ECOSOC Coordination Segment 2024 Panel on “Resilient and sustainable food systems: the path to advance SDG 2 and beyond”

Question for FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero:
As of 2022, approximately 735 million people – or 9.2% of the global population — experienced chronic hunger — a figure continually increasing due to ongoing major humanitarian crises, conflicts, climate shocks, escalating cost of living, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These worrying trends coincide with the diminishing availability of land; increasing soil and biodiversity degradation; and more frequent and severe weather events. Could you provide a short overview of the key messages from the discussion on SDG 2 at the Partnership Forum’s SDG action segment? What insights and strategies need to be adopted to build resilient, sustainable food systems and how are these advanced by FAO?  

Chief Economist's response to Partnership Forum question:

Thank you Mr. Chair. 

Let me start with your first question. We had a lively session discussion on SDG 2 at the Partnership Forum, with representatives of youth, academia, civil society and family farmers showcasing how partnerships can advance our goal of ending hunger and malnutrition. Briefly, the three main takeaways were:

• The urgent need for Synergistic Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration to achieve SDG 2
• The importance of a global consensus that we need to move towards more sustainable, equitable and resilient agrifood systems, and that inclusive Engagement is an important part of this. 
• And, finally, that we need transformational partnerships, that evolve and are flexible to meet complex challenges in changing circumstances. 
• FAO is committed to continue to support these efforts.

What insights and strategies need to be adopted to build resilient, sustainable food systems and how are these advanced by FAO?  

• The solution lies in transforming our agrifood systems  to make them more inclusive, sustainable, and with greater resilience to major drivers, while ensuring affordable healthy diets. 
• Conflicts, climate extremes and economic swings are a reality that will not disappear but will continue to occur and increasingly occur in combinations. 
• So, the critical question is what needs to be done? 
• We face significant challenges and must redouble and better target our efforts, if we are to achieve our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.
• Resilience has been discussed in details in SOFA 2021. Other SOFI and SOFA reports have looked at specific solutions
• Scale up climate resilience across food systems [SOFI 2018]. Climate is the major source of shock that will not disappear, but we can mitigate the future damage (lower emissions) and adapt to ongoing changes. [entry point for roadmap]
e.g. reducing climate-related risks and adapting to climate change; climate risk monitoring and early warning systems
• Address the challenges of water scarcity and excesses [SOFA 2020]
• Integrate humanitarian, development and peacebuilding policies in conflict areas [SOFI 2017]
e.g  peacebuilding effort linked to livelihood support, nutrition-sensitive social protection and food production and supply programmes
• Strengthen the resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity [SOFI 2019]
E.g. expanding social protection schemes. 
• Intervene along supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods for consumers [SOFI 2021]
E.g.   Increase investments for more diverse and productive agriculture sector, promoting nutritious foods. Nutritious food are often the most impacted by disruptors (climate shocks, logistics)
• Realign policies and public spendings, aka the repurposing debate, to deliver access for healthy diets and improve sustainability through focusing on resilient-enhancing measures.
All these interventions have to be gender sensitive [see The status of women in agrifood systems 2023].
Due to the current dynamics, much stronger efforts are needed to address the structural problems that afflict the African continent, and efforts to build resilience on this continent needs to accelerate.

FAO has developed the roadmap of achieving SDG2 without breaching the 1.5 degrees. FAO's roadmap involves an extensive process that spans three years, starting with COP 28 in 2023. It commences with a global vision for what ails agrifood systems today and goes on to explore financing options for the actions required, before culminating in a discussion of how to attract concrete investment and policy packages by the time COP 30 takes place. It also examines how to integrate technical assistance into our strategies while supporting sustainable investment plans. Our objective is to create a repository of both bankable and non-bankable projects in various domains. The roadmap has 10 domains, 120 actions and 20 milestones.