Urban Food Agenda

UN General Assembly to assess the importance of the urban agenda

15/07/2022

The President of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, His Excellency Mr. Abdulla Shahid, convened a High-Level meeting to assess progress on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda (NUA), on 28 April 2022.

The NUA was adopted at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in 2016. Its implementation contributes to the localization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in an integrated manner, and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets, including Goal 11 of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

The President issued a Concept Note on key framing issues and objectives of the high-level meeting, which are available here. The meeting’s objectives were to reposition the New Urban Agenda strategically as a road map for accelerating sustainable development, climate action, and building peace, and to recognize the importance of cities and transformative actions for ensuring a more just, sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The General Assembly explictly recognized the importance of food in the key messages from the event, one of which refers to urbanization impacting both rural and urban areas. Rural places are affected by, and can benefit from, the accelerated growth of nearby cities. The focus on cities to achieve just transitions in energy, food systems, and digital connectivity should not come at the expense of rural areas and livelihoods. The NUA calls for policies that anticipate demographic shifts to ensure balanced development across all a country’s subregions.

The Deputy Secretary-General also warned that focusing on cities to achieve just transitions in energy, food systems, and digital connectivity should not come at the expense of rural areas and livelihoods. 

Among the shared messages, Manuel de Araújo, Mayor of Quelimane (Mozambique) noted that 70% of the global food supply is consumed by inhabitants in areas classified as urban. Therefore, unsustainable food systems contribute to food insecurity, malnutrition and obesity, climate change, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, and the over-exploitation and pollution of water, itself a vital component for food systems, health, sanitation and much more.

Renewed modalities of urbanisation and integrating food systems into city planning are central to sustainable food systems and will require empowering city and local governments to take action on urban food systems in their own jurisdictions, integrate them in local policies and plans and contribute to national efforts to reform food systems. He mentioned that the Coalition on sustainable and inclusive urban food systems, established by FAO and other partners pursuant to the UN Food Systems Summit, can be instrumental to raise awareness, connect partners, bridge the national-local food governance gap and promote the integration of food systems in urban and territorial planning and to share experiences, building on the FAO Urban Food Agenda, its existing networks such as the FAO city-to-city exchange, and cities networks.

Read the Full Summary HERE

Watch the speech HERE