المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

A very interesting document. Which reflects clearly the historical disconnect between « food security » on one hand and «nutrition » on the other.  Coming from the nutrition world, I learnt a lot about other MSPs. 

So far, MSPs have reflected the prevailing institutional set up and have been by and large sectoral. In the context of Agenda 2030 and given the need to address complexity, this is not good enough. We will need to get geography back in the picture and bring around the same table actors who are or should be engaged in sustainable territorial strategies.

Some of the MSPs I am familiar with are focussing on implementation, but in a previous phase the private sector stakeholders actually played a key role in supporting the design and promoting the policy or rationale for these interventions. Conflict of interest and power asymmetry are often obvious.

Funding is readily available for standard interventions that are presented as cost-effective and universal answers, and rarely provide sustainable solutions to local constraints.  Short term magic bullets can have negative implications in the mid and long term in social, environmental and economical terms while they may serve the short and longer term interests of some of the stakeholders.

In several instances reference is made to “the UN system”. In my experience specialised agencies and funds have very different logics and respond to different constraints. This is the case for engagement with the private sector. The ability of funds to participate in and benefit from MSPs bears no comparison to that of specialised agencies. This in turn contributes to further imbalance within the UN system and a distortion of programmes and policies towards quick impact action and away from addressing resilience, sustainability and complexity.