Research Priorities for Enabling Healthy, Sustainable and Affordable Diets in Hanoi City Region

The transition of city region diets to diets that are more sustainable, healthy and affordable is critically important for environmental, health and food security outcomes. The EcoFoodSystems project aims to work with city-regional stakeholders to identify key needs and priorities for dietary transitions in Hanoi city region that can be enabled by research and innovation. To identify the research needs and priorities of Hanoi city region food systems stakeholders, an EcoFoodSystems Project Research Prioritisation Workshop was held on 24th January 2024 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The workshop introduced food systems stakeholders in the Hanoi city region to the EcoFoodSystems research project and to enable stakeholders to co-create and prioritise research and innovation activities that could be advanced by EcoFoodSystems research project. The EcoFoodSystems workshop brought together sixty participants from diverse sectors and stakeholder organisations, including Government Ministries, UN Agencies, private sector companies, farmer cooperatives, university and research institutes, national and international NGOs and civil society. The workshop attendees shared their expertise in areas spanning nutrition, food systems, policy, consumer safety, climate resilience and urban and peri-urban development. Participants worked together in groups to identify and prioritise research topics and tools for decision-making that should be developed to enable transitions towards diets in Hanoi city region that are more sustainable, healthier and affordable. The workshop had opening speeches from representatives of the EU Delegation to Vietnam, the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS), Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Institute of Nutrition (Vietnam) and representatives of the EcoFoodSystems project from University of Galway, Rikolto and the Alliance of Bioversity – CIAT. The workshop highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral research collaboration for food systems transformation for sustainability, health and affordability outcomes. This EcoFoodSystems workshop report identifies the key research priorities generated by stakeholders during the workshop.