FAO's work helps guide priorities and outcomes for G7 and G20 leaders
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu speaks at the G7 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting in Syracuse, Italy.
©FAO/Alessandra Benedetti
21/10/2024
Rome - FAO’s decisive participation in major international governmental fora is increasingly producing agreements and alignments between the Organization’s priorities and those of the world’s major countries to accelerate the progress towards the achievement of SDG2.
Examples include the G20 Agriculture Ministerial meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil, which upgraded the role of smallholders, who operate 90 percent of the world’s farms, by agreeing to hold a future session dedicated to Family Farming. Director-General QU Dongyu hailed this move as “an important step forward” to ensuring that transforming agrifood systems takes place in an inclusive and equitable way with on-the-ground effectiveness.
At the G7 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting in September, Qu presented some of the stark findings in the latest FAO flagship report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI) and the G7 ministers reiterated their broad commitment to make agrifood systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, to improve global food security and nutrition and explicitly noted that sustainable agrifood systems can help address the climate crisis and biodiversity losses. The G7 also gave a focus to Africa where, according to SOFI, hunger risks in 2030 are greatest if agrifood systems are not transformed.
At the G7 Development Ministers Meeting in Pescara, Italy, starting on 23 October, participants will discuss and likely pledge to launch the Apulia Food Systems Initiative (AFSI) to dismantle structural barriers to food security and nutrition and to help build resilient sustainable and productive agrifood systems. It is one of the first G7 initiatives to focus on linkages between climate and food security challenges and has the overarching goal of ensuring that all people can progressively realize the right to adequate food.
That summit will also be critical for pushing forward with the FAO-led move to develop and launch a Financing for Shock-Driven Food Crisis Facility (FSFC) closely coordinated with WFP and UN OCHA that can involve private capital from global insurance markets and provide rapid-response financing in anticipation of severe food crises. This facility will bring one of the preventive dimensions needed to enhance resilience among the most vulnerable.
As the G7 and G20 comprise powerful swathes of the global economy, such announcements carry much clout and promise. They also fit well with FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-2031, itself built as an overarching scheme for the integrated Four Betters - Better Production, Better Nutrition, a Better Environment, and a Better Life – leaving no one behind – which represent an organizing principle for how FAO intends to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).
The Four Betters “are actionable pathways at global, regional, national and local levels to achieving the SDGs and creating a sustainable and food-secure world for all today and tomorrow,” Qu told the G20 ministers.
Key points
FAO’s alignment with the G20 outcomes this year center on the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty rolled out by Brazil, holder of the G20 presidency, and focus on the prospective roles of smallholder farmers and aquaculture and are governed by three pillars: knowledge, finance and country-level actions. The Global Alliance, designed around national action, financial support and knowledge pillars, provides a unique opportunity to support country-owned action in the promotion of food security and healthy diets and to eradicate hunger and poverty.
FAO has been actively involved in the development of the Alliance and the formulation of its policy basket and has made clear it is ready to technically support countries that choose to implement policy instruments within its mandate.
More concretely, G20 members endorsed FAO’s offer to host the support mechanism of the alliance, with a Rome office at FAO headquarters, a Global south office in Brasilia, regional liaison hubs in Addis Ababa and Bangkok, and a Washington office set up in collaboration with international financial institutions. FAO will also host the support mechanism of the Global Alliance.
Meanwhile, FAO is working closely with the G7 on initiatives to promote healthy soils, improve nutrition in diets and address the climate-agrifood nexus, which dovetails into the workstream around the COP climate summits. A prime example is FAO’s work on the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) together with the United States of America and other partners, which is geared to providing African farmers with new growing opportunities, optimized information on soils and with proper market opportunities.
“FAO drives tangible changes on the ground, implementing projects and helping countries identify new investment opportunities,” Qu told the G7 ministers in Syracuse.
The FSFC, designed in close collaboration with the World Food Programme and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, will also involve International financial institutions, multinational development banks, as well as more stakeholders engaged in various disaster risk financing initiatives that are now leveraging capital available through global development insurance programs.
Its focus is to provide rapid-response financing to the humanitarian and developmental community in anticipation of local high levels of acute food insecurity, in order to prevent escalation and save both lives and donor resources. A transformative platform for cooperation and coordination, the FSFC shifts the paradigm from a reactive to a more proactive system capable of mitigating risks. Predictability and speed in deploying resources more cost-effectively and with greater returns are driving factors to protect the hard-won resilience and development gains people on the ground have made.
Cross-cutting and persistent
In an increasingly complex world, FAO’s core mandates require inputs from multiple actors and sectors to proceed. That explains why senior management engages in topics ranging from health and the environment to digital technologies.
In February, Qu went to the G20 Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting and appealed for peace, recognition of the right to food and reform of multilateral institutions. In July, he went to the G20 Development Ministerial Meeting and emphasized that, in a world where the climate crisis is affecting the food security of the most vulnerable, economic growth must be supported by policies aimed at reducing inequalities.
Remarkable achievements when the world’s largest economies sum up their efforts. “Let us be guided by our collective responsibility to respond to those in most need of our assistance,” Qu said.
