Global food systems are outdated, unsustainable, vulnerable, and often lack inclusivity and equity (Nguyen 2018; Mabhaudhi et al. 2019; Sampson et al. 2021; Bjornlund et al. 2022). They fail to provide all people, particularly the marginalized in low- and middle-income countries, with adequate and nutritious food in recognition of basic human rights and within safe and sustainable planetary boundaries. Current discussions center largely on addressing global challenges and promoting sustainable development through 2030—just seven years from now—when the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reach their target date. For global youth, this perspective is too shortsighted. Young people are looking much further ahead in a century increasingly shaped by dysfunctional food systems.

The global youth population, currently estimated at 1.2 billion, is the largest in history (see Box 2.1), with the great majority of these young people living in low- and middle-income countries in South Asia, East Asia, and Africa (Figure 2.1; Glover and Sumberg 2020). These youth are among those who have suffered the most from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their well-being and livelihoods (HLPE 2021). At the same time, they are emerging into adulthood in a context of inherently unequal and unsustainable food systems that fail to deliver food and nutrition security and are highly vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation. We, as young people in our 20s, are keenly aware that our generation not only suffers from the failures of current food systems but will inherit these troubled food systems and their looming challenges. Those challenges threaten the realization of our right to food as well as other human rights, such as health, education, decent work, and livelihoods.

Young people are entitled to expect a long and healthy future. As heirs to current food systems, we deserve a stronger voice in transforming those food systems to meet our current and future needs, primarily through a focus on food sovereignty, which will give all people greater power to shape their food systems in line with their cultural, socioeconomic, developmental, and environmental values.

The world’s youth are in line to inherit food systems that are failing on multiple fronts. At the most basic level, current food systems are not providing all people with sufficient nutritious food. Approximately 735 million people were affected by hunger in 2022, and more than 3.1 billion could not afford nutritionally rich diets in 2022 (FAO et al. 2023a). While global hunger figures do not report specifically on hunger among youth, we know food insecurity and undernutrition are highest and most persistent in South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara, which are also home to the largest share of the youth population (Glover and Sumberg 2020; FAO et al. 2023a).

Gender also plays a role in youth’s experiences of hunger and undernutrition. Women and girls make up about 60 percent of severely hungry people (WFP 2023c). In many low- and middle-income countries, women, particularly in lower-income groups, are responsible for producing and preparing food and obtaining water and firewood.

During periods of food scarcity, women and girls often eat last and least, making them more vulnerable to food and nutrition insecurity (Botreau and Cohen 2020).

In many countries, young people, especially young women, are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain decent employment (ILO 2020). In 2020 the global youth unemployment rate was estimated at 18.4 percent—more than three times the adult rate (Figure 2.2). Globally, more than one in five young people are not in education, employment, or training (ILO 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic led to millions of job losses, significantly affecting young people, who are particularly vulnerable to job losses and crises (HLPE 2021). In addition, young workers are twice as likely as adult workers to live in extreme poverty—on less than US$1.90 a day—and are far more likely to be informally employed (ILO 2022). The burden of unpaid care work keeps young women out of the workforce by leaving them with limited time, energy, and opportunities to pursue income-generating activities. Unpaid care also perpetuates gender inequality and is a root cause of poverty and hunger (Action Against Hunger 2021).

For youth in low- and middle-income countries, employment in the agrifood system is more accessible than in other sectors because of low entry requirements in terms of capital and skills (Christiaensen et al. 2021). Furthermore, projections suggest that increased demand for food and rising food prices present opportunities for jobs and business enterprises in agrifood systems in Africa South of the Sahara (Chipfupa and Tagwi 2021). For many young people, however, farming is considered “an occupation of last resort and low productivity” (Filmer and Fox 2014). They have little interest in agricultural activities because of a lack of support, innovation, and education and a perception that agriculture does not offer opportunities for prosperity or self-realization (Chipfupa and Tagwi 2021; Girdziute et al. 2022).

Many youth who work in food systems have informal jobs with minimal job security, low income, and gender inequality (Dolislager et al. 2020; Fox and Gandhi 2021). In some countries in Africa South of the Sahara, the number of hours youth spend working in agriculture has declined over time, and many youth opt out of agriculture entirely (Chipfupa and Tagwi 2021).

The challenges within food systems will increase in the future, particularly given the increasing impacts of climate change, to which low- and middle-income countries and their youth populations are disproportionately vulnerable. Without immediate action, more people in vulnerable low- and middle-income countries, which lack adaptive capacity, will grapple with worsened food and nutrition security challenges. Although the voices of young people echo globally, expressing the need for urgent climate change action, progress remains stagnant.

As youth, we see the lack of food sovereignty as one of the greatest weaknesses of current food systems. We view the pursuit of food sovereignty as an enormous opportunity to engage youth in transforming food systems to become more sustainable, more just, and better able to supply the needs of all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable.

The concept of food sovereignty draws attention to four critical factors: people and their rights, the quality of food produced, cultural aspects of food systems, and environmental well-being. A global forum held in Nyéléni Village, Mali, in 2007 resulted in a declaration that defined food sovereignty as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (Declaration of Nyéléni 2007).

The loss of food sovereignty, particularly in the world’s low- and middle-income countries, has been hastened by several major factors, including colonialism, poor governance, the intensive capitalization of food systems, the widespread growth of monocultures in agriculture, and some of the negative outcomes of the Green Revolution (Weiler et al. 2015; Shilomboleni 2017). As a result, indigenous and local farming and knowledge systems are under widespread threat. They have been not only sidelined in research and policy but also neglected as young people’s participation in food systems alongside elders, who are often left behind in rural areas, has decreased (Gunaratne et al. 2021).

