Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Re: HLPE 3rd Note on Critical, Emerging and Enduring Issues - consultation on the V0 draft

V0 draft of the CEEI note for e-consultation: Observations by Rod Cooke (CFS advisory Group member representing CGIAR). 

Thanks for your invitation of 26 April to comment. The seven CEEI stated in the covering note are: 

1. Building resilient supply chains for FSN

2. Urban and peri-urban food systems

3. Conflicts and the fragility of food systems

4. Revitalizing climate policies for FSN

5. Recognizing the role and rights of food system workers

6. Building a meaningful interface for diverse knowledges and practices for FSN

7. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases challenging FSN. 

The seven CEEI identified by the HLPE are very broadly based and cover the most important issues affecting food security and nutrition. The trends identified, aspects described and references listed in some of the CEEI are somewhat narrow and should be expanded. I offer comments below.  

1. Building resilient supply chains for FSN.

I note that the title is now in the V0 Building resilient and equitable supply chains for FSN. I had argued for this in my mail of 29 March to CFS. That mail gave several supporting references to the supply chain /value chain literature.  I now add an update on the evolving CGIAR research portfolio: one of the new research initiatives has the title  ‘Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainabilities’. This provides many recent references and analyses for consideration by the HLPE team. 

This Initiative aims to provide evidence on what types of bundled innovations, incentive structures, and policies are most effective for creating more equitable sharing of income and employment opportunities in growing food markets, while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint. 

This objective will be accomplished through: 

  • Making globally integrated value chains inclusive, efficient, and environmentally sustainable. 
  • Innovation for inclusive and sustainable growth of domestic food value chains. 
  • Innovations and policy design for development of cross-value chain services to leverage new employment and income opportunities. 
  • Knowledge tools for policy coherence and market reform for inclusive and sustainable food market transformation. 

A full description of this initiative (and associated references) can be found on the cgiar.org site under ‘Portfolio Explorer’. 

2. Urban and peri-urban food systems

I noted in an earlier exchange last March that Peri-urban food systems have been studied by many groups and are very country/location specific; a key factor being changing peri-urban land values – often a hot political issue. I recommend an approach that would ease any derived policy convergence would be along the lines of ‘ Strengthening food systems in the context of urbanisation and rural transformation’.  

HLPE 15 (2020) on building a global narrative to 2030 included as recommendation 9:  

‘ADDRESS THE SPECIFIC NEEDS OF DIVERSE RURAL AND URBAN CONTEXTS IN FORMULATING FSN POLICIES’. The associated text – to revisit in this consultation to strengthen the drivers and key questions -includes: 

  1. Ensure more equitable access to land and productive agricultural resources for small-scale producers who remain vital providers of food and food security in much of the less industrialized world.  
  2. Encourage investment in rural infrastructure development, agricultural services and access to markets, in order to mitigate rural to urban migration.  
  3. Develop policies that are targeted to helping people living with poverty in rural and urban areas to access nutritious food and healthier food environments.  
  4. Ensure that FSN policies and programmes connect growing rural and urban food needs, including in small- and medium- size towns, to sustainable livelihoods in the countryside that appeal to young people.  
  5. Support private and public sector investment in, and state-facilitated development of, peri-urban and urban agriculture in order to bring fresh foods, especially perishable horticultural products that are rich in micronutrients, closer to markets.  

In box 14 of that HLPE 15 report there is DEFINING A ROBUST RESEARCH AGENDA. That note identified the several issues as being critical and emerging; the first one noted was  ‘anticipating the inter-connected future of urbanization and rural transformation’.  

In that context, I add an update on the evolving CGIAR research portfolio: one of the new research initiatives has the title Resilient Cities Through Sustainable Urban and Peri-Urban Agrifood Systems.This Initiative aims to support a vibrant, largely informal urban and peri-urban agrifood sector, to help improve sustainability, equity and opportunity growth, and mitigate risks to human and environmental health. This objective will be accomplished through: 

