The emerging variant is causing further uncertainty, prolonging the economic impact of the pandemic and possibly affecting overall global growth for years to come. While business-as-usual is no longer a choice when addressing climate and sustainability, the world also needs to ready itself for future pandemics.

Taking charge of the Group of 20 presidency this month, Indonesia has the chance to be a leading light on the world stage when it comes to the vital and interlocking issues of climate, health, nutrition, rural development, forests, nature and land use. All these issues revolve around the choices made by Indonesia and the world as to how food is produced, processed, distributed and consumed.

The G20 presidency of Indonesia has already set out some of the key elements of its plans on climate, the environment and agriculture in a series of position papers. These include a welcome focus on the need for climate action with international support for the just transition and the need to ensure greater food system resilience in the face of a changing climate. 

The Indonesian presidency has also made an important case for more intense global action to address food insecurity, noting the negative impacts and long-lasting scarring effects that COVID-19 and the subsequent economic downturns have had on hunger and malnutrition worldwide.

Decisive domestic action is always a powerful way of displaying global leadership, and in 2022, Indonesia has the opportunity to show the world how to make significant progress in these areas. Recent reports (including World Food Program, 2021; World Bank, 2021; Agustina et al 2019) have shown Indonesia’s substantial progress over the last decade in reducing poverty and improving health indicators.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic is turning back the clock. We speak of the lost decade of growth for most emerging nations, and Indonesia faces serious challenges in food security and nutrition, with persistent regional disparities in the availability and affordability of nutritious foods (WFP, 2021). This makes it harder than ever to address the triple burden of malnutrition, leading to persistent and high child stunting and wasting rates, to high micronutrient deficiencies in the wider population and rapidly increasing obesity.

To improve access to nutritious foods for all, especially those most vulnerable to malnutrition, such as infants, young children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, and the elderly, food system transformation is essential. This means doing a better job of linking choices in agriculture and land use to health and climate change, with food as the common denominator. Many reports, including those from the Food and Land Use Coalition platform in Indonesia, point the way forward, including through the following recommendations and reflections:

First, focus safety net programs more clearly on producing, processing and consuming nutritious food in environmentally sustainable ways. Indonesia is a leader in safety net design, including shock responsive safety nets, and now is the time to show the rest of the world how safety nets can also be catalysts for food system transformation and resilience.

Simultaneously, it is necessary to mainstream the principle of a healthy diet and to invest in promotive and preventive actions to improve nutrition knowledge and practice through innovative social and behavior change communication strategies.

Second, Indonesian farmers have been negatively affected by the pandemic and the downturn, while at the same time, immensely creative in creating new business models that convey food to urban populations through digitally enabled short supply chains and local loops and linkages.

The government could increase its support of smallholder farmers to produce healthier and more sustainable food for the population (WFP, 2021) and to get it to market with less loss and waste, reducing costs and environmental losses. Procurement policy, research and development spending, real-time data and improved infrastructure could all greatly help build resilience, reduce costs and deliver better outcomes for people and the planet.

Third, actions under the first two points should not come at the expense of efforts to protect and restore Indonesia’s remarkable and unique ecosystems. We believe there should be no trade-off between producing the food needed for the population and enabling the protection and restoration of critical forests and ecosystems. In fact, realizing the synergies between the two is essential for meeting Indonesia’s ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and Agricultural, Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) sector plans for 2030. 

We trust that decision-makers across the government can support this synergistic approach, including in the context of current decisions about the review of concession licenses.

Fourth, we welcome the growing attention to environmental and social governance (ESG) standards as increasingly important signposts for purposeful investment, but we note that ESG standards are silent on health and nutrition. Efforts to build these dimensions into ESG metrics by the True Value of Food Initiative and the Nutritious Food Financing Facility from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition are helpful here. Here is another area where big payoffs to an integrated multisectoral approach can be found.

Fifth, at the global level, we encourage the G20 forum to develop a tangible proposal to address the huge public financing gaps in many middle and low-income countries. Furthermore, the forum needs to come up with incentives to intensify the participation of the global financial sector in food systems transformation.

Investment vehicles such as the &Green Fund are financing commercial projects in Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia, demonstrating the value and potential of a blended finance approach to transform the FOLU sector.

&Green (backed by European government donors, development finance and large corporates) has invested more than US$50 million in the past two years into the agriculture sector in Indonesia alone, supporting sustainable deforestation-free and inclusive economic growth. &Green’s pipeline in Indonesia alone suggests there is significant scope for further blended finance investment and other actors, such as international impact investors, the Indonesian Investment Authority (INA), regional multilaterals and others, noting a growing number of global banks and institutional investors should also look to engage in the sector.

In summary, Indonesia could lead and be a model for the transformation of food systems at home and globally, delivering improved human, as well as planetary health at the same time. We believe there is a better way, and Indonesia is well placed to develop and implement it.

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Felia Salim is a member of the board of directors of Indonesia Eximbank, the &Green Fund and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). Rina Agustina is chair of the Human Nutrition Research Center (IMERI) and lecturer at the University of Indonesia School of Medicine's nutrition department, as well as a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission. Their views are expressed as ambassadors to the Food and Land Use Coalition.