In many areas, local farmers are excluded from seed systems and have limited control over what they plant, relegating indigenous crops to the status of neglected crops (Mabhaudhi et al. 2018; Sidibé et al. 2020; Mudau et al. 2022). Many seed-related bills and laws have emerged across Africa, Asia, and South America.

Section 326 of Kenya’s Seeds and Plant Varieties Act of 2012, for example, criminalizes the exchange of seeds for all “unregistered crop varieties”—often traditional crop varieties—restricting farmers’ choices regarding food production and agricultural and food systems (GRAIN and La Via Campesina 2015; Dena 2022). By robbing people of their livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and food sovereignty, these monopolized and restrictive legal frameworks threaten the human rights of all—especially those in marginalized settings and youth, as they stand to suffer the consequences of these actions for years to come.

The consequent lack of food sovereignty has contributed to multiple challenges, including widespread food and nutrition insecurity and adverse health outcomes (Gunaratne et al. 2021; Sampson et al. 2021; Bjornlund et al. 2022). Although food-security-specific interventions, such as the promotion of major, high-yielding food crops, pushed down global hunger between 1990 and 2017, both the share and the number of undernourished people have stagnated or risen since 2017 (FAO et al. 2023a). This reversal underscores the urgent need for a new direction in food systems transformation.

Although little policy action has taken place to reinstate food sovereignty since the 1996 World Food Summit, there is a growing global conversation and an increased focus on social justice and the need to realize and protect people’s right to food (La Via Campesina 2021; Sampson et al. 2021; Bjornlund et al. 2022; GFFA 2023). Greater food sovereignty will likely involve reinstating indigenous and neglected crops4 and mixed crop-and-livestock farming systems to diversify and localize current globalized food systems, making them more accessible, sustainable, and inclusive and increasing their resilience to climate stresses (Mabhaudhi et al. 2018, 2019; Akinola et al. 2020; Wijerathna-Yapa and Pathirana 2022). This will require a more inclusive and integrated seed system framework to support solutions that seek to reduce the vulnerability of food systems (Mabhaudhi et al. 2018; Wijerathna-Yapa and Pathirana 2022).

Locally resilient, diverse, innovative, and less input-intensive smallholder farming systems—if they are supported, promoted, and extended—may constitute a sustainable solution to current food and nutrition challenges and a path out of poverty and hunger for vulnerable populations (Mabhaudhi et al. 2018; Mudau et al. 2022; Wijerathna-Yapa and Pathirana 2022). Such an approach also supports human rights for marginalized groups, which are currently being sidelined by the design of food and seed systems. Innovations are needed to achieve inclusive, sustainable food systems and food sovereignty for all within planetary boundaries. Youth, as the inheritors of injustice, have the potential to drive these innovations.

In practice, food sovereignty involves interaction between stakeholders from national, local, and community-based institutions and knowledge holders, such as local elders. This inclusive interaction could create opportunities for young people to bring their energy and innovation to help reclaim contextualized food sovereignty, thus improving nutrition while strengthening the resilience of local food systems under ecological and climate stress.

There is a long way to go to ensure the meaningful participation of young people in policy processes that can influence food systems and promote food sovereignty. At a formal, governmental level, the share of youth in decision-making forums is negligible. In most regions, the average age of members of parliament is at least 50 (Stockemer and Sundström 2022). The representation of youth aged 30 or under in parliaments is low in all regions (see Table 2.1) and even lower for women under the age of 30, especially in Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa, Africa South of the Sahara, and Western Europe. Because youth do not fully participate in legislative decision-making, their specific priorities and needs are often not considered (Stockemer and Sundström 2022).

As they confront global challenges, policymakers have begun to seek out young people’s voices and perspectives by encouraging youth participation in workshops, conferences, and working groups. Additionally, young people worldwide are forming their own organizations and initiatives, reshaping perceptions of global challenges while driving social innovation and demonstrating a willingness to be part of the solution. Examples include Act4Food Act4Change, the Asian Indigenous Youth Platform, the Global Youth Innovation Network (GYIN), Innovative Food Systems Solutions (IFSS), Nutrition Connect, the Slow Food Youth Network, the Youth Working Group of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, and Young Leaders for Nutrition. These youth-led organizations currently advocate for food systems transformation by raising awareness about food issues, food sovereignty, sustainable food production, nutrition, and environmental protection, including pledges to encourage policy action.

This increased focus on youth participation in policy dialogues has not necessarily translated into meaningful impact. Youth participation in decision-making appears superficial and limited (see Box 2.3). Despite, for instance, young people’s advocacy for climate change action and food systems transformation, progress is still too slow. The opinions and ideas expressed by youth have only minimal tangible outcomes, and their perspectives are not integrated into the design or implementation of policy interventions (Yunita et al. 2018; Macauley et al. 2022; Orsini and Kang 2023).

Leaders at all levels have a moral and economic imperative to tap into young people’s energy, creativity, and dynamism to transform food systems. Engaging young people in conversations on and governance of food systems transformation is a strategic way to adapt and adopt innovations for improved nutrition and food security outcomes, especially in the context of a move toward food sovereignty (Figure 2.3 on page 32). The right to food is increasingly recognized, and a shift toward food sovereignty will allow people to realize that right in a socially, culturally, and ecologically conscious way (Blue Bird Jernigan et al. 2021; Sampson et al. 2021). Youth can help advance the progressive realization of the right to food in several ways. They can innovate to transform food systems to align with their local context and deliver improved nutrition and food security. They can help reinstate diverse indigenous and traditional cropping systems currently under threat, and cultivate indigenous and neglected crops to create more resilient, context-specific food systems.

