16/09/2021
Christiane Grefe - Zeit
Im Jahr 2015 machten alle Regierungen der Welt gemeinsam ein großes politisches Versprechen. Sie einigten sich auf das Nachhaltigkeitsziel "Null Hunger bis 2030". An dieser Aufgabe droht die Staatengemeinschaft zu scheitern.
15/09/2021
La Via Campesina
A virtual event to elevate voices and concerns of food providers marginalized by the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) process. The People’s Kitchen Counter-Mobilization: Food System Take-Back is a half-day virtual event, hosted by The People’s Forum NYC, and will feature speakers from Africa to North America in separate conversations laying out their visions for a food system based on agroecology and food sovereignty. Intermissions will feature cultural events from organizations based around North America.
14/09/2021
Jomo Kwame Sundaram - IPS News
Timely interventions by civil society, including concerned scientists, have prevented many likely abuses of next week’s UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The Secretary General (UNSG) must now prevent UN endorsement of what remains of its prime movers’ corporate agenda.Summit threatThe narrative on food challenges has changed in recent years. Instead of the ‘right to food’, ‘food security’, ‘eliminating hunger and malnutrition’, ‘sustainable agriculture’, etc, neutral sounding ‘systems’ solutions are being touted. These will advance transnational corporations’ influence, interests and profits.
September 2021
Action Aid USA
Increasingly, grassroots movements and frontline communities from North America are joining the global fight for agroecology and food sovereignty, bringing local struggles into global policy spaces and confronting the US and Canadian governments for failing to ensure the right to food.
Swissaid
In the run-up to the UN Food Systems Summit in New York, SWISSAID spoke to six women farmers from the South and Switzerland. The aim was to give a voice to those women who work hard in the fields every day to feed people. The report, delivered personally to Christian Hofer, Director of the Federal Office for Agriculture, on the federal place on Tuesday 21th, tells the story of their daily challenges and highlights the importance of agroecology for their autonomy as women and as farmers.
Agroecology Now!
AgroecologyNow! works with partners in social movements, civil society, governments and research institutions to promote a transformative agroecology for food sovereignty and social justice: www.agroecologynow.comSee below for some highlights of our latest work and highlights from our networks, including free-to-download articles, videos and other resources.
13/09/2021
Margaret Flowers - Popularresistance.org
The World Economic Forum and Gates Foundation are convening a food summit through the United Nations on September 23. Global farmer, peasant and fishing coalitions have called a boycott of the summit for its pro-corporate agenda, refusal to include the human right to food and exclusion of the intergovernmental body, the Committee on World Food Security, that has created an inclusive and democratized international structure. Clearing the FOG speaks with Patti Naylor, a family farmer in Iowa who works on agroecology and food sovereignty.
10/09/2021
Inga Vesper - SciDev
Civil society organisations have called on influential donors to stop funding industrial agriculture programmes, which they say harm smallholder farmers and the environment.The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) — which represents 200 million small-scale food producers — along with 165 organisations from 40 countries, sent a letter Tuesday to donors of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and other ‘Green Revolution’ organisations, urging them to redirect their support to African-led agroecology and low-input farming systems.
IPES FOOD
We are writing with regard to this month's UN Food Systems Summit. Through this letter, we wish to convey our strongest concerns regarding the threat it poses to the role of science and knowledge in food system decision-making.It is our view that the foreseen outcomes of the Summit could critically undermine the ability of existing UN bodies to guide food system reform. Further, these outcomes threaten the ability of the UN system to maintain the trust and buy-in of many food system actors. These developments are therefore of major concern to us in our respective roles.
Rumbi Chakamba - Devex
An alliance of faith-based and civil society groups working for food sovereignty and sustainability in Africa called on donors to stop funding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and other programs that promote industrialized agriculture on the continent.The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa is the continent’s largest network of faith-based organizations and other civil society groups, representing more than 200 million farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and Indigenous peoples across Africa.
09/09/2021
AMIDA - AFSA
Long-time activists know all too well how the powers that be work to divide us to maintain their power base. They use coercion, ego stroking, and straight up misinformation to entice some of us to dance with them, while others see the devil for what he is. This time the devil, or shall we call him the wolf, comes dressed in sheep’s clothing. The wolf is the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Bank, an assortment of global and regional think tanks, and front men for Big Food and Big Pharma.
