This entry is part of a special series of blog posts about the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS): The Future of the CFS? Collectively reflecting on the directions of UN’s most inclusive body. Read more about this project here.
With this post we continue with the fourth thematic cluster: “Emerging Issues at the CFS: How are they being addressed?”. In what follows Martin Herren and Sonja Tschirren from Biovision provide their analysis of why the CFS should be more actively engaging in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
This is not an exclusive project. If you would like to participate, please let us know: foodsecuresolutions@gmail.com
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has considerably changed the landscape in which our work for increased sustainability of food systems evolves. Countries have started to gear their policy planning towards the Agenda’s targets and international agencies and platforms will provide support. Despite existing reservations towards the 2030 Agenda and its design, Committee on World Food Security (CFS) stakeholders decided to engage in this process. Since this remains contested, in this blog entry we look at the potentials and challenges that the CFS might face when engaging in this new agenda. Given the fact that member states have actually embarked on this journey, we propose that the CFS should not engage half-heartedly in this new process and may have to look into options how to become more innovative to match the new Agenda’s setting with CFS mandate.
The CFS and HLPF, a good match?
In view of the High Level Political Forum (HLPF), intergovernmental bodies and forums, such as the CFS, will have an active role in supporting the thematic review of the implementation of Agenda 2030. In the Agenda 2030, paragraph 24, heads of governments reaffirm “the important role and inclusive nature of the Committee on World Food Security and welcome the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and Framework for Action.”
But what would a meaningful thematic review be? And in a more strategic perspective: could the 2030 Agenda be an opportunity for the CFS to position itself as a valuable player in the achievement of SDG 2 and related goals? The CFS is by mandate tasked to support global policy coordination, policy convergence and provide advice to member states on issues of food security and sustainable agriculture. That includes fostering the broad adoption of intergovernmentally negotiated CFS products (such as the Voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of national food security or Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems) guiding countries towards SDG 2. In this regard, a thematic review that discusses the progress on the uptake of these products by governments and the other stakeholder groups is certainly a valuable contribution to the HLPF.
Beyond such an important and obvious contribution to the HLPF review however, we would note that the 2030 Agenda and the review process via the HLPF provide room for interpretation regarding what a meaningful contribution by the foremost inclusive intergovernmental platform on questions of food and agriculture to the agenda could be. CFS stakeholders – especially member states – need to further gauge and deliberate this question. If they don’t, they could miss their return on investment they made so far in the CFS, leaving room for other competing organizations and stakeholder groups to define the food systems of the future, with virtually no coherence or convergence for member states to build on.
In the meantime, we could think a bit out of the box and come-up with a few thoughts on current and possible activities of the CFS to support the achievement of SDG2 and related goals.
This entry is part of a special series of blog posts about the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS): The Future of the CFS? Collectively reflecting on the directions of UN’s most inclusive body. Read more about this project here.
Today we continue with our fourth thematic cluster: “Emerging Issues at the CFS: How are they being addressed?”. In this post, Alison Blay-Palmer reflects on opening at the international level for discussing food with an increasingly regional and sustainability focus. She questions whether emerging initiatives call into question the capacity of the CSM and its constituent groups to achieve its mandate on the Right to Food.
This is not an exclusive project. If you would like to participate, please let us know: foodsecuresolutions@gmail.com
I offer the following comments as a new observer of the CFS process. I attended CFS 42 (2015) and then 43 (2016), and participate in the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) meetings for the SDGs and Urban and Rural Transformation.
The food spaces within and between rural and urban communities are simultaneously interconnected and contested in part due to increasing distances between smallholder producers who provide most of the world’s food, and urban eaters who are now in the majority and increasing in numbers.
In opposition to the globalization and industrialization that creates these rifts in our food system, and in tandem with increased explicit attention to urban-rural linkages by the CFS, recently launched initiatives such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), New Urban Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and the City-Region Food System project offer local pathways to more coherent regional sustainable food systems and increased capacity for urban and rural transformation that respects the Right to Food.
