Thanks for this opportunity to contribute. As you well know, this is a topic I have been involved for decades including in the OEWG on Urbanisation and Rural Transformation. While I understand the trade offs that lead to the title of a HLPE report, the terminology urban and per-urban food systems is in my view too restrictive in the present global development agenda context (human rights, climate, health, conflict, energy, food, connectivity, mobility, natural resources management, e.g. biodiversity etc.). The time has finally come to reorient our work in the context of integrated territorial development and urban rural partnerships, food systems being clearly a major entry point.
- Do you find the proposed scope comprehensive to analyse and discuss the key issues concerning the role of urban and peri-urban food systems in achieving food security and nutrition? Are there any major gaps or omissions?
The present document is in my view biased to local food supply and short value chains. This is of course crucial but the report should adopt a broader perspective. The “territorial dimension of food systems for the realisation of the human right to food” is indeed essential.
The rationale should be expanded:
- It should bring out the impact of present urban food systems (which usually rely on imports) on surrounding rural areas and resulting temporary or permanent rural-urban migration.
- Rural areas can indeed provide local foods in season but also environmental services (water, clean air), renewable energy and leisure, all of which are directly or indirectly related to food
- The recent COVID crisis has raised awareness of the importance of rural areas for more healthy and affordable lifestyles. Clearly youth will go on migrating to cities in search of employment and socialisation but older people in many parts of the world either stayed or are returning to rural areas.
- One of the obstacles to sustainable territorial development is the inadequacy of the existing legal and regulatory framework (in particular regarding the informal sector).
- The need for an inter-sectoral approach is well taken, but health and social protection seems to be missing?
2. Good practices and successful experiences
Catering, and in particular collective catering (both public – e.g. school canteens - and private – e.g. enterprise catering), can and is playing a key role in reorienting diets, providing markets to family agriculture, strengthen local food processing, minimise waste and packaging etc. and overall reviving local economies.
There should be explicit mention of e-commerce.
Bibliography
Kindly include Urban-rural linkages: Guiding Principles- Framework for Action to Advance Integrated Territorial Development
https://unhabitat.org/urban-rural-linkages-guiding-principles
You may also want to check the following documents, which were elaborated in preparation of the 2021UN FSS
https://ecoagriculture.org/publication/governance-of-food-systems-transformation/
Other comments
Given the key role of conflicts in food insecurity , both international and internal conflicts should definitely be mentioned. But if this report is meant for a world audience, explicit reference to the war in Ukraine should be removed. As an African colleague of mine once told me, I could not possibly share this with counterparts in Haiti, Syria or Afghanistan…
Looking forward to the V0 version...
Dr. Florence Egal