Yesterday, November 29, Luisa Volpe, Head of Policy Development at the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), addressed the “Independent Summit Dialogues Public Forum” organized by the Special Envoy on Food Systems, Dr Agnes Kalibata and the 4SD Director, David Nabarro with other esteemed Food Systems Dialogues Convenors to celebrate the accomplishments and lessons learnt of the dialogues as a pillar of the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 (UNFSS 2021)
Democracy, transparency and a participatory structure as crucial strengths of the Summit Dialogues
Luisa Volpe started her intervention by praising the Dialogues methodology that ensures a true, open, transparent and democratic exchange: “You do not need to be an expert. Everyone is an expert because the goal is to bring everyone’s perspective on the matter so to build on the diversity of views and work on common ground,” WFO Head of Policy stated.
She went over the series of Independent Dialogues WFO convened or co-convened in the last 18 months, starting from those with Consumers International where farmers and consumers could exchange closely and openly for the first time in history. “National consumers’ organisations and national farmers’ organisations could share their views on opportunities to strengthen their collaboration at the national and global level through their respective global structures. But also, on how to transform food systems at the local level through closer collaboration between producers and consumers”.
Summit Dialogues’ best result to Farmers: the Food Producers Declaration for the UNFSS 2021
The Head of Policy Development didn’t miss to mention that WFO, in partnership with other Farmers’ Organisations, convened two Global Independent Dialogues: one among Producers and the second one in collaboration with the UN Food Systems Summit Secretariat, between Producers and other stakeholders in the food systems.
As a result of these dialogues, food producers’ organisations from different corners of the globe came together as one and independent voice and signed a joint Producers Declaration to be presented at the Food Systems Summit, in which they agreed on some critical points:
- Enhancing resilience of the food producers.
- Rebalancing Power in food value chains.
- Enhancing Food Producers’ Access to Finance.
- Empowerment of Food Producer’ Organizations at all levels: local, national, regional and global.
- Need to create a strong independent voice for food producers at the UN level.
The Dialogues as a mechanism of change to leave no one behind from now to 2030
Reflecting on the future, Luisa Volpe underlined how the dialogues could support the interaction among the Coalitions of Actions emerged within the UNFSS 2021 to align towards a transformation of food systems that makes all feel comfortable. WFO, in partnership with other international bodies and Governments, has launched the Coalition on Sustainable Livestock.
In the same way, dialogues can support the implementation of the national pathways for food systems transformation, ensuring that none is left behind at a national level. The Dialogues can be a critical instrument to create interlinkages between farmers’ local best practices and the global political agenda on Food Systems.
She remarked how the instrument of the Dialogues would also be good to foster an inclusive discussion at the country level between pathways and the NDCs because of COP27 and 28 that we all would like to be focusing on food.
Boosting dialogues where everybody can share their experiences is also a critical way to feed the global agenda with local solutions and the other way around, making sure that global processes are understood and owned by local implementers.
“The methodology of the Dialogues is the guarantee that no one will be left behind from now to 2030 in the implementation of the Food Systems Summit and the overall 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” the WFO Head of Policy Development affirmed in her conclusions.
Watch the event recording HERE: https://fb.watch/9D0W2mN5tG/