individually or as a group, each of them looking at the issue from their point of view and following their own interests. There are consumers, too, also acting either as individuals or as a group. There are scientists from different academic sectors. And there are extension and field services, teachers, social and medical services.

All these actors must be committed to a continued, coherent, and sustainable action on local, regional, country, and/or global level. Of course, public partners are also involved as well as states, regions and their administrations, supranational and international organizations. However, they are not just another part of this big puzzle of actors involved. Their task is different. It is up to them to lay down the basic legal rules, aiming at a level playing field for the fruitful cooperation of all actors.

It is up to countries and regions to establish the rules to comply with and which solve conflicts of interest, establish standards for cooperation and conduct, ensure the transparency of processes, as well as equal treatment and representation and look for the appropriate discussion of the various different aspects. It is up to the public partners to stimulate and moderate the trans-sectorial and multi-disciplinary action to improve the nutritional standard of people in a given area.

This does not mean that the public partners should dominate the process in a top-down manner. Public partners will never be suited to do so, as they will never know better and already ex ante what needs to be done. Public partners need input from other actors. They need to understand and they need to get the large picture, empowering them to play this stimulating, moderating, and facilitating role with the necessary authority.