In an increasingly urbanised world, natural resources are under enormous pressure and significant shifts are occurring in what and how people access, eat and waste food. It is therefore critical to consider the role of city and local governments and their added value towards accelerated, more inclusive and sustainable food systems transformation.

There is an important need for interaction between the different levels of government to achieve effective food system actions. This was the message already voiced by Corinna Hawkes, Director of Food Systems Division at the FAO, during her opening of the side event Cities and local governments accelerating cohesive and inclusive food systems transformation and further clarified and supported by the various speakers and workshop conversations during this session as part of the 4th Global Conference of the Sustainable Food Systems Programme (SFS), held in Hanoi, Vietnam, last week. 

The urban side event was organised on the 25th of April 2023 by FAO, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Rikolto, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and the RUAF global partnership. It aimed to raise the voices of city and local governments as key stakeholders in national food system consultations and commitments, underscore the importance of context, and workshop a framework of action and guidelines on establishing effective and strengthened multi-level governance. 

The scene for the workshop session was set with a video declaration from Maxmillian Iranqhe, Mayor of Arusha, who illustrated with the concrete case of Arusha how the City Council has been actively working on critical food system issues and the importance of leadership in providing and shaping an enabling environment in which a diversity of safe, healthy foods are more easily accessible for all city residents. More voices from cities were included in the event through preliminary collection of feedback and ideas from cities and local government representatives, situated in a variety of contexts, about successes, barriers and learnings in multi-level governance on food systems; where multi-level governance is viewed as a key mechanism to facilitate countries' food system pathways’ implementation.

Charlotte Flechet, Global Director of the Good Food for Cities program at Rikolto and moderator for the event, led the participants along two main session components: a panel discussion and working groups on barriers and opportunities for multi-level food system governance. 

Panellists Mr Martin Hoppe from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Ms Mansi Shah, from the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA), Truong Tuyet Mai, Vice-Director of National Institute of Nutrition in Vietnam, and Tường Tạ Văn, Deputy Director of  the Agriculture and Rural Development Department, of Hanoi provided examples of local food policies and approaches for collaboration on different government levels and with non-state actors from their experience in various contexts.  

After the first discussion, panellists joined the audience in three working groups for a workshop-style engagement on what is important to address and which approaches to consider when developing guidelines on multi-level food system governance. Input from participants, panellists and consulted city representatives centred around three elements of multi-level food system governance: barriers, mechanisms (formal and informal) and expectations for the guidelines. 

Specific actions emerged from the discussion as key elements to achieve an effective multi-level food system governance, namely: establishing inclusive and effective participation in national policy processes, setting up coordination mechanisms and dedicated spaces for multi-level dialogues, strengthening information sharing and data collection across levels, building capacity on food systems thinking, allocating resources to these governance processes and their implementation,, and proactively involving non-state actors to close gaps between levels of government.

Outputs of this workshop will be the first step towards the development of the guidance note on engaging cities and local governments in multi-level food systems governance . The expressed barriers and expectations will also inform a set of interviews in selected case study countries to be carried out later this year.

In view of the 2023 UN-FSS Stocktaking Moment which will take place in Rome, between 24 - 26 July 2023, the SFS conference aimed to make a substantial contribution to the UN Food Systems Summit (UN-FSS) follow-up process by focusing on concrete, transformational actions to facilitate national and local policy-making processes within a sustainable food systems approach. The multi-level governance guidelines and framework is one of various actions the UNFSS Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Food System coalition works on to establish a strong, coordinated and meaningful ecosystem of support for countries’ food systems pathway implementation.

Jamie Morrison, Senior Advisor for GAIN, succinctly concluded the event with key points that can also guide next steps. This included the applicability of guidelines and a framework on multi-level governance in a wide variety of contexts, the critical importance of information sharing and urgency of local capacity building on a food systems approach, leveraging multi-level collaboration by mobilising governments on practical local-level food transformation entry points such as food waste and the role The Urban Food Systems Coalition might play in closing the gap between national and local level food systems transformations.