Nevertheless, being outside of CFS debate, these initiatives might call into question the capacity of the CSM and its constituent groups to engage based on:
inadequate funding for the CFS,
a lack of joined-up policy; and;
the threat to agro-ecological farming systems from high technology.
The MUFPP, launched in 2015, now has 133 signatory cities that together include more than 460 million people. The Pact draws direct connections between rural and urban communities “Recognizing that family farmers and smallholder food producers, (notably women producers in many countries) play a key role in feeding cities and their territories, by helping to maintain resilient, equitable, culturally appropriate food systems; and that reorienting food systems and value chains for sustainable diets is a means to reconnect consumers with both rural and urban producers” (MUFPP 2015: 1).
Enhanced direct links between producers and consumers offer the potential for better market opportunities for smallholder farmers and improved access to nutritional food for the urban food insecure. This level of integration is also key to addressing the 2030 Agenda goals. For example, the Report of the UN Secretary General titled ‘Agricultural development, food security and nutrition’ (2016) points to SDG 2 (zero hunger) that addresses food and nutrition security and its interconnections with production considerations including soil quality (Goal 15), water quality and availability (Goal 6), climate (Goal 13), gender equality (Goal 5) and production and consumption patterns (Goal 12).
While developed as an international initiative through UN-Habitat, the New Urban Agenda looks to integrate ‘urban and territorial planning’ to end hunger and malnutrition by making local food supply-consumption loops less wasteful and more affordable, coordinating policy at the food-energy-water-health-transportation-waste nexus, and conserving genetic (and presumably, though not explicitly) biodiversity. Paragraph 123 of the Agenda states:
“We [Heads of State and Government, Ministers and High Representatives] will promote the integration of food security and the nutritional needs of urban residents, particularly the urban poor, in urban and territorial planning, to end hunger and malnutrition. We will promote coordination of sustainable food security and agriculture policies across urban, peri-urban and rural areas to facilitate the production, storage, transport and marketing of food to consumers in adequate and affordable ways to reduce food losses and prevent and reuse food waste. We will further promote the coordination of food policies with energy, water, health, transport and waste policies, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds and reduce the use of hazardous chemicals, and implement other policies in urban areas to maximize efficiencies and minimize waste.”
This entry is part of a special series of blog posts about the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS): The Future of the CFS? Collectively reflecting on the directions of UN’s most inclusive body. Read more about this project here.
We continue with our second post of ur third the thematic cluster: “CFS: Multi-stakeholder or multi-actor? And does it matter?” In this post, Pierre-Marie reflects on the rise of “multistakeholderism”in the CFS, and more broadly across food security and nutrition governance. He concludes with reflecting on ways to reinforce governance framework to ensure more appropriate participation in multistakeholder mechanisms for food security and nutrition.
This blog series is not an exclusive project. If you would like to participate, please let us know: foodsecuresolutions@gmail.com
If you participated to CFS 43, you must have noticed the strong participation of private sector representatives. Around 150 of them were there, representing companies from all over the world and from all segments of food chains: agro-chemical companies, seed companies, traders, food processors, retailers, investors…
The 2009 reform of the CFS supported the creation of two mechanisms to facilitate the participation of non-state actors in debates (but without voting power): the civil society mechanism, for civil society organization and social movements more broadly; and the private sector mechanism. While civil society organisations immediately seized the opportunity and massively participated in the CFS, the number of companies represented at the CFS has been slowly increasing year after year, from less that 30 in 2010 to a bit less than 150 in 2016.
What’s going on in the CFS / PSM can not be understood apart from broader evolutions that characterizes the global governance of food and nutrition security (but also more widely), which tend to rely more and more on a so-called “multistakeholderism”. Between 2008 and 2016, a good dozen multistakeholder initiatives have been developed in the field of food and nutrition security and agricultural development: the Global alliance for improved nutrition, the Alliance for a green revolution in Africa, the Global alliance for climate smart agriculture, the New alliance for food and nutrition security, the Amsterdam declaration against malnutrition, to cite a few.