FIAN International & Growing Culture
After two years of preparations, the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is set to take place on September 23rd. The Summit states its goal as “setting the stage for global food systems transformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.” It sounds promising. But the Summit has been mired in controversy practically from its outset. We’ve broken down the most important questions and answers about the upcoming Summit to clarify exactly where the controversies lie and offer some ways to get involved in the response.
08/09/2021
Feeding your mind
Idag är var tionde människa i världen undernärd, samtidigt som var fjärde är överviktig. Det är långt kvar till att nå de globala Agenda 2030-målen som "ingen hunger" och "ingen fattigdom" - men tiden är knapp. Den 23 september 2021 samlas världens ledare till det digitala FN-toppmötet Food Systems Summit. Vad kan ett sådant toppmöte åstadkomma? Möt Lisa Sennerby Forsse, Sveriges enda representant i toppmötets vetenskapliga expertgrupp, kanslirådet Peter af Wetterstedt på Näringsdepartementet som inte ser toppmötet som ett slut utan som en början - och Carolina Rodriguez Gonzalez, en av de forskare i världen som väljer att bojkotta Food Systems Summit.
07/09/2021
Chiara Spadaro - Altra Economia
Al vertice sui sistemi alimentari delle Nazioni Unite del 23 settembre il ruolo dei governi appare secondario rispetto alle multinazionali. Dare priorità ai loro investimenti è rischioso perché mina le politiche pubbliche. Occorre coinvolgere i movimenti sociali. Intervista a Nora McKeon, storica ed ex funzionaria della FAO
06/09/2021
Global agriculture
The upcoming UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is not the people’s summit it claims to be because key elements such as human rights, equity and accountability are not on the agenda, according to a leading UN rights expert. The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, says that the summit turns a blind eye on root causes and governance issues linked to hunger and malnutrition and fails to address corporate concentration of power in food systems. In a policy brief entitled “Last chance to make the Food Systems Summit truly a people’s summit”, Fakhri shares his concerns that the “people’s summit” will fail the people it claims to be serving.
Nora McKeon - Development journal
This article helps lay a basis for the kind of deep analysis of the stakes of global food governance that is required today, under the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and with the threat of corporate capture of decision-making spaces. The article reviews the history of global food governance, identifies the critical questions that need to be asked, and suggests some directions that may contribute to strengthening the agency of rights-holders, weakening that of corporations, and democratizing multilateral governance.
03/09/2021
Esther Turnhout et al. - Policy Forum
Food systems require urgent transformations to meet multiple demands of food and nutrition security, justice, liveli hoods, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
01/09/2021
Nicholas Nisbett, Kent Buse, Jeff Collin, Lesli Hoey and Lucy Westerman (BMJ)
The pre-summit to September’s United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), held in Rome at the end of July 2021, confirmed the fears of a broad range of international actors that the UNFSS model allows for corporate capture of international policy on healthy and sustainable food systems. Coverage in the BBC Food Programme demonstrates that concerns have moved into the mainstream, despite the hopes of many that the UNFSS could still help fix a broken food system.
Nicoletta Dentico
Quando il segretario generale delle Nazioni Unite annunciò il proposito di organizzare un summit di alto livello dell’Onu sui sistemi alimentari, la notizia fu accolta con sorpresa, ma anche con molto interesse. Era il 16 ottobre 2019, giornata mondiale dell’alimentazione. Covid-19 non lo conosceva ancora nessuno, ma l’emergenza della fame nel mondo -in costante aumento dal 2014- era un fenomeno che già metteva a dura prova l’obiettivo “fame zero” della Agenda per lo sviluppo sostenibile.
30/08/2021
Stacey Malkan (US Right to Know)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $6 billion on agricultural development programs since 2002, with a key focus on expanding industrial agriculture in Africa. The foundation’s main program, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other inputs to grow commodity crops for the global market. Leading experts in food security and hundreds of groups around the world have raised concerns about the foundation’s agricultural development strategies for Africa.
