Setting the Table for our Children – Improving governance of food systems through multi stakeholder action [CORE]
‘Setting the Table for our Children’ envisions a future in which sustainable and healthy food is affordable and attainable to all. It proposes to bring down the tremendous obvious and hidden economic, health, social and environmental costs of current food production and consumption patterns by promoting a food systems approach to food policy planning and governance.
Food systems need to function within the context of a finite and shrinking resource base. More explicitly, in the future they will need to cope with challenges posed by exhaustible fresh water reserves and a growing demand for energy. Currently collaboration across the food system is rare with silo-thinking predominant within the public sector, private sector and civil society. Moreover many food systems – as a result of incoherent or inadequate and exclusive policy planning - rather exploit resources, externalize costs to the environment or vulnerable communities, produce inefficiencies and mainly build on end-of-pipe solutions. There’s an urgent need to accelerate the shift to more sustainable food systems to safeguard a food secure future. ‘Setting the Table for our Children’ brings together different actors from civil society, private and public sector through practice in multistakeholder platforms. They will commit towards sustainable food charters and strategies at local and national level, while developing and implementing transformative policies and practices towards sustainable food systems. Capacity building activities like the facilitation of trainings and courses on systems thinking and stakeholder engagement will empower food system stakeholders anywhere to become active agents in realising the shift to more sustainable food systems. An interactive global community of practice will gather and inform best sustainable food systems practices and policies, and be the learning component of the proposed initiative. - Contact: nvaart@hivos.org; marina.bortoletti@un.org