Leaders must pursue, and youth must demand, investments in sectors that can improve young people’s well-being, including health, education, skills development, and social connectivity. High-quality education and training not only enable youth to become more productive and employable but serve as foundations for personal development and well-being, help fight poverty and unemployment, promote equality, and positively influence individuals’ lives while benefiting society (Idris et al. 2012). Rigorous evaluations of agricultural skills training programs for youth are needed to provide evidence on employment outcomes, which could encourage governments and donors to scale up such programs (Maïga et al. 2020).

A transformation to sustainable, resilient, and equitable food systems can provide fair, interesting, and sustainable employment opportunities for the current population of young people and future generations (Nguyen 2018; Mabhaudhi et al. 2019). Such food systems can enable freedom of choice and innovation in agrifood systems, encouraging creativity and allowing young people to tap into niche production opportunities. Realizing this vision requires boosting young people’s access to green jobs, land, youth-sensitive credit and financial services, productive resources and equipment, and markets.

Aspirational career paths should provide opportunities and remove barriers for youth seeking to work in agricultural value chains. For young people not inclined to work on farms, including those without access to land or productive resources, governments and the private sector could help position them in nonfarm activities that drive agricultural transformation, such as improving rural markets and promoting environmental sustainability (Geza et al. 2021). Improving rural markets would entail investing in infrastructure for transportation, water, electricity, and postharvest handling and storage, as well as making investments downstream in the value chain. These efforts could be facilitated by including youth in the implementation of existing global policies to address food system challenges—such as the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change—through further collaboration with international youth organizations and forums already involved in this work.

To develop youth-inclusive and youth-specific policies, policymakers need timely, reliable data on current youth roles in food systems activities and policy processes (HLPE 2021). In addition, the conditions, capacities, and opportunities faced by youth vary widely based on their context, so empowering youth as agents of change in transforming food systems should recognize the diversity, intersectionality, and context specificity of youth needs, challenges, and aspirations.

As youth, we see that current food systems are unsustainable, inequitable, non-inclusive, and vulnerable to external shocks and risks. Our generation, which will inherit these food systems and live with them for decades to come, has a huge stake in ensuring that the food systems of the 21^st century are inclusive, equitable, sustainable, resilient, and localized. A shift toward sustainable food systems is necessary for planetary health and human well-being. Such systems will promote broader economic, social, and environmental sustainability and contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more effective adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

Most young people involved directly or indirectly in food systems livelihoods are located in rural areas. Therefore, addressing youth participation in food systems requires a holistic approach broadly focused on improving rural economies, social well-being, and service delivery. Efforts must be made to create a supportive environment for youth to pursue careers and interests in food systems. Increasing agricultural productivity and promoting and investing in innovations such as mechanization, farm advisories, and irrigation to make farming more profitable and less laborious could attract youth into agriculture by unlocking diverse employment opportunities.

To build such food systems and engage youth for generations to come, leaders at all levels should ensure that the direction and targets of policy go further than 2030 to look toward 2050 and beyond.

As they embark on this long-term pathway, they must do more than simply pursue dialogue with young people. They must engage youth in policymaking to promote inclusivity, equity, and sustainability. At the same time, young people must seize opportunities to participate in food systems governance, advocate for social justice, promote gender equity, protect every human’s right to food and food sovereignty, spur climate change action, and integrate their perspectives into policy to enable just, sustainable food systems for all.

Spiraling food prices and global supply chain disruptions precipitated by the Ukraine war, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and regional conflicts have worsened hunger for millions of people, requiring humanitarian and resilience-building responses to be urgently scaled up. These current crises and urgent needs, discussed in more detail elsewhere in this report, amplify longstanding structural deficiencies in the global food system, which is inadequate for sustainably ending poverty and hunger as envisaged by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda (Barrett et al. 2020; Webb et al. 2020). Several high-level gatherings in recent years have reinforced this message, including the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021, and the Nutrition for Growth Summit in December 2021 (von Braun et al. 2021). Yet the crucial topic of food systems governance, which plays a core role in determining whether people have nutritious and sustainable diets, has largely been marginalized in these global assemblies (Canfield, Anderson, and McMichael 2021).

Food systems consist of the interactions among the many actors involved in growing, processing, distributing, consuming, and disposing of food products, and their links with the social, environmental, and economic structures in which they are embedded (Fanzo et al. 2021; HLPE 2017). Governance of these food systems encompasses the actors and institutions that exert power over food access, availability, and quality; the ways through which priorities are deliberated, coordinated, and acted upon; and the responsibilities for financing, delivering, and monitoring results (Delaney et al. 2018).

Because food systems are multifaceted—spanning agriculture, health, environment, gender, markets and trade, humanitarian assistance, and several other domains—food systems governance is always complicated by the need to reconcile competing interests and values and to achieve policy coherence across sectors. Recent political trends further circumscribe efforts to improve food systems governance. At the global level, rising nationalism and geopolitical tensions— underscored by the war in Ukraine—threaten prospects for multilateral cooperation on food systems and food and nutrition security. At the national level, civic spaces and freedom of expression are becoming increasingly repressed (CIVICUS 2021; Dupuy, Fransen, and Prakash 2021), with at least 50 countries legally limiting the operations of civil society organizations (Amnesty International 2019). The narrowing of such spaces hinders citizens from claiming and realizing their right to adequate food, as enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as from participating in decisions on how to tackle hunger and from learning about and exercising their constitutional entitlements (Elver 2016; Fakhri 2020).

Given these dynamics, this essay focuses on opportunities to improve food systems governance at the local level. In some countries, citizens are finding innovative ways to amplify their voices in food system debates—including by using data to track government performance and by engaging in multistakeholder platforms—and keeping decision makers accountable for addressing food and nutrition insecurity and hunger. Encouragingly, examples of empowerment are just as visible in fragile contexts with high levels of societal fractionalization as they are in more stable settings with longer traditions of local democracy.