26/08/2021
George-André Simon (ALAI)
On July 26-28 took place, in Rome, the UN Pre-summit on food systems. During this event, most of the participants repeatedly declared that food systems must be changed. However, so far, there has been no agreement on how to succeed in the best way and the general feeling from the discussion is one of confusion and disagreement
24/08/2021
Molly Anderson
The world is falling well short of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 2 (to end hunger) by 2030, and many fear the upcoming United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) will not deliver on its promise to get the world on track to genuinely transform the way food is produced, distributed and consumed.
20/08/2021
Cecelia Heffron, Shiney Varghese (IATP)
Starting on July 26, United Nations delegates and other stakeholders met in Rome for a Pre-Summit leading up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) scheduled to take place this September in New York. This could have been an opportunity for a step towards putting global food systems on a more sustainable and equitable path.
19/08/2021
Navdanya International
The Pre-Summit of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) taking place in Rome, as a preparative stage to the New York September Summit, is, as expected, going in the wrong direction. As many civil society members, as well as past and current Rapporteurs on the Right to Food, have denounced, this summit is yet another instrument to reinforce corporate control over food and agriculture, while attempting to restrain civil society’s role in global food governance.
08/08/2021
Cecilia Hefron
In August 2021, an alliance of African faith leaders delivered a powerful message to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Stop promoting failing and harmful high-input Green Revolution programs, such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
02/082021
Mark Dunlea (Hudson Mohawk Radio Network)
Civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ Organization have launched a global counter-mobilization against the UN Food Systems Summit. Qiana Mickie, a member of the Civil Society Mechanism coordinating committee, discusses the concern about corporate agribusiness domination and the need to hear from the voices of peasants, farmers, food and agriculture workers, consumers, etc. With Mark Dunlea for Hudson Mohawk Radio Network.
02/08/2021
Witness Radio
Science-policy interfaces consist of groups of experts who present the latest scientific thinking to governments to support them in making informed policies.
28/07/2021
Jaime Amorim/ Brasil de Fato
In the same year that La Vía Campesina celebrates 25 years of defining, building, and fighting for “food sovereignty,” the United Nations (UN) will convene a summit for heads of state, members of large businesses and private corporations, multinationals and agribusiness representatives to discuss food systems processes.
Leonardo van den Berg, Janneke Bruil, Sylvia Kay and Danny Wijnhoud
Het laatste VN-rapport over mondiale honger en ondervoeding kwam eerder deze maand uit. Door Covid-19 en een toenemende klimaatcrisis is het aantal personen met chronische honger in slechts één jaar tijd, tussen 2019 en 2020, met 118 miljoen toegenomen tot 768 miljoen.
July 2021
Agroecology Research Action
29/07/2021
Jyotsna Singh
The United Nations Food Systems Summit has become one of the most controversial events of this year due to corporate take over. Civil society activists came together during the pre-summit to register their protest
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
In July 2020, an alliance of five African and five German organizations published the study False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). It was the first study to scientifically assess the impacts of AGRA, an agricultural alliance registered in the United States and supported by numerous international organizations and governments in the Global North, along with some African governments.
Megan Rowling
People don't agree on much when it comes to food. But most think how we produce it isn't working for everyone on the planet, nor for crucial natural systems vital to food production, including soils, water and the climate.In response, an upcoming U.N. summit on food systems aims to curb damage to the environment and wildlife from what's on our plates, as well as tackle hunger made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate-heating emissions from agriculture and food waste.Preparations for September's event, due to take place in New York, have already brought together governments, farmers, indigenous people, businesses, U.N. agencies and others to discuss ways of making food production fitter for the future.
Slow Food Italy
Oltre 300 organizzazioni della società civile, produttori di cibo di piccola scala, ricercatori e popoli indigeni di tutto il mondo si sono riuniti in un evento virtuale e fisico a Roma dal 25 al 28 luglio 2021 per manifestare il loro dissenso al pre-Vertice delle Nazioni Unite sui Sistemi Alimentari. Anche Carlo Petrini è intervenuto: riportiamo qui la sintesi del suo pensiero pubblicato ieri su La Stampa.
27/07/2021
CSM
On 27 June 2021, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) received a letter from Ms. Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit. The letter included an invitation to participate in the official programme of the Pre-Summit “in order to enrich and refine the Summit’s wider ambition and accelerate action moving forward in alignment with the 2030 Agenda.”After due internal consultation, CSM expressed its intention to remain fully consistent with the positions already taken and to not participate in the UN Food Systems pre-Summit.
