Healthy diet

• Diet plays a critical role in shaping the health and well-being of both individuals and populations, and unhealthy diets are a major risk factor for disease and disability.
• Healthy diets help to protect against malnutrition in all its forms, as well as noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
• Healthy dietary practices start early in life – breastfeeding fosters healthy growth and improves cognitive development.
• Dietary behaviours and preferences established in childhood and adolescence often extend into adulthood.
• Healthy diets come in many forms, but the four core principles of adequacy, balance, moderation and diversity should be the foundation of any healthy diet.
• A diet must also be safe to be healthy, i.e. free from microbial and chemical contaminants.
• A variety of minimally processed and unprocessed foods low in unhealthy fats, free sugars and sodium are the foundation of any healthy diet.

The fund was agreed in principle at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022, a moment widely described as a breakthrough after roughly three decades of developing countries pushing for exactly this kind of mechanism. Wealthy nations had long resisted the idea, worried that creating such a fund would be read as an admission of legal liability for climate damage.

It took another year of negotiation through a Transitional Committee before COP28 in Dubai in 2023 produced an agreement on how the fund would actually be structured, governed and staffed. The board held its first meetings through 2024, appointed Ibrahima Cheikh Diong as its inaugural executive director for a four year term beginning that November, and only began accepting funding requests from countries in December 2025. In effect, three years passed between the fund being announced and its first call for applications actually opening. https://english.nepalnews.com/s/explainers/bhote-koshi-flood-can-nepal-get-compensation-from-the-un-backed-loss-and-damage-fund/