Policy-makers must find a way to “feed the world and save the planet at the same time,” QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said at the G20 Leaders Summit in Rome last Sunday.
“Climate change will compromise our ability to produce sufficient amounts of nutritious foods and increase poverty and deepen inequalities,” Qu said.
Qu spoke during two sessions—one focused on climate change and the environment and the other on sustainable development—at the Summit hosted by Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy and attended, mostly in person, by presidents and heads of government representing around two-thirds of the world’s population and an even higher share of its economic activity.
He expressed his thanks to Italy for its support to the Food Coalition initiative and for making sure that global food security was high on the agenda throughout the 2021 G20 Presidency. The Leaders Summit culminated a year with 175 events, 20 ministerial meetings, two other G20 Leaders-meetings—one on Health and one on Afghanistan—as well as dozens of working group sessions that have led among other outcomes to the Matera Declaration on Food Security, Nutrition and Food Systems, to which FAO was a major contributor.
Agri-food systems around the world are being threatened by a hosts of factors ranging from civil conflicts to biodiversity loss, and the Covid-19 pandemic has made things worse, pushing more than 800 million people into chronic hunger, while another 3 billion cannot afford healthy diets, the director-general said.
“We are not on track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees,” he said.
With just nine agricultural seasons until the 2030 target date for the Sustainable Development Goals, “the urgency for climate action is stronger than ever,” the director-general told the G20 leaders. “Politicians need to take stronger leadership, People need to take the ownership and all society must work in coherent partnership based on science and innovation.”
The G20 Rome Leaders Declaration culminating the Summit encouraged partners and stakeholders everywhere “to collaborate with or join the Food Coalition launched by FAO as a means to respond to the impacts of Covid-19 on food security and nutrition.” Leaders also recognized the importance of sustainable agri-food systems not only to combat hunger but also to “make a major contribution to tackling the interlinked global challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
Image courtesy of FAO photo