The United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) will be held on September 23, 2021, as part of the United Nations General Assembly. Sara Scherr, EcoAgriculture Partners president and CEO, has been busy as part of UNFSS leadership teams working on Nature-Positive Production (Action Track 3) and Territorial Governance (Action Area on Governance).
After months of dialogue, analysis and solution development, the summit will launch real action and implementation strategies to transform how people grow, produce, distribute and consume food. After the summit ends, UN agencies, member countries and coalitions will lead implementation.
The work will continue beyond the event, and a clearer picture of the road ahead will emerge afterwards. Before then, the landscape community is encouraged to review and reflect on the wide range of solutions and opportunities that have emerged from UNFSS.
A wealth of dialogue and ideas
Work leading up to the summit has generated significant new knowledge and resources that professionals can apply within landscapes. Contributors have proposed well-developed analyses and recommendations to transform food systems, addressing finance, governance, science, production, capacity, technology and innovation.
Hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals have participated in voluntary and collaborative efforts worldwide, resulting in published reports, proposed solutions and ongoing dialogue.
Summit solutions for landscapes
EcoAgriculture Partners is one of many organisations deeply involved in this effort. We have contributed proposed solutions on:
- Landscape Finance
- Strengthening Landscape Partnerships
- Territorial Governance
We have also joined the Coalition on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture in making an institutional commitment.
We encourage professionals to explore how peers and colleagues working through Integrated Landscape Management approaches are proposing solutions, forming coalitions and developing recommendations to transform food systems.
National-level pathways and coalitions
Dialogues spearheaded by countries have led to national pathways in the UNFSS process. These pathways are how each country envisions achieving its national food systems vision, which focuses particularly on marginalized communities with the least resources and influence that tend to be hardest to reach. These pathway roadmaps can serve as points of reference across government and for all stakeholders in the coming years.
Food systems can negatively or positively impact land use, environment, agriculture, nutrition, infrastructure, industrial and other interconnected development planning processes. In addition, different coalitions responding to country needs have been organized around four action areas:
- Nourish all people
- Boost nature-based solutions for production
- Advance equitable livelihoods, decent work and empowered communities
- Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses
Given the increasing relevance of food systems for country and multistakeholder dialogue and action, we as a community must consider incorporating food systems into our work across landscapes. This is why EcoAgriculture Partners wants to encourage everyone to reflect on the work that has emerged from this nearly year-long multistakeholder process and think of how all of these solutions, coalitions pathways and emerging trends connect to your own work in landscapes.
Look for your countries’ national convenors, statements and pathways here.
What we hope will continue after the summit
Many contributors have helped develop solid food systems components. However, we see three areas that need more work:
- Demonstrating how food systems transformation can function practically within landscapes
- Strengthening the integration of strategies across natural infrastructure, agroecology, nutrition and related approaches
- Improving focus on ecosystem management for resilience and agricultural productivity
Next steps
This is just the starting point of the work from the UNFSS. As a landscape community, we need to be thinking about what we want to work on and who we want to engage with as a part of implementing the good ideas that come from the summit. We will keep you posted on opportunities to collaborate for landscape perspectives to implementation and encourage you to do the same!
The real work is only just beginning.