While recognizing that transforming food systems ultimately requires interventions at multiple levels, a greater focus on local governance of food systems is warranted for five main reasons.

First, consumer preferences, natural resource management practices, and farming and livestock rearing methods are often grounded in local cultural traditions, historical experiences, and agroecological conditions.

Second, as the world urbanizes and cities demonstrate their own unique food security challenges (Crush and Riley 2019; Fan 2017), mayors and municipal councils have become more influential in transnational development networks (Barber 2014). In initiatives such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, leaders of major world cities express shared commitments related to climate action and food policies. These initiatives have given mayors a platform to proceed with their own food systems goals that may reinforce, bypass, or intersect with national-level aspirations (Moragues-Faus 2021).

Third, the trend toward decentralizing government functions over the past 20 years has given greater political autonomy and functional authority to subnational governments (Rodden and Wibbels 2019). Consequently, local governments increasingly have more functional authority over key elements of food systems, such as the location of and infrastructure in informal markets, which are main sources of food for the urban poor (Smit 2016). In many countries— from Ghana to Nepal, Kenya to Pakistan—authority for budgeting, designing, and implementing food systems policies in the agriculture, health, and environment domains has been devolved to provinces, counties, or districts (Kyle and Resnick 2019; Resnick 2022; Resnick and Rana 2016).

Fourth, a local lens is particularly necessary in fragile states where—owing to ongoing conflict, weak capacity, or both—national governments are unable to exert power, authority, or legitimacy across the full range of territory that they legally govern. Instead, informal sources of governance, such as traditional authorities, may have greater credibility with local communities (Baldwin and Raffler 2019). Conversely, certain subnational areas, such as the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo or northeastern Nigeria, can be disproportionately infiltrated by armed groups and violent nonstate actors whose presence limits opportunities for community engagement. Consequently, these areas, which tend to be the worst affected by hunger (Delgado and Smith 2021), are least likely to experience the benefits of national food system commitments.

Finally, a local perspective can help reveal whether and how national food system priorities actually reflect local needs and preferences. Food corporations and agribusiness interests can, through corporate concentration and lobbying resources, play an outsized role in national and global decision making around food and agriculture policy (see Clapp and Fuchs 2009). Yet at the subnational level, there may be circumstances where such actors are less prominent, creating a more even playing field for understanding the concerns of communities and the frontline service providers who are ultimately responsible for implementing agrifood systems policies.

When adopting a local lens, however, it is important to remember that the same tools for participation and accountability cannot be used everywhere. The nature of civic engagement in food system processes at the local level, and the degree to which local governments can be held accountable for food and nutrition security outcomes, depends on the extent of community power relations and social cohesion as well as on the broader governance setting. For instance, participation is naturally more limited in countries where the state limits freedom of association and speech. Moreover, where local government leaders are appointed rather than elected, those leaders often feel more accountable to the central government that appointed them than to the community residents they serve (Faguet 2012). Fragile states characterized by high vulnerability to societal conflict and weak oversight may require especially careful approaches to citizen engagement. Figure 2.1 illustrates how these different dimensions correspond with each other, highlighting that while there is a strong association between more empowered local governments and those that allow greater space for civil society participation, fragility can be present in a wide variety of settings. Thus, tools for engaging citizens and promoting accountability need to be appropriate for the degree of local government autonomy, the space citizens have to engage in freedom of speech and association, and the level of government fragility, which can affect the capacity of local authorities.

How exactly can communities in these different settings engage at the local level to improve accountability for food and nutrition security outcomes? Many innovative approaches have emerged in recent years. Here, two mechanisms are considered. One is the use of data and technology to track performance at the local level. The other consists of local platforms that bring many stakeholders together to contribute their perspectives on food system challenges and policy options. These approaches are relatively new, so their direct impacts on food security and long-term sustainability will require further study, but it is worth examining here their potential and initial achievements in improving food security policy processes.

Tracking Local Performance

One set of accountability mechanisms centers on surveillance of policy and project implementation. Because implementing policies and projects that affect food and nutrition security often requires spending money, budget tracking has gained prominence. For several years, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement has worked with its member countries to analyze government budget allocations toward policies that are nutrition-specific, such as micronutrient supplementation and infant and young child feeding programs, and nutrition-sensitive, such as clean water, sanitation, and access to healthcare (Fracassi et al. 2020). While this approach captures the amounts that are budgeted by governments for nutrition, it does not capture the amounts they actually disburse, so other complementary approaches have also emerged, such as the World Bank’s nutrition public expenditure reviews (Wang et al. 2022).

For both budget and expenditure tracking, the lack of publicly accessible subnational data on nutrition, agriculture, and other food system dimensions—due to either unavailability or unaffordable license fees—poses a challenge for accountability. Yet some local actors have found ways around this information shortfall. In Nigeria, for example, the civic organization BudgIT has since 2011 aggregated all state-level budgets and uses its open data Tracka platform to enable the public to provide information about the implementation of government projects in their communities (BudgIT 2022; Tracka 2022; Herbst and Onigbinde 2017). This is increasingly facilitating civic awareness and participation in a country traditionally characterized by its opaque budget processes (Bisong and Ogwumike 2020).

Another approach focuses on incentivizing local governments to perform better through peer comparisons. In Ghana, District League Tables (DLTs) have been published annually by UNICEF and Ghana’s National Development Planning Commission since 2014 to enhance civic awareness and improve social accountability. The DLTs are scorecards that rely on administrative data for all of the country’s 260 districts to calculate 17 indicators focused on five domains: education, health, water and sanitation, governance, and information and communication technology (NDPC and UNICEF Ghana 2021). The highest- and lowest-ranked districts are often profiled in the media, encouraging public scrutiny of performance. More recently, the government announced the launch of the National District Awards, which will reward the best-performing districts on the DLTs with additional financial support (Aniagyei 2022).

