From the G20 to the UN Food Systems Pre-summit: food is the real common thread among the environment, climate, and health.
Complexity, interconnections, collaborations: peremptory words that mark the path of a global community in search of real solutions to pressing challenges. We have seen it in the G20 ministries of recent months: culture and tourism, work and education, foreign affairs and the development of internal areas, finance and climate, and today it emerges loudly at the beginning of the work of the Pre-Summit on Agri-food Systems organized by the United Nations.
It is “the beginning of the most profound transformation of the financial system that I have seen in my 40-year career in finance,” as defined by the president of BlackRock, one of the largest banks in the world, facing an abrupt shift towards the green transition in finance itself. So between carbon taxes and decarbonization incentives, world economies can no longer ignore environmental and climate issues, just as energy needs clash between the need for prosperity, widespread food security, and the exploitation of renewable sources. It is clear that food is the undisputed protagonist in all of this: a common thread linking the health of humans, communities and the planet, an essential element for human survival but also the main culprit of unspeakable waste, injustice, loss of biodiversity, and emissions due to the way it is produced, distributed, marketed, and consumed. Even if we were to abruptly stop all emissions caused by the use of fossil fuels, emissions from food production alone would take us past the infamous 1.5°C global temperature, recent studies reveal.
Yet regeneration comes through intricately interconnected and capillary agri-food systems. Evidence of this is the strong opposition of Veneto small farmers to the proposal to devolve over 50 hectares of arable land for the production of energy from renewable sources (ground-mounted photovoltaic) in Loreto, near the Po Delta Park, one of the most valuable agricultural areas of the Region.
Waste of arable land for clean energy or protection of small farmers? Renewable sources on the ground or on rooftops? Micro photovoltaic plants for self-consumption or maxi plants? Thinking global but acting local means exactly this: outlining real and lasting solutions that start from the criticalities of specific contexts, that are rooted in the territory and tailored to the needs of all stakeholders, carefully balancing environmental, social, cultural, economic, and territorial impacts.
As Prime Minister Draghi recalled today at the opening of the Pre-Summit, the latter stems from the justified concern for the many threats to food security, including climate change, infectious diseases, and disruptions to supply chains, all fears made even more urgent by the Covid-19 pandemic. For this reason, the ministerial meeting on Environment, Climate, and Energy held a few days ago, also took on crucial importance.
Three issues addressed by the ministers of environment of the part of the representation of the G20 inevitably intertwine and meet in a single denominator: food. Thanks to the Campanian city that hosted the summit, Naples, the gaze turns to the nearby home of the Mediterranean Diet, Pollica, and to the sea that Naples itself overlooks, the Mediterranean basin that can play a central role in the acceleration of the ecological transition. A hotspot of terrestrial and marine biodiversity, a place of resilience, knowledge, and ecological practices, the Mediterranean is a witness to how human health and environmental protection can coexist, beginning with good, healthy, nutritious, varied, and sustainable food.
Pollica, an emblematic community of the Mediterranean Diet and an undisputed symbol of integral ecology, is hosting our series of special events “Food for Earth, G20 Edition,” alongside the G20 Environment, Climate, and Energy Summit. We will begin from the primary role of food: to ensure energy and nourishment, despite the inevitable difficulties of acceptability and physical and economic accessibility of healthy and nutritious food for all.
But food is also climate and the environment, the cornerstone for responsible management of natural resources, for the preservation of biological and cultural diversity, and for the promotion of responsible innovation in the agri-food chain. Protecting biodiversity for real, not as a sanctuary, means living it, savoring it through active conservation, exalting co-participation, and co-creation. Once again, the Mediterranean offers a precious example of the values needed for the whole world, from care to regeneration, to put man back in harmony with the land, but also of contact, dialogue, and continuous cross-pollination of methods and approaches.
For this reason, in the context of the Food Coalition, we launched, in partnership with FAO and UNIDO, a food coalition dedicated to the Mediterranean supply chains, to enhance and support local supply chains that are particularly sensitive to the current environmental and climate changes. A commitment that is strengthened by the pledge presented by the Future Food Institute to the Convention on Biological Diversity which, precisely from Pollica with the Paideia Campus project, puts ecosystem thinking at the center: education, community, and innovation, for biodiversity requires an understanding of real complexities and real collaborations between local and international communities.
It is no coincidence that the only two Future Food Institute training programs held in person for 2021, the year of food, were on biodiversity and climate, located in the heart of the Mediterranean: in Marettimo. This small island, at the center of the Egadi Islands, we held a course on sustainable fishing practices, and then in Pollica, another program dedicated to the Mediterranean. Both are recognized by the Ministry of Ecological Transition within the initiative All4Climate, the container of all Italian events dealing with the fight against climate change. Environmental, climate and energy regeneration can only pass through the Mediterranean, which only a few days ago, on July 8, saw its first dedicated International Day. “If we fight for the environment, we fight for balance,” recalls Grammenos Mastrojeni, Assistant Secretary-General of the Union for the Mediterranean and a speaker at the Food For Earth G20 Edition.
Even Pope Bergoglio reminded us today that to reach “the Zero Hunger goal it is not enough to produce food, but it takes a new mentality and a new holistic approach.” Thus, the Mediterranean, a sea surrounded by different lands, Medium Terrae, becomes the clearest example of openness to diversity, always mindful of the value of interconnection and interchange, and it is precisely this mare nostrum that we believe is worth focusing on to start again.
