With the UN Food Systems Summit due this September, civil society organizations, universities, and social movements from all over the world have expressed concern regarding the way the summit is being organized, voicing their fears that the food decision-making bodies and processes may fall into the hands of big corporations.
A civil society letter co-signed by 550 signatories and addressed to UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, decried the fact that the summit would be organized by the UN in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) which “casts a cloud on the integrity of the United Nations”, the letter read.
Furthermore, the signatories denounced the appointment of Agnes Kalibata as the UN’s special envoy for the summit which, they said, “presents a clear conflict of interest with regards to the stated purpose of the summit”.
As a culmination of these events, the largest association of farmers’ and peasants’ organizations in the world, La Via Campesina (LVC) together with the CETIM, a research and publication centre dealing with development questions, addressed the assembly of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). According to them, the preparations for the summit have been seized by corporate lobbyists who defend the interests of those who treat food as a commodity and not as a basic human right.
Reasons for discontent
The UN Food Systems Summit is viewed as a multilateral platform, embracing multi-stakeholder inclusivity and building trust, with its roots going back to 1996 at the FAO World Food Summit. Yet the signatories of the letter feared that with such an organizational partner as WEF, the 2021 summit “is not building on the legacy of the past world food summits, which were clearly anchored in the FAO and resulted in the creation of innovative, inclusive, and participatory governance mechanisms with the goal of realizing the right to adequate food for all”.
The partnership with WEF for the organization of the forthcoming summit “would let food decision-making forums be co-opted by private interests and legitimize more corporate influence in public affairs”, said one of the letter’s signatories, the Hague-based international organization Hivos. “The WEF is a private-sector vehicle with no democratic mandate, accountability, or conflict resolution mechanism. Giving it so much influence would undermine existing democratic and inclusive food decision-making bodies like the Committee for World Food Security (CFS),” it added.
Regarding the discontent arising from the appointment of Agnes Kalibata as the UN’s special envoy for the summit, a separate letter was sent to the UN Secretary-General recalling that she had held the post of president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) whose “efforts have centered on capturing and diverting public resources to benefit large corporate interests”.
“Ignoring the past failures of the Green Revolution and industrial agriculture, AGRA continues to promote the same, orienting farmers into global value chains for the export of standardized commodities,” the letter read, adding that Agnes Kalibata was the wrong candidate to lead the summit which “will result in another forum that advances the interests of agribusiness at the expense of farmers and our planet”.
Practical implications
As the signatories of the letter noted, Agnes Kalibata’s conflict of interests goes without saying, in particular in terms of the pathways for food systems transformation. Thus, organizations like LVC are promoting holistic approaches to food systems such as agroecology, shifting away from the Green Revolution ‘armed with high-yield commercial seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides’.
This being the case, concerns regarding possible bias go far beyond the issue of peasants and farmers’ rights. It concerns the political direction that the summit will take in regard to the much-needed change of paradigm in agriculture and food systems in general. Therefore, ensuring balanced interest-representation and participation of various actors at the UN Food Systems Summit is of vital importance as is the respect and enforcement of their rights.
“The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) is one of the most important ways in which countries can fulfill the right to food and transform their food systems at the same time,” as stated Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
Due to be held in September in New York, the UN Food Systems Summit is aimed at fostering public discourse on actions, solutions, and strategies necessary to transform the way food is produced and consumed in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The summit comes at a time when the efficiency of conventional agriculture is increasingly often questioned and when global food systems are facing significant challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences for consumers, farmers, and the food chain in general.