FAO, mandated to serve a broader constituency of 194 Members, is well placed to serve as a bridge for knowledge, resource mobilization and concrete implementation between G20 and G7 Members and countries that face greater resource constraints while also bearing the brunt of specific adversities such as conflicts and universal challenges such as the climate crisis.
Examples include the G20 Agriculture Ministerial meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil, which upgraded the role of smallholders, who operate 90 percent of the world’s farms, by agreeing to hold a future session dedicated to Family Farming. Director-General QU Dongyu hailed this move as “an important step forward” to ensuring that transforming agrifood systems takes place in an inclusive and equitable way with on-the-ground effectiveness.
At the G7 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting in September, Qu presented some of the stark findings in the latest FAO flagship report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI) and the G7 ministers reiterated their broad commitment to make agrifood systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, to improve global food security and nutrition and explicitly noted that sustainable agrifood systems can help address the climate crisis and biodiversity losses. The G7 also gave a focus to Africa where, according to SOFI, hunger risks in 2030 are greatest if agrifood systems are not transformed.
At the G7 Development Ministers Meeting in Pescara, Italy, starting on 23 October, participants will discuss and likely pledge to launch the Apulia Food Systems Initiative (AFSI) to dismantle structural barriers to food security and nutrition and to help build resilient sustainable and productive agrifood systems. It is one of the first G7 initiatives to focus on linkages between climate and food security challenges and has the overarching goal of ensuring that all people can progressively realize the right to adequate food.
That summit will also be critical for pushing forward with the FAO-led move to develop and launch a Financing for Shock-Driven Food Crisis Facility (FSFC) closely coordinated with WFP and UN OCHA that can involve private capital from global insurance markets and provide rapid-response financing in anticipation of severe food crises. This facility will bring one of the preventive dimensions needed to enhance resilience among the most vulnerable.
As the G7 and G20 comprise powerful swathes of the global economy, such announcements carry much clout and promise. They also fit well with FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-2031, itself built as an overarching scheme for the integrated Four Betters - Better Production, Better Nutrition, a Better Environment, and a Better Life – leaving no one behind – which represent an organizing principle for how FAO intends to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).
The Four Betters “are actionable pathways at global, regional, national and local levels to achieving the SDGs and creating a sustainable and food-secure world for all today and tomorrow,” Qu told the G20 ministers.
Key points
FAO’s alignment with the G20 outcomes this year center on the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty rolled out by Brazil, holder of the G20 presidency, and focus on the prospective roles of smallholder farmers and aquaculture and are governed by three pillars: knowledge, finance and country-level actions. The Global Alliance, designed around national action, financial support and knowledge pillars, provides a unique opportunity to support country-owned action in the promotion of food security and healthy diets and to eradicate hunger and poverty.
FAO has been actively involved in the development of the Alliance and the formulation of its policy basket and has made clear it is ready to technically support countries that choose to implement policy instruments within its mandate.
More concretely, G20 members endorsed FAO’s offer to host the support mechanism of the alliance, with a Rome office at FAO headquarters, a Global south office in Brasilia, regional liaison hubs in Addis Ababa and Bangkok, and a Washington office set up in collaboration with international financial institutions. FAO will also host the support mechanism of the Global Alliance.
Meanwhile, FAO is working closely with the G7 on initiatives to promote healthy soils, improve nutrition in diets and address the climate-agrifood nexus, which dovetails into the workstream around the COP climate summits. A prime example is FAO’s work on the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) together with the United States of America and other partners, which is geared to providing African farmers with new growing opportunities, optimized information on soils and with proper market opportunities.
“FAO drives tangible changes on the ground, implementing projects and helping countries identify new investment opportunities,” Qu told the G7 ministers in Syracuse.
The FSFC, designed in close collaboration with the World Food Programme and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, will also involve International financial institutions, multinational development banks, as well as more stakeholders engaged in various disaster risk financing initiatives that are now leveraging capital available through global development insurance programs.
Its focus is to provide rapid-response financing to the humanitarian and developmental community in anticipation of local high levels of acute food insecurity, in order to prevent escalation and save both lives and donor resources. A transformative platform for cooperation and coordination, the FSFC shifts the paradigm from a reactive to a more proactive system capable of mitigating risks. Predictability and speed in deploying resources more cost-effectively and with greater returns are driving factors to protect the hard-won resilience and development gains people on the ground have made.
Cross-cutting and persistent
In an increasingly complex world, FAO’s core mandates require inputs from multiple actors and sectors to proceed. That explains why senior management engages in topics ranging from health and the environment to digital technologies.
In February, Qu went to the G20 Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting and appealed for peace, recognition of the right to food and reform of multilateral institutions. In July, he went to the G20 Development Ministerial Meeting and emphasized that, in a world where the climate crisis is affecting the food security of the most vulnerable, economic growth must be supported by policies aimed at reducing inequalities.
Remarkable achievements when the world’s largest economies sum up their efforts. “Let us be guided by our collective responsibility to respond to those in most need of our assistance,” Qu said.
FAO, mandated to serve a broader constituency of 194 Members, is well placed to serve as a bridge for knowledge, resource mobilization and concrete implementation between G20 and G7 Members and countries that face greater resource constraints while also bearing the brunt of specific adversities such as conflicts and universal challenges such as the climate crisis.