The Food System Summit’s Disconnection From People’s Real Needs

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit held in September 2021 has left the world with a jumble of ideas and no clear path forward for transforming the world’s food systems. The Summit was touted as the ultimate place to provide the world with solutions – but it never clarified the problems with the dominant food systems leaving participants with no coherent or cohesive framework. Most distressingly, the Food Systems Summit did not put the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing food crisis anywhere on its agenda. In this Policy Perspective, the author, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, provides his first-hand account of the effects of the Summit not focusing on people’s immediate needs during a food crisis. The author briefly touches upon the Summit’s role in the global debate around meat consumption. This debate exemplifies how the Summit did very little to change the substance of global food debates. Instead, the Summit can be understood as an inter-corporate contest that did not have any substantive regard for social justice or human rights.

‘Finprint’ technopolitics and the corporatisation of global food governance

“…The problem of corporate capture of global food governance institutions has long been recognised by critical social scientists and concerned non‐governmental organisations (Canfield et al., 2021). Nonetheless, the UNFSS of 2021 surprised many on the depth of corporate capture with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) (IPES‐Food, 2023, p. 5) calling it a ‘watershed moment in drawing attention to corporate influence over public food governance’ (also see Fakhri, 2022; McMichael, 2021). Corporate influence at the UNFSS was facilitated in a number of different ways, including through an explicit commitment to ‘multi‐stakeholderism’, which effectively allowed corporate actors to play a prominent and formal role in the agenda setting process (Montenegro de Wit et al., 2021).…”

“…Recent global food and food related summits have been criticised for the growing role of corporate actors in setting the agenda for food systems transformation (Canfield et al., 2021; Clapp et al., 2021; Fakhri, 2022). The problem of corporate capture in global food governance was especially evident in the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), which was widely condemned ‘as an elaborate process to undermine more democratic arenas of global food governance, while reinforcing corporate control over food systems’ (Canfield et al., 2021, p. 2).…”

Copping Out on Food Systems: How COP26 Failed to Address Food and Climate and How COP27 Can Solve It

“…The techno-fixes at the heart of initiatives like AIM4C may only served to maintain reliance on energy-intensive inputs and practices that contribute to the climate crisis and many other problems to the detriment of agroecological approaches (see for example, Clément & Ajena 2021). In an assessment of the failures of COP26, Sheather (2021) notes that without tackling the foundations of capitalism and the cur-1 Concern about the global governance of food systems was also raised with regards to the UN Food Systems Summit that was held in 2021 (see Fakhri 2022;Clapp et al, 2021). 2 It is worth noting that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also been central to this initiative.…”

“… 1 Concern about the global governance of food systems was also raised with regards to the UN Food Systems Summit that was held in 2021 (see Fakhri 2022 ; Clapp et al, 2021 ). …”

Catalysing sustainable development through regional food system governance: Strengthening the translation of regional food system policy guidance to national level in the Pacific

“…The literature suggests that institutional, ideational and interest‐based conditions might be behind the weakness of regional–national translation and thus need to be investigated to identify opportunities to strengthen food system governance in PICs (Canfield et al, 2021; Fakhri, 2022; Raschke & Cheema, 2008; Thow et al, 2011, 2021; UN, 2022b). As the strengthening of social, environmental and economic outcomes necessitates a ‘food systems lens’ that goes beyond sectoral objectives, food system governance requires a coordinated, multisectoral and multidisciplinary, and complex approach that creates coherence between multiple policy actors with often conflicting priorities (Vignola et al, 2021).…”