On World Food Day last year, the UN Secretary-General announced a Food Systems Summit to take place in 2021. When he nominated Dr. Agnes Kalibata as his Special Envoy for this Summit in December 2019, no one expected that a pandemic would bring public life to an abrupt halt. Despite the crisis, a small Secretariat team in Nairobi, Rome, New York, Geneva and Bonn was built.
Tasked to bring people together to for a “people’s summit”, the team has not had a single staff meeting in person to date. And yet, the Food Systems Summit is becoming a reality, not just as a point in time in September 2021, but as a year-long global engagement process to bring solutions to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals.
Indeed, a broad understanding is emerging that our food systems are a key factor in our environmental planetary emergency: food, as a system, is a massive contributor to global heating, the number one killer of biodiversity, the biggest reason for land use change and the largest consumer of freshwater. The discussions in the , in the and soon in countries with the Food Systems Summit Dialogues will show these ignored tradeoffs and unaccounted costs.
But, most importantly, our food systems are exposing the profound inequalities and injustices in our global society. and are suffering from the consequences of hunger or malnutrition. Vulnerability to the pandemic is but one example of the sufferings of a staggering 40 per cent of the planet’s population.
The number of hungry people on this planet started – after years of decrease – to go up again even before the pandemic. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the World Food Programme has highlighted the direct connections between political instability and food insecurity. This inequality will only become worse as we are suffering through a global pandemic. The aftermath of the pandemic will see livelihoods destroyed and the number of hungry and malnourished people worldwide soaring. It will be, again, the most vulnerable who will pay the biggest toll.
With the ever-increasing impacts on climate change on the very people who contributed least to the problem – smallholder farmers – the last decade has made climate justice a key topic. First driven by committed young people on the streets who did not want to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of others, the recognition of climate change and indeed all of environmental degradation being a question of ethics and solidarity has reached the world’s elites.
The Summit process is listening to the world’s most vulnerable. It is committed to build an empowering future in which those who suffer most today, can be the agents of change to build food security, resilience against climate and other shocks, and help a growing population to return to a safe operating space for humanity within planetary boundaries.
For that, we need to change perspectives, think in systems and in solidarity and, most of all, we need to build trust. We must not shy away from honest and often difficult discussions to build solutions together. Now is the time to get involved as we progress the work to look for game-changing ideas from everyone – everywhere. You can visit the recently launched online , a highly collaborative space to guide the science, solutions, concepts and outcomes of the Summit. The platform is open to anyone with in interest in food systems at all levels, and will be a key entry point for stakeholder engagement on defining the solutions.
More specifically, have your say via these online surveys:
The very promise of the Sustainable Development Goals is a fair and sustainable world in which no one is left behind. Our food systems do have the potential to transform our global reality, but everyone and everything must change. We hope you will get involved and have your voice heard.
