To feed more than 10 billion people within our planetary boundaries by 2050, while ending hunger and tackling unhealthy diets, we will have to fundamentally change the food system, requiring co-ordinated and large-scale action by all stakeholders across multiple axes.
The ambition of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit is to launch a collective journey of transforming our food systems to give us the best possible chance of delivering on 2030 agenda. Everyone has a role to play in this. Only by coming together and challenging one another we can spark new ideas and create meaningful impact.
In a time of many seemingly insurmountable challenges, there is something that we can fix. One thing, which if changed could simultaneously accelerate the end of hunger, ensure everyone has access to a healthy diet, dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reverse biodiversity loss, and make societies and economies more equitable and resistant to devastating pandemics such as COVID-19.
In 2021 we nutrition champions are blessed with not one, but two summits to advance nutrition outcomes. The UN Food Systems Summit (FSS) will take place in September in New York and the Nutrition for Growth Summit will be held in Tokyo in December.
On the recent World Food Day, the clarion call was clearer than ever: We must fix our food systems to improve human health, drive economic growth, and save the planet from environmental collapse. The challenges facing us are wide-ranging. The way the world produces and consumes food causes huge environmental impacts, and yet 3 billion people worldwide are unable to afford a healthy diet, and up to a third of the food we produce is wasted.
Deteriorating nutrition and health outcomes have stimulated nutrition programmes and policies to strive to reduce the intake of salt, added sugar, and unhealthy fats towards recommended targets. Alongside promoting the consumption of fresh nutritious foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, and whole grains), reformulation of processed foods may make an important contribution to improving diets.
The UN Food Systems Summit will launch bold new actions, solutions and strategies to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems.
The Giving Women Annual Conference is a crucial platform for different actors including UN organisations, civil society, NGOs, business, academia, among others to inform, reflect, and act together to bring dignity and agency to women and girls worldwide.
