This speech focuses on addressing poor nutrition, with a specific focus on stunting. It states that the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus recommended priorities for confronting the top ten global challenges, ranking the provision of young children with micronutrients as the most cost-effective way to advance global welfare. The author urges governments to invest in programmes to prevent stunting or risk diminishing the impact of other investments in education, health and child protection. It suggests that governments, international agencies and non-governmental organisations should work together to improve their collective ability to implement, as well as monitor, the results that these programmes are achieving, identify the barriers to progress and coordinate efforts to overcome them. This, in turn, maximises the effectiveness of aid dollars and budget allocations at a time when economic adversity makes every dollar count more than ever. Making nutrition a global priority and stunting a thing of the past is a cost-effective opportunity for a big global development win – an opportunity that nobody can afford to lose.