Our agrifood systems need transformative finance, governance
The Director of the FAO Office of Sustainable Development Goals, Stefanos Fotiou, spoke at today’s Moment for Nature high-level thematic debate, discussing how agrifood systems serve as a cohesive avenue to foster a healthy planet.
Today saw the High-level Thematic Debate of the UN General Assembly: Moment for Nature, convened by the 76th President of the UN General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid. The event fostered proactive dialogue, a cohesion of ideas, and a shared resolve among global environmental workstreams, in order to keep the 1.5-degrees target alive and accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Participating from FAO at the high-level debate was Stefanos Fotiou, Director of the FAO Office of SDGs and Director of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, hosted by FAO on behalf of the UN system.
With only eight years before our agreed timeline to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is no time to lose, Fotiou said, speaking of FAO’s strong belief that transformations towards sustainable agrifood systems are inherently an acceleration for achieving all SDGs.
Fotiou reaffirmed the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub’s commitment to a transparent and inclusive approach to supporting countries to operationalize their national pathways for agrifood systems transformations as a follow-up of the 2021 Food Systems Summit.
“FAO is convinced that agrifood systems are one of the most promising areas holding solutions for the triple planetary crisis,” Fotiou remarked. In this effort, the Hub is working to develop a 'Food Systems Solution Portfolio' of technologies, practices, and methods that all countries can use to transform their agrifood systems based on the SDGs.
As part of these efforts, all solution providers – governments, the private sector, young entrepreneurs, financial institutions, resource partners, and academia – are invited to become part of this solutions space, he added.
Towards transformative vision, finance, and governance
Participating in the panel segment ‘Cultivating coherent system-wide responses to tackle interlinked planetary crises’, Fotiou joined other UN speakers to discuss about the need for greater synergies and coherence across all the environmental work streams and at all policy planning and implementation levels.
Fotiou highlighted three areas deserving immediate attention, with eyes on 2030 and beyond.
First, we must prioritize an inclusive approach that benefits women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples, as they have been historically more impacted by hunger and food insecurity. This is especially the case at a time when the world’s most vulnerable find themselves paying the most for less food.
Second, we shall come together to support the leveraging of new finance, becoming more innovative with our budgets, while rethinking how and why our current food and agriculture architecture is producing negative externalities worth at least USD 6 trillion, according to World Bank estimates.
“Leveraging finance for agrifood systems transformations is one of the most attractive ways to catalyze bold action for the SDGs, Fotiou said. “If we get it right, our agrifood systems can become champions for development, becoming profitable, equitable, sustainable, healthy, and mindful of our environment”.
Third, it is important that we treat agrifood systems as a vehicle to deliver on the cross-cutting solutions that the SDGs expect from us. Doing so can only happen through system-wide approaches to safeguard and maintain our global commons.
All SDGs call for cross-cutting solutions, Fotiou highlighted. This means that we must address the root causes of our global challenges, he said, referring to FAO’s crosscutting approach anchored in its Strategic Framework 2022–2031, including recent calls for bold, collaborative actions to ensure everyone enjoys access to healthy diets, while safeguarding our planet's resources.
Related links
- Watch the recording from today’s high-level thematic debate.
- Have all your questions about the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub answered here.
- Follow @stefanosfotiou and @FoodSystems on Twitter for latest updates on the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.