Landscape Assessment On Global Monitoring Of Diet Quality

Monitoring of dietary intake at national and global levels is becoming increasingly important with the changing food systems and diets. Better measurement and monitoring are needed to support governments in establishing policies and programmes to promote healthy diets and assess the effectiveness of these actions. However, there is lack of consensus on the indicators that best capture the properties of healthy diets. Recognizing the need for consensus and action, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Health Organization (WHO), have joined forces to chart a way forward via Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative (HDMI). This is the first version of the guidance for monitoring healthy diets globally, which provides an overview of healthy diets measurement purposes, types of surveys suitable for the monitoring purpose, appropriate dietary assessment methods, relevant dietary data types and potential healthy diet metrics for national and global monitoring purposes. The guidance will be enhanced in the coming years to reflect the most up to date technical and operational recommendations, after rounds of consultations with countries and experts actively engaged in the implementation of surveys and data collection processes.

This report scientifically assesses the validity, usefulness, and fitness-for-purpose of existing healthy diet metrics for population assessment for global and national monitoring. Existing healthy diet metrics were identified and critically assessed through a set of criteria for their use as global and national monitoring indicators. After comparative evaluation, three healthy diet metrics were identified as the most suitable for global and national monitoring. The report highlights strengths and weaknesses for the existing healthy diet indicators. Some may be suitable for simple data collection tools and short data collection time while other indicators may require complex quantitative dietary information, lengthy data collection time, and might need to confirm the validity in various contexts. Some of them may only capture a limited number of the sub-constructs of the construct of healthy diets. The report underlines main knowledge gap regarding the population groups for which the metrics could be used – whether these indicators were developed for a particular demographic and/or socioeconomic groups and their ability to be used for other population groups. The report also identifies key priority areas to further explore how these indicators could be used for more population groups and settings.

This meeting report is an outcome of the WHO-UNICEF Technical Expert Advisory Group on Nutrition Monitoring (TEAM), which was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal of the consultation was to promote increased communication, coordination and collaboration for the purpose of accelerating progress towards identifying or developing a parsimonious set of metrics for global monitoring of healthy diets for individuals over 2 years of age. Eighty-five participants took part in the consultation, representing a wide range of institutions and roles in the data value chain.

The purpose of this report is to assess the current implementation of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) in Africa. It presents the context for FLR on the African continent, highlights major FLR initiatives, and provides an overview of FLR in Africa at the start of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). It identifies key challenges, opportunities, actors and processes, illustrated with some case studies. Data collection was both primary (interviews) and secondary (extensive desk research). The report contributes to tracking progress on the implementation of AFR100 and other FLR initiatives in Africa on the ground. It provides a baseline for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and is expected to be updated at regular intervals. The report is prepared under the jointly implemented regional technical cooperation programme by FAO Regional Office for Africa (RAF) and the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) “Support to the implementation and monitoring of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100)” and in close collaboration with AFR100 Management Team members and partners. It is also responding to the recommendation of the 22nd Session of FAO African Forestry and Wildlife Commission1, held in March 2020 in South Africa. The report is structured as follows: Chapter 1 introduces the importance of Africa’s forests and tree-based landscapes and to the challenges they and their people face, as well as the relevance of restoration and the global policy context. The next chapter presents an overview of FLR and restoration more generally. The third chapter provides a more detailed overview for Africa’s subregions of the current status of forests with examples of FLR initiatives (or other relevant ones that may not have the FLR label but are in fact aligned with FLR). Chapter 4 then reviews some key success factors for FLR in Africa. Chapter 5 presents opportunities going forward and remaining challenges. The last chapter is more forward-looking and speculative, highlighting potential priorities for FLR in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

In recent years EU policy towards the ‘landscape’ has become better defined, whereas at the same time the notion of ‘landscape’ itself remains elusive. The need for indicators to evaluate and monitor the effects of landscape policies and plans is urgent. What is more, landscape is one of the components considered in environmental reporting, but unlike air, soil, or water, it is difficult to measure using quantitative methods. With studies on landscape indicators being as rare as they are, this volume is an attempt to fill the gap, dealing as it does with the definition and use of specific indicators for landscape assessment and monitoring. To tackle the diverse dimensions of the landscape (whose complexity is well known), the subject is approached by a multidisciplinary team of experts in landscape ecology, landscape history, landscape perception, regional planning, strategic environmental assessment and environmental impact assessment procedures, and multi-criteria assessment methods. Individual chapters include comparative assessments of studies conducted thus far in the EU, as well as detailed analyses of ecological, historical, perceptive, land-use, and economic ways of looking at landscape. As well as providing a rich source of references for researchers studying the landscape from a variety of perspectives, the book will be required reading for European officials involved at any level in planning or assessing the landscape or environment.

Air pollution originating from rapid industrialization, urbanization, population growth and economic development has disturbed the urban ecosystems of ecologically sensitive regions like the Indo-Burma hot spot, and they are under severe air pollution stress with limited resources to collect data on what is happening. Air pollutants comprised of both particulate matter (PM) and gaseous pollutants may cause adverse health effects in human, affect plant life and impact the global environment by changing the atmosphere of the earth. It is now well established that urban PM may also contain magnetic particles along with other air pollutants. Biomonitoring of PM through magnetic properties, known as biomagnetic monitoring, measures the magnetic parameters of dust loaded plant leaves, giving a new opportunity to monitor. Compared to existing conventional technologies, biomagnetic monitoring is an eco-friendly technique perfect in urban areas. Biomagnetic Monitoring of Particulate Matter reviews the issues with PM and the potential of these methods to on tropical vegetation on a variety of flora which represent the biodiversity of the Indo-Burma Hot Spot. Bio-magnetic Monitoring of Particulate Matter gives a comprehensive overview of the issue of particulate pollution and monitoring Cases of magnetic biomonitoring across different environments are included to demonstrate this emerging technique as a way to measure particulate pollution Coverage includes a comparison to other techniques as well as why it works well ecological diverse developing areas which are data scarce, like the Indo-Burma Hot Spot A review of the detrimental health impacts of Particulate Matter reinforces the importance for this type of data to be available universally