All of them involve companies from different segments of food chains, along with States, international organisations, research organisations and non governmental organisations. More than 60 companies are involved in at least two of those initiatives, most of them being large and often transnational corporations. Hence, and although the term “private sector” encompasses a broad range of actors ranging from multinational companies to small and medium enterprises or even certain farmers (who for example feel more comfortable to participate in the CFS through the private sector mechanism than through the civil society mechanism), one can not ignore the fact that multinational corporations from upstream and downstream parts of food chains play a prominent role in most global governance mechanisms for food security.
Just to give an example, out of the 12 multistakeholder platforms related to food security we looked at, major transnational companies such as Unilever, Cargill, Yara, Monsanto, Pepsi, were involved in half of them or even more. So the question is: what drives those companies to participate in such mechanisms? What can be expected from their contribution?
In terms of participation, three main factors can be identified. A first is common to all development issues and relates to the growing demand expressed by States and international organisations towards private companies. Sustainable development is indeed deemed to necessitate more investments that the public sector itself is no longer able to supply, hence the need to increase the support from the private sector.
A second factor relates to the need for most companies to raise their sustainability profile in the face of growing public / societal demand.
A third factor has often to do with the company’s business model and takes different forms depending on the type of initiatives we are talking about. In a political space like the CFS, one of the issue for companies is to make sure that what will come out from intergovernmental negotiations will be compatible — or even favourable — with their business operations. In project-oriented initiatives, like the Global Alliance for improved nutrition (GAIN) or the Amsterdam initiative against malnutrition, the question is more about identifying new markets / customers through different kind of projects.
GAIN is an organization that mobilizes public-private partnerships to address malnutrition.
Given this context, what can we expect from this increased contribution of transnational corporations? A closer look at the projects developed under in those different initiatives allows to distinguish between four types of interventions: intensifying agriculture practices upstream by improving access to inputs (chemicals, fertilizers, improved seeds); generating more cash from agriculture by improving farmers’ access to (international) commodity markets; developing the demand and the availability of bio-fortified products downstream by working with marketers, food processors and retailers; and changing policy frameworks at all levels to favour the adoption of the three above mentioned types of actions.
All of those can be grouped under a similar heading, that of “agri-food chain modernisation”, which reflects to a great extent the agenda of most companies involved. One of the key reason behind that situation is that many companies are not willing to embark in initiatives that are not aligned with their own objectives, as reflected — for example — in their CSR policy. Since, on the other hand, the bearers of food security initiatives are keen on having “big players” on board, they tend to align the initiatives’ objectives and projects to what companies have already planned to do.
However, the project of “agri-food chain modernisation” has often been criticized by peasant organisations, social movements but also researchers for its many negative impacts on the ground. Yet, those groups are often under-represented in the different initiatives we talked about — apart from the CFS. This results either from their own lack of willingness to take part in those initiatives — often in the name of lack of accountability mechanisms (see here and there), or from the fact that they were not necessarily invited, or from a lack of resources (human, financial) needed to contribute to such initiatives.
Hence, while big corporations are indeed in a position to contribute to food security thanks to their great investment capacity, but also their position in most food chains, this is not likely to happen without certain changes. One concerns the kind of projects they want to invest in and the agricultural models they want to support. Such evolutions or innovations will however not be favoured by most multi-stakeholder platforms if they stay as they are. An other important change would thus be to reinforce their governance framework, in at least two different ways.
One is to recognize the fundamental differential of power that characterizes the different participants to such initiative. When the net profit of a company is worth the double of a country’s GDP, not to speak about the annual budget of a small farmer organisation, those power asymmetries can not be ignored and must be considered in the way in which discussions are organised and decisions taken.
Second is to endow such platforms with a stronger accountability framework, which involves the following key elements: the definition of a referential framework, which is to enable the assessment, ex-ante, in itinere and ex-post, of the potential and actual impacts of a measure or a project; and the creation of a reporting mechanism thanks to which those impacts can be attributable to actors who can, in turn, be held accountable.