Navdanya
Benjamin Luig - Rosa Lusemburg
The lockdowns and partial lockdowns in the last one and a half years of the COVID-19 crisis have been accompanied by a worsening of the food crisis in many countries. In regions as diverse as India, South Africa or Germany, it became clear how much agriculture does not only depend on farmers, but also on agricultural workers. Now, in the autumn of the second year of corona, the United Nations will host a “Food Systems Summit” (FSS). The first step will be a “Pre-Summit” in Rome between July 26 and 28.
Welt agrar bericht
Seit Montag findet in Rom der Vorgipfel zum UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) statt – allerdings ohne die Beteiligung vieler zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationen und mit dem Thema befassten Wissenschaftler*innen.
26/07/2021
Kenny Stancil
Characterizing this week's United Nations Food Systems Pre-Summit as a corporate-friendly affair, a coalition of more than 300 civil society and Indigenous peoples' organizations—representing over 380 million agricultural workers and other food justice advocates—has launched a parallel gathering to advance "a radical, human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems."
FIAN International
On 26-28 July 2021, the United Nations will hold Pre-Summit event as a part of United Nations Food System Summit (UNFSS) in Rome, Italy, which will be followed by Global Dialogue in September 2021 in New York, USA. The Summit intends to be a platform to alleviate the problem of hunger and nutrion all over the world, including country like Indonesia. According to the SOFI 2021
Transnational Institute Tni
Host Shaun Matsheza in conversation with Paula Gioia, a peasant farmer and beekeeper based in Germany. She works on a community farm, and is part of the European Coordination of La Via Campesina.The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the already existing deep structural problems of corporate and increasingly globalized food systems. A radical, human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems is more urgent than ever.
Fiona Broom (SciDev)
A UN summit which aims to tackle food insecurity has become the scene of controversy and disagreement, with one group of scientists joining a parallel event in protest.The United Nations Food Systems Summit will begin three days of “pre-summit” discussions starting today (Monday), with the main talks coming later on in September.
Dan Saladino (BBC Radio)
Dan Saladino finds out why a UN summit to transform the global food system has become so controversial. It has generated 2500 ideas for change but also a boycott by protesters.In 2019 the UN's Secretary General António Guterres highlighted ways in which the global food system was breaking down: hundreds of millions of people going hungry, billions more overweight or obese and tonnes of food being wasted.
Thin Lei WinThe New Humanitarian
September’s first-ever UN Food Systems Summit aims to tackle hunger, malnutrition, food production, and climate change in a holistic manner. However, many activists and farmers’ groups are boycotting a warm-up “pre-summit” that begins today in Rome and are running their own parallel events.
26/07/2020
IPES Food
From the outset, the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) raised major concerns. Its origins were opaque, its relationship to existing global fora unclear, and its governance poorly defined (i.e. who is in charge, who participates, and how decisions are made). We were able to put these concerns temporarily aside in the hope that they would be addressed by the time key milestones were reached.
Jomo Kwame SundaramIPS News
Undoubtedly, the world needs to reform existing food systems to better serve humanity and sustainable development. But the United Nations World Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) must be consistent with UN-led multilateralism.
Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples' Mechanism (CSM)
Confronting the on-going Covid-19 pandemic, climate chaos, increasing hunger and all forms of malnutrition, ecological destruction and multiple humanitarian crises, we, social movements, indigenous peoples’ articulations, non-governmental organizations, and academics assert our commitment to food sovereignty and reject the ongoing corporate colonization of food systems and food governance under the façade of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS).
Farida Akhter (The Business Standard)
The concerns are intense and the resistance is global. The Pre-Summit of the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is going to take place in Rome from 26–28 July 2021. The peoples' organisations working for food and nutritional security, particularly those active with farming and indigenous communities to safeguard the local environment, ecology, and biological basis of our lives, are raising their voices about the summit.
Corrado Fontana (Valori)
«Nonostante l’alimentazione riguardi la salute di tutta la popolazione del Pianeta e le aziende agricole familiari e di piccola scala producano oltre il 70% del cibo che consumiamo, sono poche grandi imprese a dettare le politiche in campo agricolo e a stabilire cosa dovrà essere prodotto, come e quanto dovrà costare il cibo».