Yet scorecards can result in minimal impact if they reflect idealized outcomes that are not feasible given the capacities of local government; if they exacerbate tensions between communities, bureaucrats, and politicians; and if they fail to generate interest among policymakers (Kelley 2017). Several initiatives have therefore shifted to developing such tools in a more interactive way with local governments, with opportunities for feedback and refinement. In Malawi’s Mangochi District, the Community Initiative for Self Reliance (CISER), in coordination with local civil society organizations, started developing community scorecards in the 2020–2021 agricultural season to capture residents’ experiences with one of the national government’s flagship programs, the Affordable Inputs Program (AIP), which provides subsidized fertilizer and seeds to vulnerable farmers. The indicators were initially developed with several communities in the district and the District Agricultural Extension Coordinating Committee (DAECC), based on AIP guidelines.

The communities and civil servants from the District Agriculture Office scored the performance of the program based on the indicators. The scorecards revealed several weaknesses in the AIP: among other things, the mobile application used for redeeming input coupons was slow and volatile, inputs were disbursed too late in the planting season, poor roads in the rainy season affected people’s ability to access input distribution sites, individuals who lost their national identity cards had problems obtaining the inputs, and mechanisms for airing grievances were lacking. The DAECC communicated many of these issues to the central government, which addressed several of them in the subsequent agricultural season. For instance, farmers are now allowed to obtain their inputs from a different location than originally allocated, and inputs are delivered to agro-dealers earlier in the season. Furthermore, a new indicator—experience with gender-based violence when trying to access the AIP inputs— has been added to the scorecard (interview, Felix Sanudi, CISER, June 10, 2022).

In Nepal, the civil society organization Aasaman Nepal has used a similar interactive approach to develop community scorecards. In two municipalities within Madhesh Province, residents, municipal representatives, and service providers convene to discuss their expectations for their health facilities and the quality of the health services to which citizens are entitled. They organize an assessment of health services, jointly discuss and develop indicators to score the performance of health facilities and services, separately assess those indicators, and then reconvene. If a health facility’s performance falls below a certain threshold, all participants agree on an action plan and identify their roles and responsibilities for improving performance. In each of the health facilities, this action plan is publicly posted and regularly monitored; the following year, performance is reassessed (interview, Mani Ram Acharya, Aasaman Nepal, June 2, 2022).

Such collaboration may be more challenging in contexts that are fragile or that lack formal venues for meaningful civic engagement. Sudan’s resistance committees represent one example of a grassroots movement aimed at promoting accountability and addressing gaps in service delivery. First arising in Khartoum in 2013, these committees emerged organically, encompassing students, unemployed youth, and activists from urban neighborhoods. The committees made efforts to oversee bread distribution in Sudan’s main cities by using a mobile application to record data on flour deliveries, bakery closures, and smuggling. In this way, they aimed to prevent bakeries from siphoning off subsidized flour for illegal purposes (Resnick 2021). Although the long-term sustainability of this volunteer-based initiative remains questionable, the committees nonetheless remain an important feature in urban Sudan almost a decade after their original formation.

Meaningfully Engaging Local Stakeholders

Multistakeholder platforms, which aim to foster dialogue and collaboration among a diverse range of constituents, are a popular tool for addressing the complexities of agricultural and food system transformation (Hermans et al. 2017; Thorpe et al. 2022). They are especially popular for promoting citizens’ entitlements to the right to food (see Box 2.1). There are, however, several concerns about such platforms, including whether they create unrealistic expectations from participants about policy outcomes (Resnick and Birner 2010) and whether they simply reinforce existing power asymmetries in the food system (Canfield, Anderson, and McMichael 2021; Gleckman 2018; HLPE 2018). This is particularly problematic in local settings with entrenched forms of patriarchy and other asymmetrical power relationships.

Attuned to these concerns, several multistakeholder platforms are sensitive to how voices are heard in these fora. In Bolivia, for example, the civil society organization Fundación Alternativas has been working with the municipal food security committee in La Paz since 2013. The committee, which aims to ensure that resources are devoted to food security and food system policy priorities, includes participants from all levels of government, the private sector, and civil society. Organized into specific thematic groups, the participants meet monthly to identify where parts of the food system need to be improved and collaborate on either normative draft laws to be considered by the legislative branch or work on proposals for targeted investments (interview, Maria Teresa Nogales, Fundación Alternativas, June 6, 2022). In 2018–2019, the committee was instrumental in drafting a municipal law for urban agriculture, which is now legally recognized as an appropriate use of land (Nogales 2019).

Critically, the thematic groups in the municipal food security committee must reach consensus before proceeding with a policy recommendation. The committee’s deliberations are bolstered by the use of the Dialogic Change Model (interview, Maria Teresa Nogales, Fundación Alternativas, June 6, 2022); this model is a structured collaborative approach to planning and implementation that emphasizes the need to hear everyone’s voice in multistakeholder platforms (Collective Leadership Institute n.d.).

In Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Peru, subnational platforms focusing on collaborative management of land and forestry resources revealed several power asymmetries among stakeholders that affected the groups’ efficacy. For instance, indigenous communities felt marginalized, or only those civil society actors with travel budgets could participate (Barletti 2022). Consequently, the “How are we doing?” tool developed by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and its partners is based on the principles of adaptive collaborative management and is aimed at increasing trust and equity in these settings through continuous feedback from participants, resulting in iterative shifts in the design of the multistakeholder platforms (Barletti et al. 2020).

