Most of you who follow this blog will know that the 44th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is on this week. I am taking a break from the...

I am thrilled to be teaching a month long course on Global Food Security Governance at the Kyoto University. I have been invited by the Graduate School of Economics as...

By Martin Herren and Sonja Tschirren, Biovision 
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
sdg 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. Convergence of the Agendas
By Alison Blay-Palmer
 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
nua 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:
  1. inadequate funding for the CFS,
  2. a lack of joined-up policy; and;
  3. 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.”
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
T03P04 - Uncovering Politics in Public Policies for Agriculture and Food
  • European Consortium for Political Research Oslo, Norway, 6-9 September 2017
Section 69: The Politics of Food Governance