25/07/2021
Elisabeth Mpofu and Edgardo García (Aljazeera)
In September this year, the United Nations will host a Global Food Systems Summit in New York. The organisers of this summit are pitching it as a crucial debate of the decade which is to define the future of agriculture.
24/07/2021
Land Workers´ Alliance
The UN Food Systems Summit is due to take place some time in autumn 2021, however, serious concerns over the UNFSS’s priorities have been raised, with La Via Campesina – of which LWA is member organisation – co-signing a letter together with 173 organisations from 83 different countries to the UN Secretary General raising concerns over the level of corporate involvement in the event.
Capire
Social movements that struggle for food sovereignty and build agroecology denounce and reject the offensive taken by corporate power against food and nature, represented by the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS).
23/07/2021
Cecelia Heffron and Shiney Varghese (IATP)
Starting on July 26, United Nations delegates and other stakeholders will meet in Rome for a Pre-Summit leading up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) scheduled to take place this September in New York.
ETC Group
Our latest communiqué looks at how the Food Systems Summit (FSS) planned for the fall of 2021 is not about changing food systems, but about spinning a story that props up and expands the industrial food chain at the expense of other food systems.
Ermanno Giuca (Reti Solidali)
Dal 26 al 28 luglio, Roma ospiterà il pre-vertice del Food System Summit 2021 (questo il sito in italiano) previsto per settembre a New York. Questo raduno mondiale, indetto dall’ONU, è stato convocato con un ambizioso obiettivo: coinvolgere i principali attori del sistema alimentare mondiale nel raggiungimento dei 17 obiettivi dello sviluppo sostenibile dettati dall’Agenda 2030.
Kira Walker
As the pre-summit of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) 2021 gears up to begin in Rome next week, small-scale food producers, civil society, Indigenous peoples and human rights groups are sounding the alarm. This growing alliance of activists are expressing deep concern that the conference is on course to push our global food systems even further in the wrong direction.
22/07/2021
While everyone has agreed that a transformation of our food systems has become an imperative, we are seeing a corporate co-option of this necessary transformation to push for further concentration of industrial agriculture systems through digitalization, financialization and the imposition of destructive technologies.
21/07/2021
Friends of the Earth International
From 26 to 28 July in Rome the United Nations will hold a Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), a pre-cursor to a VIP New York summit in September 2021. The summit claims it will provide “game-changing” solutions for the transformation of food systems through its “open and inclusive” process. But dig a bit deeper and the façade comes crashing down.
Timothy Wise
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been under fire over the last year after our research revealed that the billion-dollar agency had made little progress toward its stated goals of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while halving food insecurity.
20/07/2021
Samyukta Kisan Morcha
Parliament Protest Plans stand as announced - Protesting Farmers will hold Kisan Sansad near Parliament on every working day of the Parliament Session: SKMUnited Nations Food Systems Summit vulnerable to corporate takeover - this is exactly what our struggle here in India is against: Samyukt Kisan Morcha
In a new briefing note, IPES-Food warns that the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a new mode of decision-making that could exclude many voices in food systems.
Rai News
Cresce in tutto il mondo la critica contro il Vertice ONU sui Sistemi Alimentari indetto dal Segretario Generale Antonio Guterres e previsto a New York il prossimo settembre. Vertice in cui il ruolo delle multinazionali dell’agroindustria risulta pericolosamente pervasivo e dominante.
La'o Hamutuk
On 14 July, La’o Hamutuk and other NGOs sent a letter to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries regarding the upcoming Food Systems Summit (FSS). The objective of the Summit is to establish a path toward realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and to create an action plan and measurable goals to strengthen food systems.
16/07/2021
Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Molly Anderson Barbara, Gemmill-Herren, Jessica Duncan, Nora McKeon,Matt Canfiel, Alastair Iles, and Jan Douwe van der Ploeg
The UN Food Systems Summit (FSS) aims to identify solutions and advance action to make progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. In so doing, it gives considerable attention to major food system problems, including hunger, loss of biodiversity, and the degradation of nature. These problems are indisputable.