In Peru, roundtables for local development in food security have been led by Consorcio Agroecológico Peruano (CAP) and Red de Agricultura Ecológica del Perú (RAE) in five districts surrounding metropolitan Lima in the Lurín and Chillón valleys. The roundtables build on existing, organic community structures that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when residents of low-income neighborhoods in those valleys and elsewhere in the capital city organized soup kitchens known as “common pots.” These kitchens have continued as a survival strategy during the global inflation spurred by the war in Ukraine (Briceno 2022). CAP, RAE, and other nongovernmental organizations work with these networks of popular kitchens and also incorporate farmer organizations, youth groups, and religious associations. As in Bolivia, these roundtables meet regularly either in person or virtually, organize around thematic groups, and focus on improving local laws relevant to food systems (interview, Juan Sanchez, CAP/RAE, June 6, 2022).

While Bolivia and Peru deepened their decentralization processes in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, respectively, with executive mayors who have functional autonomy over specific aspects of the food system, Nepal’s experience with local government is much more recent. The country’s 2015 Constitution provides for three tiers of government: national, provincial, and municipalities. Following the passage of the Local Government Operations Act (LGOA) in 2017 and the 2017 local elections, municipalities received legal authority to formulate and implement policies in 22 domains.

In this delicate environment of newly empowered and elected local governments, the civil society organization Aasaman Nepal has focused on ensuring municipalities’ responsiveness to residents’ concerns about food and nutrition security, health, and other development needs. Since 2018 Aasaman Nepal has leveraged the seven-step local planning process that is integral to the LGOA, working in eight municipalities in Madhesh Province where gender inequality, landlessness, food insecurity, and malnutrition are high. In each municipality, participatory planning begins each year in February at the settlement level, where communities discuss priorities and development plans that are then streamlined at the next-highest administrative level, the ward, before being incorporated into the municipal-level plans. Over the past three years, more and more plans have been approved by the municipalities, and in 2021 the eight municipalities approved 341 settlement plans submitted by the groups through this process (interview, Mani Ram Acharya, Aasaman Nepal, June 2, 2022).

Niger represents a particularly fragile environment owing to growing desertification, a struggling economy, and the presence of many nonstate armed groups along its borders. Nonetheless, community groups have coalesced in several thematic multistakeholder platforms to address targeted food system problems with support from the High Commission for the Nigeriens Nourishing Nigeriens (HC3N) initiative. For instance, in 2021, HC3N facilitated an exchange between farmers’ organizations and processors in the flour value chain. The participants addressed challenges related to providing fortified flour from local millet and sorghum at an affordable price and of consistent quality for consumers while still ensuring that both processors and farmers can make a decent living from the value chain, given the variations in access to and prices for inputs. Jointly, the participants found consensus on several areas of action for policymakers to pursue (interview, Gervais Ntandou-Bouzitou, FAO-Niger and technical assistant to HC3N, June 10, 2022).

On their own, accountability tools may not directly improve food and nutrition security. However, as elaborated in this essay, the experiences of these various communities and civil society organizations with using performance tracking and multistakeholder platforms suggests several successes, such as the adoption of a new municipal law in Bolivia, more inclusive budgeting processes in Nepal, and improved service delivery in Malawi, all of which indirectly affect food access and quality. Moreover, the practice of exercising oversight and participation empowers communities to demand government responsiveness while increasing their awareness of their entitlements and the means to access them. Though not sufficient, these actions are surely necessary in the continued quest for better food and nutrition security.

At the same time, several key lessons emerge from these experiences.

First, it is important to recognize that local governments often have fewer resources and technical staff than their central government counterparts. Moreover, given the wide diversity of local government settings, it is important to ensure that governance efforts are well matched to conditions and capacities on the ground and to be realistic about the replicability of such tools. In more decentralized settings, citizens may be able to draw on established planning and budget structures, regular collection of administrative data, and skilled local bureaucrats to advance food policy. In countries that have only recently decentralized, citizens will need to internalize the practices of local democracy and set up ways to participate in implementing and overseeing development projects. In fragile and more autocratic settings, organic community efforts may be the only realistic channel for action on local food systems governance. When possible, partners can learn from such efforts and facilitate the scaling up of such measures to other communities.

Second, local leadership is pivotal to the sustainability of local interventions. In Peru, in mid-2022, concerns about whether local elections in October 2022 will derail momentum on food commitments has led the civil society organizations Consorcio Agroecológico Peruano (CAP) and Red de Agricultura Ecológica del Perú (RAE) to educate all mayoral candidates about the work of multistakeholder platforms in the Lurín and Chillón valleys. By contrast, in Nepal, a new cadre of motivated local leaders elected in May 2022 created a window of opportunity for Aasaman Nepal to scale up its activities. Similarly, while the municipal government of Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo, has been a partner in the city’s Food Policy Council since its inception in 2016, all projects are led by “champion” nongovernmental stakeholders who can ensure that momentum on food policy continues even as mayors change (Andrianarisoa et al. 2019).

Third, those local communities with the worst hunger have the most to gain from improved accountability. However, owing to weak or poor governance, high levels of displacement, and a lack of security, initiatives to enhance accountability will encounter greater risks of failure. Development partners need to be prepared for this potential trade-off and ensure that their planning and engagement with communities incorporate a sufficiently long timeline and flexibility in funding arrangements. In extremely fragile contexts affected by ongoing crises and dominated by humanitarian coordination structures, any interventions to empower local communities to shape food systems should also build on the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability—a set of nine commitments designed to hold humanitarian agencies accountable to affected populations (CHS Management Group 2022).

Overall, while the governance of food systems takes place at multiple levels, there are, even in the most fragile contexts, innovative mechanisms and tools that can empower local communities to shape food systems in ways that address hunger, food and nutrition security, and related concerns. In places where local democracy is relatively new, creating support for a culture of inclusion and accountability inevitably requires a high degree of learning, patience, and realism. The local milieu—whether neighborhood, district, or municipality— remains the main level at which citizens engage with the state and where they are most directly affected by food policy and service delivery performance. Harnessing their experiences and mobilizing their voices is therefore pivotal for meaningful food system transformation that ultimately benefits all people, especially the most vulnerable.

