ABSTRACT
In the last quarter century, the international development environment surrounding food and nutrition programming has profoundly changed. Transformations which began during the last half of the Cold War (1974–89) became clear in the seven years after it ended. By 1996 a new development era had emerged, characterized by a wider consensus on universal human rights, increased power of civil society, increased role of market economics, and lessened official development assistance. These transformations were accompanied by increased civil conflict and political instability. Combined with other aspects of globalization, the accelerating growth in communications and information technologies, these changes have reshaped the institutional environment affecting food and nutrition problems and the ways the development summit thinks about them and seeks to solve them. This chapter describes how the practice of nutrition intended for grassroots communities must respond within the new development environment: How those at the development summit might scale down assistance to best assist those who are seeking sustainable nutrition security for themselves in the twenty-first century.