15/07/2021
The policy briefing is addressed to governments and aims to raise awareness about the false solutions for food system transformation promoted by the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021 (UN FSS).
People across the globe will intensify their protest against the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and expose its double-facedness of aiming to end hunger and malnutrition and heal the planet and at the same time being dominated by corporations precisely causing the problems.
14/07/2021
Stacy Malkan
Hunger and malnourishment increased dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a sobering United Nations report released Monday. The report is the first comprehensive assessment of hunger since the pandemic struck, and estimates a 25% increase in the number of severely undernourished people across the globe
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $6 billion on agricultural development, with a key focus on transforming African agriculture by transitioning farmers to patented seeds and fossil-fuel based fertilizers to grow staple crops for the global market.
Marion Nestle
Yesterday, I posted information about the forthcoming UN Summit on Food Systems (UNFSS) and its Pre-Summit. The Summit has been heavily criticized on the grounds that it:Sets agenda themes determined by corporate entities such as The World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.Favors corporate technological solutions to food system problems.Ignores agroecology, organic farming, and indigenous knowledge.
06/07/2021
Million Belay and Bridget Mugambe (AFSA)
Africans have long been told that our agriculture is backward and should be abandoned for a 21st-century version of the Green Revolution that enabled India to feed itself.
02/07/2021
Alimentando Políticas
Food systems that depend on conventional agribusiness intensify the greenhouse effect causing loss of productivity, food insecurity and obesity.
01/07/2021
According to an anonymous inside source, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is preparing a campaign to raise $1 billion in the coming months to fund its promotion of industrialized agriculture through 2030. The organization, which has spent $1 billion since its founding in 2006, is reportedly counting on the September United Nations Food System Summit as a key platform for its fundraising.
Maynooth University
Four seasons in one day is a common expression used by people living in Ireland to describe the variety in our weather. The most consistent feature of our temperate climate seems to be its unpredictability.
22/06/2021
The world is falling well short of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 2 (to end hunger) by 2030, and many fear the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit will not deliver on its promise to get the world on track to genuinely transform the way food is produced, distributed and consumed.
21/05/2021
Global Forest Coalition
Three big United Nations summits are coming up on food, biodiversity and the climate, and the private sector is poised to have a major influence at all of them, making 2021 a key year for the corporate takeover of multilateral processes. With civil society participation in these summits limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, several extremely harmful policy outcomes are being cooked up.
12/05/2021
Priscilla Claeys
In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly agreed to a 15 year action plan for sustainable development. The result was a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. The second sustainable development goal is related to zero hunger.
07/05/2021
Polycap Kalokwera, Tobbias Jolly Owini
A total of 36 civil society organisations (CSOs) in Uganda and across Africa under the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) have cancelled their participation in the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) scheduled for September 2021 in New York, USA.
03/05/2021
Rachel Shue (Devex)
With the aim to bring together “key players from the worlds of science, business, policy, health care, and academia, as well as farmers, indigenous people, youth organizations, consumer groups, environmental activists, and other key stakeholders,” the inaugural Food Systems Summit has faced some stumbling blocks recently, with critics suggesting that large-scale commercial agriculture stakeholders are controlling the agenda.
02/05/2021
Thea Walmsley (A Growing Culture)
Later this year, the United Nations is set to hold a historic Food Systems Summit, recognizing the need for urgent action to disrupt business-as-usual practices in the food system.
21/04/2021
Slow Food
The UN Food Systems Summit (UN FSS) will be held in September 2021 and aims to launch bold actions to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems.
13/04/2021
Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael
Although few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, it has become clear that the Summit is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance and capture the global narrative of “food systems transformation.”
30/03/2021
Arnold Padilla (PANAP)
While the preparations and discussions for the FSS are in full swing, peasant movements in the region are wary of the event.
04/03/2020
John Vidal (The Guardian)
An international food summit to address growing hunger and diet-related disease is in disarray as hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning a boycott.
13/01/2021
Michael Fakhri
Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has written this open letter to Dr Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems Summi
12/03/2020
Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Kaamil Ahmed (The Guardian)
A global summit on food security is at risk of being dominated by big business at the expense of farmers and social movements, according to the UN’s former food expert.