The Two-Way Links between Conflict and Hunger

Failing food systems and the consequent increase in hunger are among the most pressing issues of our time. The world is falling far short of what is needed to achieve Zero Hunger—the second of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The figures are stark: in 2020, 155 million people were acutely food insecure—an increase of nearly 20 million from the year before. Nearly 30 million people were on the verge of starvation, meaning they did not know where their next meal was coming from (FSIN and GNAFC 2021).

Despite the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, violent conflict remained the main driver of global hunger in 2020 (WFP USA 2021). The number of active violent conflicts is on the rise, and they are becoming increasingly severe and protracted (Pettersson and Öberg 2020). Moreover, there is a pattern of increased violent conflict some two to three years after a major economic crisis—as was the case after the 2008–2009 financial crisis, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the mid-1970s oil price shock—so there are reasons for concern that the number of armed conflicts may well increase in the next two to three years.

A list of those countries facing the worst food crises includes a litany of violent hot spots: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen. All are plagued with ongoing violence and hunger on a tragic scale (FSIN and GNAFC 2021). Of the 10 countries with alarming or extremely alarming hunger in this report, conflict is a major driver in 8 (Figure 2.1).

The broader humanitarian context is rapidly deteriorating, reflecting an increased risk of violent conflict, a growing number of people suffering from hunger worldwide, the unfolding impact of climate change, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first year of the pandemic distorted decades of development. It triggered the deepest global recession in nearly 100 years (OCHA 2021a). It pushed between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, with estimates warning that a further 25–35 million could fall into extreme poverty in 2021 (World Bank 2020). This situation reverses decades of progress in poverty reduction. The mid- to longterm horizon is darkened by climate change and extreme weather events, which are also drivers of hunger and will increase the risk of conflict in the coming years. While the current situation is grave, heads of major humanitarian organizations are warning of an even more critical humanitarian agenda ahead (Jochum 2020; OCHA 2021b; SIPRI 2020).

The two-way linkages between hunger and conflict are well established and beyond doubt (FSIN and GNAFC 2021; Holleman et al. 2017; Martin-Shields and Stojetz 2019). Violent conflict has a devastating impact on food systems, as it “negatively affects almost every aspect of a food system, from production, harvesting, processing, and transport to input supply, financing, marketing, and consumption” (FAO, IFAD et al. 2021, 54). Lasting food insecurity is a principal legacy of war (Messer and Cohen 2007). At the same time, heightened food insecurity can contribute to violent conflict. Without resolving food insecurity, it will be difficult to build sustainable peace, and without peace the likelihood of ending global hunger is minimal. The situation demands action that is urgent, decisive, and sustained.

The good news is that it is possible to begin to break the destructive linkages between conflict and hunger in the midst of ongoing conflict. Even where there is extreme vulnerability, it is possible to start building resilience. Research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that, especially when working together, actors such as community groups, local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations agencies, and states can create conditions for food security and sustainable peace (Delgado et al. 2019; Delgado 2020; Delgado, Murugani, and Tschunkert 2021). Even small-scale interventions can go a long way toward reducing vulnerability and strengthening local pockets of peace.

Food systems encompass everyone

Food systems in conflict-affected countries are characterized by a high level of informality, structural weakness, and vulnerability to shocks. To appreciate their vulnerability, we first need to understand that food systems comprise everything and everybody connected to the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food. It is useful to think of food systems as the combination of four systems:

• the natural system of earth, water, and climate, which determines the basic conditions for the production of food;

• the technical agricultural system, including the crops grown and livestock raised;

• the logistical and distributive system that takes products from point of origin to market and onward to waste disposal; and

• the social and economic system that shapes relationships, including international ones, between producers, distributors, and consumers.

Because food systems are also social systems and reflect the inequalities found in all societies, food security is vulnerable to challenges ranging from pandemics to violence.

Violent conflicts affect food systems directly and indirectly - with major impacts in rural areas

In conflict-affected countries, about 60 percent of people live in rural areas. Agriculture is the mainstay of their livelihoods, and food systems tend to be localized and traditional (Vos et al. 2020). Violent conflict has a direct negative impact on these food systems. It reduces people’s ability to produce, trade, and buy food. Violent conflict can also affect food systems indirectly through its impacts on health, energy, and transport systems. In many cases, the effects of violent conflict and of climate change intersect with each other to exacerbate communities’ risks and vulnerabilities. Likewise, a failure in the food system has a social impact. Extreme circumstances tend to reduce people’s inhibitions against engaging in violence. Food insecurity creates grievances that can escalate into instability and violent conflict, acting as a channel for individuals or groups to express broader socioeconomic and political grievances.

Under conflict, black markets flourish

Armed conflict generally reduces the functioning of formal markets and the capacity and presence of the national government in conflict-affected areas. This double effect has a heavy impact on food systems. It makes resources less available—including agricultural inputs like seeds and feed—and reduces the ability of governments to effectively use measures such as rationing and price controls to mitigate the impact of violence. Violent conflict makes it harder for farmers to get their products to market and increases the costs for consumers. This confluence of factors in turn generates the conditions under which black markets flourish. In many conflict-affected settings, informal arrangements come to dominate most transactions all along the supply chain (Delgado, Murugani, and Tschunkert 2021). In Afghanistan, for example, where food systems have been affected by decades of armed conflict, there is a striking lack of formal markets for agricultural inputs. These have instead been smuggled in from neighboring countries (Hiller, Hilhorst, and Weijs 2014). Similarly, since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia in 1991, that country has maintained a functioning informal economy dominated by livestock, remittance inflows, and money transfers. The livestock sector, which provides food and income to more than 60 percent of the population, has been a major contributor to the thriving unofficial economy thanks to unregistered livestock exports to Ethiopia and Kenya (Maystadt and Ecker 2014).

