Achieving the SDGs through food systems transformation
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2021, launched earlier this week, exposed devastating figures on rising rates of world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms: tens of millions of people have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished over the past five years, while a colossal 2.3 billion people — 30% of the world’s population — lacked year-round access to adequate food in 2020 alone.
Though food security has been eroded by the pandemic and globalized food systems in crisis, these findings demonstrate that the world was way off track to deliver on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — especially on SDG Goal #2:Zero Hunger — long before COVID-19 struck. It is in this context that the High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development (HLPF) — the ministerial level platform for review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — will meet to discuss ways to ensure a sustainable and resilient recovery from COVID-19 that puts the world on track to realize the 2030 Agenda. They will also discuss the integrated, indivisible, and interlinked nature of all the SDGs.
A common thread links every one of the 17 global goals: food.
Food systems affect every part of our lives — not just what we eat, but how we grow and transport it, who picks it, who owns the land that food is grown on, what chemicals are used, and to what environmental effect.
In adopting the SDGs in 2015, nations around the world formally recognized universal priorities for an equitable, sustainable, and healthy future and made a commitment to act. With food systems as a nexus point for the many great global challenges we face, there’s never been a better time to connect agendas and to act for change. Indeed, in 2016, Johan Rockström and Pavan Sukhdev presented the SDG “wedding cake” — an iconic graphic that demonstrates both how the economic, social, and ecological aspects of the SDGs must be viewed as interconnected and argued that food is the golden thread.
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food has developed seven Calls to Action — each backed and informed by eight years’ of research, dialogue, and case studies, demonstrating how the transformation of food systems is possible and highlighting the imperatives for action. In a similar way to the SDGs, all of the Calls to Actions are interlinked, interdependent and, when viewed as a set, present a blueprint for a future of food that is healthy, equitable, resilient, diverse, renewable, inclusive, and interconnected:
#1. Ensure inclusive, participatory approaches to governance as a way to address the structural inequities in food systems.
#2. Increase research for the public good that emphasizes indivisible ecological, health, social, and economic goals.
#3. Account for the environmental, social, and health impacts of food systems policies and practices in order to inform better decision-making.
#4. Direct public sector investment toward ecologically-beneficial forms of farming, healthy food, and resilient livelihoods and communities.
#5. Unlock investment opportunities in sustainable food systems and align private, philanthropic, and multilateral funders with national food systems actors.
#6. Create enabling environments where agroecology and regenerative approaches flourish.
#7. Promote nutritious, sustainable, whole-food diets adapted to local ecosystems and socio-cultural contexts.
If countries are serious about committing to the 17 SDGs, it’s time to address the root causes of dysfunctional and inequitable food systems by pulling the golden thread and acting on these seven transformative Calls to Action.
In preparing this article, ahead of the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit, the Global Alliance also set out to understand how each of the seven Calls to Action can be mapped according to each of the 17 SDGs (deep-dive into each of the SDGs here). In the graphs below, you’ll see a visual representation of which SDGs we consider to be most closely aligned with each Call to Action.
There are some important takeaways for us when reflecting on the below: this includes the importance of collaboration to connecting agendas and stimulating local and global action, to seeing how the Calls to Action can (and should) adapt further according to both the untapped opportunities available and to respond to the complex and changing context we live through during the Anthropocene.
#1. Ensure inclusive, participatory governance:
#2. Increase research for the public good:
#3. Account for externalities:
#4. Direct public finance and policy:
#5. Unlock private and multilateral investment:
#6. Enable agroecology and regenerative approaches:
#7. Promote nutritious, sustainable, whole-food diets:
