Committee on Commodity Problems

Trade and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

24 October 2017, FAO Headquarters

Eradicating hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition by 2030 are key goals in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that Members of the United Nations adopted in September 2015. The new Agenda contains a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets.

The 2030 Agenda recognizes that transparent, non-distorted and wellfunctioning global agricultural markets are an essential element in the global effort to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG 2). SDG 17 on the means of implementation and strengthening the global partnership for sustainable development contains a separate section on trade, including a specific target to “promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization”.

Today there is enough food produced globally to feed everyone in the world, yet 815 million people continue to be chronically undernourished. Agricultural trade can play a central role in the fight against hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, and increasingly so in the context of climate change.

Objectives

  Inform and sensitize the Members about the state of play of the WTO agricultural trade negotiations and the preparation for the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference

  Debate and highlight the role of trade in achieving food security and improved nutrition and the articulation of food security needs in the multilateral trading system, in the context of the 2030 Agenda