To coincide with the launch of the 2021 United Nations Food System Pre-Summit today, the Global Food Security programme has published its new multi-stakeholder dialogue report, which was selected to feed into the official UK Member State Dialogue for the UN Food System Summit.
The scenarios sub-report The role of the UK food system in meeting global agreements: multi-stakeholder dialogue describes the outputs of an intergenerational, multi-stakeholder dialogue held by the Global Food Security (GFS) programme as part of the United Nations UN75 Global Conversation last October.
The dialogue brought together academics, farmers, community leaders, youth activists, and the wider public, with the aim of identifying the actions that must be taken today to align the UK food system with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The dialogue was based on the four potential food system scenarios described in the recently-published GFS scenarios report. To facilitate cross-stakeholder communication, GFS collaborated with writer and storyteller Debs Newbold, who translated the scenarios into four engaging stories set in the year 2050 (available here).
Turning talk into action
The stakeholders involved in the dialogue identified a range of multi-level actions that can be taken today to transform the food system for human and planetary health, including:
- Working with all members of civil society, particularly marginalised groups, to build a social revolution that promotes global citizenship through food
- Establishing food system education (including dietary health, food sustainability and food justice) as a core subject in the national curriculum
- Organising local food-sharing events to explore the cultural importance of food in the community, and collaboratively identify culturally appropriate changes that members can make to address health, sustainability, and accessibility issues in the food system
- If possible, learning to cook with plant-based whole foods, utilising food ‘waste’, and eating seasonally.
There is considerable overlap between multi-level actions published in this multi-stakeholder dialogue report and the 14 recommendations that were recently published in the National Food Strategy.
This GFS dialogue was one of the five dialogues selected to feed into the UK Member State Dialogue for the UN Food System Summit. Member State Dialogues are organised by national governments and are expected to help shape national pathways to sustainable food systems.
Last month, BBSRC held an Independent Dialogue titled Nutrition: Bridging the gap between farm to fork for improved health and resilience in a changing environment. Independent dialogues are convened by individuals or organisations independently of national authorities, offering opportunities for all citizens to engage directly in proposing pathways towards sustainable food systems. The outputs of this dialogue will be submitted to the UN Food System Summit ahead of the main summit this September.
Introducing youth experts
The GFS multi-stakeholder dialogue was the first time that youth were invited to join a Global Food Security expert group. However, the value of involving young people in discussions about food system transformation is gaining global recognition.
Dr Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), 2018 World Food Prize laureate, and Chair of UN Food System Summit Action Track 1 said:
“Half the world’s population is under 30. It is self-evident that they are most affected by the food system decisions made by policymakers in industry, government, development agencies and the research community. And yet, youth have the least access to this decision-making space.
“This has to change, not only from a fairness perspective, but also because it’s the smart thing to do. Young people are fearless. They don’t have the baggage of “we tried it before and it does not work”. They ask “how can we make it work now?”.
The multi-stakeholder dialogue report is available to download below.
The role of the UK food system in meeting global agreements: multi-stakeholder dialogue
This scenarios sub-report summarises the outputs of a multi-stakeholder dialogue based on the scenarios in the GFS report The role of the UK food system in meeting global agreements: potential scenarios.
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