  • Enabling sustainable production of nutritious foods in (peri-) urban zones, by identifying, adapting, piloting and scaling technologies and institutional innovations together with local partners and in collaboration with local governments. 
  • Building inclusive and sustainable food markets and safeguarding supply chains, by identifying ways that urban food marketing contributes to city resilience through two pathways: 1) building on the sociocultural benefits and convenience of local ‘wet’ markets for low-income consumers, and 2) safeguarding food supply against losses and waste. 
  • Strengthening circular bioeconomy, food safety and the urban environment, through, for instance, supporting private and public actors with technologies, business and finance models for a more circular bioeconomy; and supporting municipal authorities with adoptable strategies and guidelines to maintain food safety in growing informal urban and peri-urban food production systems and supply chains. 
  • Improving food environments and consumer behavior for nutrition, by characterizing food environments, dietary patterns, and their drivers and variations across seasons for key target groups; and creating a toolkit for assessing urban and peri-urban food environments and diets, with guidance for how to improve these. 
  • Strengthening the evidence base and research and innovation capacities for urban and peri-urban agrifood system governance and growth, by developing a cross-sectoral urban and peri-urban agrifood systems resilience framework; supporting urban agrifood startup enterprises to translate research outputs into marketable innovations; and establishing a virtual center providing knowledge, research and capacity development support. 

A full description of this initiative (and associated references) can be found on the cgiar.org site under ‘Portfolio Explorer’. 

3. Conflicts and the fragility of food systems 

HLPE 15 (2020) on building a global narrative to 2030 included as recommendation 10: ‘ADDRESS THE FSN NEEDS OF THOSE AFFECTED BY CONFLICTS’. The associated text, pertinent to the ‘drivers’, includes: 

Provide timely, adequate and nutritious emergency food relief for people affected by conflicts, including displaced people.  

Ensure the availability of clean and adequate water and sanitation to facilitate food production, preparation and utilization in conflict and post-conflict situations.  

As emergency relief is phased out, rebuild the conditions to have normal functioning food systems in post conflict situations.  

Revitalize development and governance capacity and expertise in areas relevant to sustainable FSN during conflict and in post-conflict situations.  

The recent HLPE paper on the Ukraine crisis discussed at the CFS B/AG meeting on 28 April updates some of this thinking 

4. Revitalizing climate policies for FSN.  

This should replay the CFS 49 (October 2021) discussion and background documents on the three UN Rio Conventions and FSN. That event addressed the issues critical to the world’s food security and nutrition, as a follow up to the Ministerial Round Table held at the UNFSS Pre-Summit, where links between the Conventions were highlighted as they relate to food security. An IFPRI/CGIAR speaker at CFS 49 discussed the role of research in supporting the Rio Conventions, and noted that a lot of today’s challenges are a result of under-investment in research, especially research focused on environmental challenges. Noting that governments currently spend more than USD 700 billion annually to support farmers and food production, less than 3% of this goes towards agricultural innovation, and that CFS intervention called for incentives to induce a change. 

CFS 49 also included a Monitoring Event: CFS Policy Recommendations on Climate Change and Water. This discussed the use and application of the CFS policy recommendations on Food Security and Climate Change (2012) and Water for Food Security and Nutrition (2015). An earlier presentation by the HLPE considered these reports, and the scope for improvements in these areas. CGIAR inputs are included in that CFS 49 background document. An especially relevant CFS 49 Side event was SE 13 October 14: ‘Innovation as a force for good in the fight against climate change and malnutrition’, that SE explored many of these climate policy issues. 

In that context, I now add an update on the evolving CGIAR research portfolio one of the new research initiatives has the title ClimBeR: Building Systemic Resilience Against Climate Variability and Extremes. 

This Initiative aims to transform the climate adaptation capacity of food, land and water systems in six low- and middle-income countries, ultimately increasing the resilience of smallholder production systems to withstand severe climate change effects like drought, flooding and high temperatures. This objective will be accomplished through: 

  • Reducing risk in production system-linked livelihoods and value chains at scale, through agricultural risk management, digital agro-climate services, climate-smart agricultural innovations, diversifying production systems and reducing nutritional impacts of climatic risks. 
  • Building production-system resilience through recognizing the relationships among climate, agriculture, security and peace, by providing robust science on the climate security and agriculture nexus, and designing evidence-based environmental, political and gender equitable solutions. 
  • Developing adaptation instruments to inform policy and investment, integrating a top-down approach using participatory scenario workshops, in-country task forces and knowledge integration workshops; and a bottom-up collective imagination of futures, incorporating existing innovative grassroots practices and ensuring the inclusion of women, youth and marginalized groups. 
  • Multiscale governance for transformative adaptation, through: developing and integrating bottom-up multiscale polycentric governance frameworks for reducing systemic cascading risks; co-demonstrating transformative adaptation options with relevant actors to illustrate applicability across scales; and co-developing “champions of change” to advocate for multiscale polycentric governance. 

A full description of this initiative (and associated references) can be found on the cgiar.org site under ‘Portfolio Explorer’. 

The CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition (2021) are structured around seven focus areas encapsulating cross-cutting factors that are relevant for improving diets and nutrition. The second focus area is: ‘Sustainable Food Supply Chains to Achieve Healthy Diets in the Context of Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability, and Climate Change’. This focus area includes ‘seeks to mainstream climate adaptation and mitigation and promote the sustainable use and management of natural resources’. The associated text bears re-visiting by HLPE in this consultation.  

5. Recognizing the role and rights of food system workers 

HLPE 15 (2020) on building a global narrative to 2030 included as recommendation 1: ‘UPHOLD THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE RIGHT TO FOOD AND OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS IN FSN’. The associated text, useful to strengthen this CEEI, includes:

  1. States should take stronger actions to honour their obligations and duties to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food and protect agency. This affects all states in the world in a spirit of solidarity.  
  2. Empower citizens as food system participants, especially women, indigenous people, migrant workers, displaced people and refugees and other vulnerable people and communities to exercise agency over their own livelihoods and ensure access to diverse, nutritious and safe food.  
  3. Ensure that food systems are more equitable and work for the world’s most marginalized producers, consumers and workers. The global private sector has a great responsibility here.  
  4. Provide support services and social protection, including in crises and complex emergencies.  
  5. The CFS should formally strengthen the Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food, by moving from “progressive realization” to “unconditional realization.”  

That HLPE 15 report presents six dimensions of Food security and one of those is ‘Agency’. The text relating to that aspect includes consideration of human rights and disparities in wealth, income and power dynamics. 

6. Building a meaningful interface for diverse knowledge and practices for FSN 

There is a vast literature on this topic. Much of that is captured in the evolving CGIAR research portfolio: one of the new research initiatives has the title Harnessing Digital Technologies for Timely Decision-Making Across Food, Land and Water Systems. This provides a rich source of relevant issues and recent references. 

This Initiative aims to support sustainable and inclusive transformation of food, land and water systems by bridging the gender and urban-rural digital divide, improving equitable access to and quality of available information and systems, and strengthening local capabilities to best make use of the potential of digital technologies. This objective will be accomplished through: 

  • Enabling environment for digital ecosystems, including policies, investment plans, frameworks, and innovation support systems, to strengthen local digital ecosystems and support the access of agrifood system actors to digital technologies and their management of climate and market risks. 
  • Bridging the gender digital divide, by developing a suite of tools and guidelines to track digital inclusion and present options to strengthen the empowerment and resilience of marginalized women and girls.  
  • System dynamics modeling for food, water, and land resource management: Building on system dynamics modeling with real-time data, the Initiative aims to complement natural resource management initiatives in the region with a next-generation decision support system. 
  • Real-time monitoring of food systems for decisions to inform multiple stakeholders who make time-critical decisions to respond to variation and shocks. 
  • Enabling digital platforms and services for research and development practitioners, facilitating user-specific, appropriate delivery of administrative and private data for the inclusive benefit of the public, and for more effective evidence-based decision making in food-water-land systems in a climate crisis. 

7. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases challenging FSN. 

In the CFS advisory group, we have had several discussions on the need for a ‘One Health’ approach; including presentations and side events at CFS 47 (February 2021). Much of that is captured in the evolving CGIAR research portfolio: one of the new research initiatives has the title Protecting Human Health Through a One Health Approach. 

This Initiative aims to demonstrate how One Health principles and tools integrated into food systems can help reduce and contain zoonotic disease outbreaks, improve food and water safety, and reduce anti-microbial resistance, benefitting human, animal, and environmental health. This objective will be achieved through: 

  • Pre-empting the emergence and spread of zoonoses with epidemic and pandemic potential at the interface of wildlife, livestock, and people, including in bush meat value chains. 
  • Reducing the burden of foodborne disease with a focus on animal-source and other perishable foods, including in informal and traditional food systems. 
  • Reducing the selection and spread of anti-microbial resistance from livestock, fish and crop production systems. 
  • Improving waste and water management, with a focus on pollution from livestock and aquaculture, including zoonotic pathogens, antimicrobial residues and antimicrobial resistant bacteria and resistance genes. 
  • Testing the effects of capacity building, incentives, and monitoring on behavior of value chain actors and government personnel providing support or oversight for relevant sectors. Assessing the cost-effectiveness of innovations and the private and public cases for investment. 

A full description of this initiative (and associated references) can be found on the cgiar.org site under ‘Portfolio Explorer’. 

I hope that these comments are useful to the HLPE team taking these CEEI forward. 

Dr R D Cooke  

CFS Advisory Group member, representing the CGIAR System Organisation