The UN's Food Summit: Working with the enemy?
🌐 The controversy comes down to a classic dilemma.
💡 ICYMI—previously in the View, a conversation with Ilan Kelman on disasters and vulnerability.
VIEW
Analysis and global perspectives in health, development, planet.
It may have sounded like an 'inside baseball' kind of conversation.
The first-ever Food Systems Summit was convened by the UN as part of its General Assembly last week, after more than 18 months of planning and conversations with around 150 countries.
Hailed by some as a "historic" and "landmark" event, it aims to “develop national strategies for more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems”. The language is that of "transformation", in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The need for such a goal goes without saying—or perhaps requires some indicative facts. Millions around the world are facing rising levels of hunger and malnutrition, as we see in the weekly Briefings, a trend fuelled by Covid-19, conflict, and the climate crisis. On the other side of the scale, obesity is also on the rise, fuelling chronic disease. Food systems are, in turn, closely linked with climate change—both cash and subsistence crops are increasingly vulnerable to droughts and floods, supply chains are linked to deforestation, and industrial agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental pollution.
So what’s the problem with the UN’s event?
A vocal opposition and boycotting by hundreds of academics, sustainability advocates, small farmers and indigenous groups, including high-profile figures such as the UN's current and former special rapporteurs on food rights.
They described the event as "elitist", "pro-corporate", "regressive", "tech-focused", and ignorant of the power imbalances in the food system which mean the demands of the private sector overshadow those who advocate small-scale food systems and local food production.
According to Carbon Brief's newsletter, Cropped:
Critics said the solutions proposed at the meeting were “market-led, piecemeal, voluntary” and “will enable a handful of corporations and individuals to expand control over the global food system to the further detriment of the vast majority of people and the planet”.
And according to the Tortoise Sensemaker:
Critics say issues like chemical-intensive monocropping and industrial meat farming barely got a mention.
Though it’s unusual for such intense criticism to be levelled at a high-profile UN event, this isn’t a new debate.
In the context of the developing world, and to put it simply: the goal of pursuing sustainability while intensifying agricultural production—which tends to favour agribusiness and high-tech interventions—clashes with smaller-scale visions of agricultural development which favour organic principles, diversity, and equity in the system.
When it comes to Africa, that clash has been embodied in debates about specific initiatives. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been a target of the criticism for some time, and in the run-up to the UN Summit, and again this month in an open letter signed by 200 organisations.
Writing in the Guardian's Global Development newsletter (no link available for this one), deputy editor Liz Ford brings up another example:
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched by the then G8 in 2012, promised to “lift” millions of people out of poverty by developing the agrifood sector in 10 countries through increased private investment. That project was opposed by many civil society groups, and heavily criticised by the European parliament. It didn’t live up to its promises.
Familiar as the debate may be, I do see some changes underway.
One—conversations about agriculture will be less and less about just agriculture. As links with the climate crisis become more prominent, the field is getting more crowded in an already complex sector.
Two—the lure of high-tech solutions will become harder to counter as technologies get more sophisticated. This recent piece in the Economist is indicative.
Three—the language of sustainability is now spoken by big business as much as anyone else. The lines are blurred, and it's getting harder to decipher the fineprint behind that sustainability talk.
Four—governments are cash-strapped. The money lies with the private sector. Even if you think corporations should be kept at bay, this makes it harder to do.
What's not changing is the fundamental choice—a worldview, even—that makes this debate a classic dilemma and far from inside-baseball.
Do you pursue change by working with 'the enemy': those who are part of the problem and yield power against your goals? Or do you go your own way and on a path of collision?
Over the years, I’ve spoken to knowledgeable and committed people who make strong arguments either way.
This is about social change, and I’m not sure there’s one ‘right’ path to it. In fact, making change sometimes means having to take both of those paths (think of Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid).
And I hate to break it to you, but I don't have the answer.
What I do have—and will leave you with—is a success story with a hint: the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, a case I wrote about in a Nature supplement on cities, research and the SDGs, which was published last week.
Some 30 years ago, Belo Horizonte developed a unique approach to food security with policies based on the tenet that access to food is a basic human right. Within a decade, extreme poverty rates fell dramatically—from 17.2% in 1991 to 5.6% in 2010—and the programme is active to this day. The city’s approach involved setting up a 20-member council with representatives from consumer groups, research institutions, churches, civil society, the public sector, and industry.
It’s a setup that suggests the principle on which you lead matters. At the same time, it suggests that your leadership does well to be diverse, and inclusive.
Briefing Highlights
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The pressures that fuel displacement aren’t going away, research tells us migration is set to grow; but it’s hard to see policies that deal with this effectively and humanely. More than 200 million people will be forced to leave their homes within the next three decades because of the impacts of climate change, according to the World Bank. That’s about four times the number of internally displaced people as it stands now, which we reported back in May. Climate change is just one driving force of movements within or across borders—there are others, including conflict, disasters and poverty. Enter Haiti, and the fallout in recent days over the forced deportation—and apparent mistreatment—of thousands of people crowded under a bridge in South Texas, waiting for asylum claims to be processed after fleeing disaster and unrest. A month after the country was struck by an earthquake, 260,000 children and thousands of rural Haitians are reportedly still waiting for humanitarian aid.
➖ If you’re looking for more detailed coverage of global migration trends, check out the Mixed Migration Update newsletter, by Joel Hernandez, also on Substack.
Based on Briefings September 21 + September 28. (Sign up here)
—
UNDER THE RADAR
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is planning to lift a ban on industrial logging that has been in place for two decades to protect the world’s second largest rainforest, Africa’s Congo Basin. The controversial move comes as part of new plans to manage the rainforest, for which the DRC will seek funding at the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
Sources: NatGeo + Sky
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UN records substantial drop in new global Covid-19 infections - Hill + CIDRAP
Farmworkers at 4 times the risk of Covid-19 - CIDRAP
England’s Covid travel rules spark outrage around the world - Guardian + BBC
Amnesty blames top Covid jab makers for vaccine inequality - Al Jazeera + Amnesty
What are DNA vaccines?: India is the first country to approve a new type of jab to fight Covid-19 - Economist
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Low vaccination rates blamed for ‘diverging’ South-East Asia growth - FT
ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE
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The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees - Vox
China's Xi pledges to end funding for overseas coal power plants - Politico + NPR + Human Rights Watch
HEALTH
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Nigeria faces one of its worst cholera outbreaks in years - AP
Extinction of Indigenous languages leads to loss of exclusive knowledge about medicinal plants - Mongabay
HUMAN RIGHTS
Mexican state of Sonora approves same-sex marriage - TRF
Where are the hotspots for abortion rights in 2021? - TRF
SOCIETY
'Fashion is resistance': The Afghan designers championing traditional dress - TRF
Deep in the Amazon rainforest...a star is born - WaPo
In the middle of the Amazon forest, along the banks of the Rio Negro, a young woman in face paint was bored. The coronavirus pandemic had cut off the flow of visitors, further isolating this Indigenous village, accessible only by boat. So Cunhaporanga Tatuyo, 22, was passing her days, phone in hand, trying to learn the ways of TikTok. With a video of her eating a wriggly, thick beetle larva, a star was born. In little more than 18 months, Cunhaporanga has collected over 6 million TikTok followers, simply by showing scenes from her everyday life. To her, the activities she posted were unremarkable. But for her growing audience, they brought into sudden intimacy a world that could not have seemed more distant.
From the week’s global soundtrack 🌐
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