4.2, on the second point, the list of sectors expected to be included does not include education. Wouldn't that be essential? Schools have been an important entry point for improving nutrition, and similarly understanding of and willingness to do something about climate change.
4.2, in general I wondered if there's some need here to add in a call for resources for the national actors to engage in the regional/global interfaces and, for example, to be able to work with the UNFSS Hub. This may be elsehwere in the doc, I was reading selectively, but it seems an important issue to enable national actors to be able to liaise between the national and international fora.
4.2 another missing issue is ensuring the incentives are there inside the national government to make use of the evidence and opportunity that SPIs provide. National bureaucrats assigned to participate without clear evidence of higher level political will have little incentive to make effort, prioritize, or engage. This seems like a risk that deserves at least mention in this section, though again it may be treated elsewhere.
I agree with your points throughout that the governance and decision-making structure and authority of the SPI matters so much. I didn't see much examples from multisectoral nutrition platforms, but these are another great example and have several cases where they worked really well and others where they were there but not paritcularly effective or lacked sufficient support to be effective. Learning from these efforts seems important and is a gap in the current draft that should be addressed with something like another box. SUN probably has a great list of examples (good and less good) that you could draw from.
5.1 - there needs to be a person or group who are funded and can make it their job (full-time if warranted, or enough of their part-time as successful implementation demands) and a clear decision-making structure (addressed throughout but cannot be emphasized enough).
5.1 - not all these actions need to be carried out "in house" - there could be a lot of efficiency gains from countries/sub-national jurisdictions having access to an analysis shop whose job is to support with the necessary data, analytics and research - something like applied policy research firms contract by the SPI or the government or even an international capacity hub that serves countries. These may exist, but just thinkint about relevant experiences and where the gaps may be in this guidance depending on context.
Throughout it seems important to pay attention to the risk of elite capture of the SPI mechanism. Engagement with communities at a very local level needs a way to be part / feed up their priorities, issues, and concerns, etc.
Dr. Kate Schneider