Every year, FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific celebrates the importance of World Food Day. This year, given the COVID-19 global pandemic and the disruptions it has caused to livelihoods and food security, our celebrations are muted, yet within this context, the World Food Day itself is more important than ever.

While the spread of the coronavirus has seriously disrupted food security and livelihoods for millions of people in this region, we also find ourselves far off-track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals to end malnutrition and poverty.

This World Food Day’s theme, ‘Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together – Our Actions are our Future’, underscores the need to immediately and urgently respond to, and recover from, the impact of COVID-19 on our food systems and the billions of people that rely on them.

What more appropriate day, than World Food Day

FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will host, virtually, on this day an interactive discussion on the ways forward – to examine FAO’s Asia and the Pacific Regional COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme – and to hear from you about ways we can work together. Indeed, we already work together in many areas – and we have some good practice case studies to share.

The Webinar will be joined by other resource and development partners specially invited from across Asia and the Pacific, including representatives from Governments, the private sector and civil society.

The event will begin with a video message from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, the FAO Special Goodwill Ambassador for Zero Hunger in Asia and the Pacific.

The FAO Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue on Joint Action for COVID-19 Response and Recovery will convene virtually, and by invitation only.

PROVISIONAL AGENDA

ACTION SHEETS

1. Addressing the impacts of COVID-19 in food crisis contexts
2. Data for decision-making
3. Economic inclusion and social protection to reduce poverty
4. Boosting smallholder resilience for recovery
5. Trade, intra-regional trade and food safety standards
6. Preventing new pandemics in Asia and the Pacific
7. Food systems transformation