Just a quick post to share links to two calls for abstracts for very interesting international conferences. I have added links to the sessions that I will be co-chairing.
International Conference on Public Policy
Singapore, June 28-30, 2017
This entry is part of a special series of blog posts about the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS) – The Future of the CFS?: Collectively reflecting on the directions of UN’s most inclusive body. Read more about this project here.
This week we continue with the thematic cluster The CFS: What for? We reflect on the process of policy negotiations at the CFS and consider tradeoffs between having negotiations completed in advance of the Annual Sessions or giving space to the final negotiations during the Annual Sessions.
This is not an exclusive project. If you would like to participate, please let us know: foodsecuresolutions@gmail.com
Last week, Josh’s contribution focused on how broader aspects of discourse and framings influence CFS debate. This week, we will discuss more specific aspects related to the negotiation process. Certain details can actually mean a lot for a key function of the CFS: to develop and endorse policy recommendations and guidelineson a range of food security and nutrition topics.
Since its reform, CFS’ Annual Sessions have included negotiations on the final policy text to be endorsed in Plenary by the Committee – that is, during that key week in October where all members and participants meet. This year, all the negotiations were completed before the Annual Session.
What are the implications of this change?
In what follows, we discuss some reflections on opportunities and risks.
Before that, let’s briefly review how the CFS has functioned as a policy body. If you already know the standard CFS negotiation process, you can jump directly to Potential Limitations below.
One of the primary roles of the CFS is to
“[p]romote greater policy convergence and coordination, including through the development of international strategies and voluntary guidelines …” (CFS 2009:para 5.2).
After the reform, policy roundtables were established to support these aims. It generally works as follows, as also illustrated in the graphic below:
The CFS identifies a theme (step 1) and tasks the CFS’s independent High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) to produce a related report with recommendations (step 2). In preparation for the roundtables, the CFS also forms Task Teams (step 3). These Task Teams draft discussion papers and compile “decision boxes” informed by the report of the HLPE (step 4). Decision boxes (sets of actionable policy recommendations) preface the discussion papers and form the starting point of the policy negotiations, although this year “Proposed draft recommendations on sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock” were issued as a separate document. Open-Ended Working Groups (OEWG) are formed where interested parties start negotiating the recommendations in the inter-sessional periods to prepare for the larger negotiations (step 5).
Each roundtable begins with a panel of experts, including experts identified by civil society and private sector actors (step 6). These experts provide context from multiple scientific perspectives to help frame the negotiations. Still, the negotiations are facilitated by a Chair (a country delegate) and chronicled by a Rapporteur (these are usually volunteers from country delegations or experts in the area), and a scribe. The Rapporteur is responsible for identifying key outcomes, points of agreement and advancing recommendations. As noted above, the negotiations start from the text included in the decision boxes, or the draft recommendation.
Member states and participants identify themselves to the Chair and then the Chair calls on them to make interventions in the order they are seen (step 7). It is not uncommon to hear the Chair say “Civil Society Mechanism please, to be followed by Canada, and then the World Bank” illustrating not only a fundamental change in the way the CFS operates, but also in the ordering of intergovernmental negotiations.
The text being negotiated is projected onto a large screen. Scribe make use of Microsoft Word track changes to note the contributions and changes.
The Chair works with the members and participants to come to consensus. With consensus on the text, a roundtable is concluded and the negotiated decisions submitted to the Plenary for approval (step 8).
The important change is that this year, there were no side negotiations during the Annual Session. The negotiations took place in the Open-Ended Working Groups and were completed in advance so that the CFS plenary only needed to approve them.
So let us turn now to the tradeoffs we see with this change in CFS procedure. Let’s consider three potential limitations, then turn to opportunities (although these are, as you will read, not clear cut categories).
Potential Limitations
Restrictions on number of people participating in policy-making: The clearest impact is that having negotiations during the year restricts the number of people that can participate, for time, and for financial reasons. While this could challenge the inclusive vision of the CFS, it could also mean more committed participation (see more on potential opportunities).
Limited visibility: During policy roundtable negotiations, all participants can watch, understand and react to the negotiations. Moving to a format focused on inter-sessional negotiations might limit the visibility of these political dynamics. Part of the excitement around, and hope for, the reformed CFS until now has been linked to the political debates between member states (who even if not actively negotiating, were at least present) and participants.
Reduced engagement: Associated with a reduced number of participants, engagement might also be reduced. This is particularly important because engagement is key to the uptake of CFS outputs. By having a wider group of actors involved in the negotiations, you get more organizations aware and invested in the outcome. The debates and discussion are also central for members and participants to gain insight into the politics and concerns embedded within the policies. This insight and enhanced awareness, we argue, is key to ensuring that these policies move beyond the CFS.
Considering the above, we wonder what value the participants now see in taking part in the CFS annual sessions if political negotiations are left to inter-sessional activities. We see the possibility of participants shifting their attention from the political negotiations to side-events and networking activities. Many participants that we spoke this year refer to the CFS not only a negotiation platform, but also as a true meeting point for those working on food security and nutrition.
Besides simply changing the negotiation dynamics, shifts in decision-making processes have implications for how member-states representatives understand interactions with non-state actors, as each year, new people come to the CFS. These people may not be aware of the CFS processes. The opportunity to engage in the policy roundtables presents in some ways a “crash course” in the inclusive and deliberative methods employed by the CFS to arrive at decisions.
This can be a very frustrating process (especially, for who are not used to being challenged by non-state actors), but we have also seen that many of those who experience this approach come to see the value of it. We have interviewed and witnessed several higher-level diplomats express deep frustration at their first CFS event, only to become proponents of the CFS and its participatory approach in a later stage once they saw the benefits of greater interaction.
Potential Opportunities
More efficient and reliable plenary: Since the reform, it has been common that policy negotiations go on late into the night. This is certainly exhausting for the participants, leaving some unable to engage in the CFS plenary the following day (a key issue for countries with small delegations). Additionally, it is also exhausting for the budget of the CFS, as when a session is extended, interpreters and staff must be paid and the buildings need to be kept open. Completing negotiations in advance of the annual session might result in a more reliable schedule and reduced costs for the Annual Plenary.
Increased commitment: It is expected that those participating in Open-Ended Working Groups are invested in the process and not last-minute arrivers that can express dissent on recommendations that were already crafted through careful negotiation and consensus. Yet this calls for reflections on representation within Open-Ended Working Groups, for example, shifting the balance of power since some organizations cannot afford participating in all meetings.
Trust building: Negotiations taking place at a smaller-scale might create more opportunity for the development of deeper trust, understanding and willingness to listen and learn. It might also allow people to ask more questions and move away from defensive positions. The longer time periods and the ability to take time to think and consult is also an important consideration that is less available when negotiations are tied to the Annual Sessions.
From interviews and discussions we had at the CFS, we noted that some participants appreciated the time that was freed up by not having to be preparing for negotiations during the Annual Session. They noted that this provided more opportunities to network, strategize and organize.
In Conclusion
We have here focused on questions related to process, with little regard for content. Much more time and care is required to be able to make claims as to the implications of this approach for policy outcomes. You can however judge the results of the negotiations yourself by reading the final report of the 43rd Session, available here.
We would be most interested to hear your thoughts: What are the opportunities, benefits and risks associated with having the policy recommendations negotiated entirely in the inter-sessional period?
The first volume of Advances in Food Security and Sustainability has been released. I have contributed a chapter on the post-political condition and global food security governance.
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Advances in Food Security and Sustainability takes a scientific look at the challenges, constraints, and solutions necessary to maintain a healthy and accessible food supply in different communities around the world. The series addresses a wide range of issues related to the principles and practices of food sustainability and security, exploring challenges related to protecting environmental resources while meeting human nutritional requirements.
Key Features
Contains expertise from leading contributions on the topics discussed
Covers a vast array of subjects relating to food security and sustainability
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