T

he year 2015 is a big year for nutrition in Indonesia. Many of the children who were born during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 will be graduating from high school and some will be enrolling in university.

This cohort is likely to do less well in school and university than those born when the worst effects of the crisis had passed, say in 2002. Why? They will do less well because the crisis affected them during their most vulnerable period '€” during their time in the womb and up to their second birthday.

Why were they so vulnerable to shocks at that time? All our human hardware and software is laid down at that time '€” the fundamental, once-in-a-lifetime, systems such as immunity and brain development '€” any disruption reverberates throughout the life cycle and, if unchecked, crosses generations to our children and grandchildren.

The Asian Financial Crisis, although devastating, came and went. Indonesia is becoming an economic powerhouse in the region and the world. In contrast, the silent crisis of malnutrition in Indonesia carries on, corroding and damaging human hardware and software and acting as a brake on economic growth that could be as extraordinary as China'€™s.

Consider the first Global Nutrition Report, just launched on Feb. 9. Using data from WHO and UNICEF provided by the Indonesian government the report found the following:

Worldwide, malnutrition is implicated in 45 percent of the deaths of children under the age of 5, 37 percent of Indonesians under 5 are stunted, more than 5 percent are wasted (low weight for height), and 12 percent are overweight.

The trends are not encouraging: stunting rates have remained unchanged for the last six years.

Indonesia is not on course to meet the 2025 targets for any of the four UN health goals: under 5-stunting, wasting, overweight and women'€™s anemia

Indonesia is one of only 17 countries (out of 117) with serious public-health problems concerned with under-5 stunting, wasting and overweight. Fewer than half of children under 5 are growing healthily.

So doesn'€™t economic growth automatically take care of malnutrition? It does not. First, economic growth is highly uneven in a geographic sense and by income group and while these disparities are significant, they may not be the constraining factor '€” witness the declines in poverty throughout the country in the past few years.

Second, even if income growth was broad-based, malnutrition is determined by much more than money. Families have to be able to buy healthy food at affordable prices. Mothers need the time and support to breastfeed children early and exclusively for the first six months of their life.

Water and sanitation services need to be clean enough that they do not make children sick all the time, so they can absorb the nutrients they do ingest.

Health systems need to be available and of good enough quality to do the basics '€” provide antenatal health services, deliver babies safely, prevent infection through immunization, provide vitamin and mineral supplements and treat infection when it occurs. The above report suggests that the health system is a particular weak spot for Indonesia.

But as incomes increase, tastes can change, more food is purchased away from the home and more fast food joints spring up. Consumption of foods high in salt, sugar and fats is increasing rapidly in Indonesia. Authorities must make it easier for families to make healthy choices if Indonesia is to avoid becoming the overweight and obesity capital of Southeast Asia.

There are already interventions that have proven effective throughout the world. Their impact needs to be scaled up. Safety nets and agriculture need to be more nutrition sensitive. The policy environment needs to be enabling.

The government is clearly committed to reducing malnutrition. It is an active member of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, it is a signatory of the Nutrition for Growth set of commitments in 2013 and the Global Nutrition Report assesses these commitments to be largely on track. But nutrition needs to move to the center stage of the economic debate.

The report found that nutrition was rarely mentioned in any of Indonesia'€™s key economic-policy documents. This is a real missed opportunity. The report estimates the benefit of investing one rupiah in SUN interventions. For Indonesia, the benefits to the individual from preventing stunting are astonishing: 48 rupiah in benefits flow from that one rupiah investment. A cost-benefit ratio of 48. Over a 30-year period that performance is three times better than the performance of the US stock market.

Indonesia has the potential to be one of the world'€™s most powerful nations. But until it addresses malnutrition this will always be its Achilles Heel. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the next best time is now.

The babies and infants we can prevent from becoming stunted now will grow up to be even more productive members of the workforce in 20 years time.

For Indonesia this is a critical generational window because in 20 years the ratio of the numbers of people of working age to those of non-working age will peak.

This demographic transition is optimistically referred to as a demographic '€œdividend'€. Investing in nutrition will help this demographic dividend to materialize and, more importantly, will help young children survive their fifth birthday. It'€™s time to plant that tree.