Although informal markets can serve an important function for conflict-burdened communities, they can also heighten households’ exposure to risks and shocks. This is because small-scale producers lack access to insurance, credit, and cash flows with which to cushion the impact of the unreliable supply chains and volatile prices that characterize informal markets. Worse, the war economies that informal arrangements underpin can have a corrosive influence on the sustainability of peace, even after the fighting stops (Pugh, Cooper, and Goodhand 2004).

Though Venezuela is experiencing an economic and political crisis rather than open armed conflict, it represents another case in point. Until the mid-2010s, the country benefited from abundant petroleum resources and a relatively strong economy. When oil prices started to drop in 2014, the resulting crisis quickly worsened food insecurity.

The government responded by providing subsidized food boxes to vulnerable households. However, corrupt officials have diverted food boxes to the black market, exacerbating food shortages and allowing some of those who operate the scheme to overcharge both the government and consumers (Pielago 2020). At the same time, there have been reports that the government is using the subsidized food to reward political loyalty (Rendon and Mendales 2018). The humanitarian crisis has pushed many civilians into criminal activity in order to survive and consequently strengthened criminal networks. As a result, crime and violence in Venezuela have spiraled, and the gangs’ reach now extends into neighboring Colombia and Central America (van Roekel and de Theije 2020).

Violent conflict is increasing

As a general proposition, peace is more likely to be built and sustained if it is linked to secure livelihoods and food security, and vice versa (Vos et al. 2020). Yet current global, regional, and national trends are discouraging and threaten the achievement of Zero Hunger and other SDG ambitions by 2030. Global security has deteriorated significantly since 2010. In 2020, worldwide, there were 56 armed conflicts involving states, either in conflict with other states or with rebel forces; 72 violent conflicts in which states were not involved (nonstate); and a further 41 in which the state or a rebel force was the only actor and its opponents were unarmed (UCDP 2020; Figure 2.2).

All three forms of conflict have risen significantly in the past decade, with nonstate conflicts alone increasing by 148 percent. By 2020, military spending had risen to its highest level since before the end of the Cold War, as had the international trade in major weapons (Wezeman et al. 2020). The increasingly toxic nature of global geopolitics is clear in the triangular relationship between China, Russia, and the United States and their respective allies (Smith 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). This international context is not conducive to cooperation or conflict mediation.

Recovery is long and complex

Emerging and recovering from violent conflict can take decades. Violence continues in Afghanistan, which now has the second-highest number of people in emergency food insecurity in the world (OCHA 2021c). Although Somalia gradually recovered from food insecurity and famine in 2011, food insecurity is worsening once again, and more than half a million people are on the brink of famine, in large part owing to conflict (WFP 2021b; FSIN and GNAFC 2021). Youth unemployment is high (it stood at 67 percent a few years ago)—a key concern, as unemployed youth are a prime target for extremist recruitment (World Bank 2015). Syria and Yemen are further examples of protracted armed conflicts with profound crises of food insecurity, ill health, and social trauma (WFP 2021d,e). Support for these countries must address the livelihood needs of hard-hit, long-suffering communities so they can, in time, generate food security for themselves. If not, the cycle of grievance will continue, potentially fueling a resurgence of violent conflict (Strandh and Yusriza 2021; Vos et al. 2020). Because of this kind of feedback loop and risk of conflict recidivism, the World Bank estimates that it takes an average of 15–30 years for a conflict-affected country to raise itself from the level of Haiti—which in 2020 ranked 170th out of 189 in the Human Development Index—to that of a reasonably well-functioning state such as Ghana, which ranked 138th that same year (World Bank 2011; UNDP 2020).

The pathways from conflict to increased food insecurity—and from increased food insecurity to conflict—are unique to each case and often complex. That is because, as the examples cited show, there are many underlying causes of both food insecurity and conflict, interacting in different combinations. The capacity of people and communities to cope with threats to their livelihoods is also specific to each setting. Breaking the links between conflict and hunger and fully harnessing the potential of food systems to contribute to peace will demand good contextual evidence, well-grounded knowledge of the setting, and cooperation between peace, humanitarian, and development actors.

Evidence shows advances are possible

Research demonstrates that progress is possible even in the most unfavorable circumstances. SIPRI’s research on the impact of the work of the World Food Programme (WFP) on the prospects for peace suggests that, even in an inimical global environment, efforts can be made to leverage resilient food systems to help advance peace (Delgado et al. 2019). Scaling up these efforts could generate tangible progress, if not fulfillment of the highest ambition.

In northeast Nigeria, many communities lie in areas controlled by nonstate armed groups. Those who have managed to escape have mostly fled to garrison towns surrounded by defensive trenches. Having lost access to their livelihoods, they depend on food aid. The risk of famine is steadily increasing. However, humanitarian organizations are implementing small-scale interventions to enhance resilience by enabling households to cultivate food crops in the trenches. Although most households still depend on food aid, this practice helps them meet their immediate food needs and prevents the loss of skills from one generation to the next. It maintains employment and contributes to a sense of community engagement. Furthermore, SIPRI’s research suggests that generating hope for better livelihoods in the area helps prevent recruitment by nonstate armed groups (Delgado, Tschunkert, and Riquier 2021).

Similar findings have emerged in remote areas of Colombia. In the wake of the 2016 peace accords between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), small-scale livelihood interventions helped reintegrate former rebel combatants. Local production of animal feed increased the viability of keeping small farm animals. The ex-combatants and local farmers received training on climate-resilient farming practices and on marketing. The money earned through the projects went toward salaries, and additional gains were reinvested in community works. These activities generated both employment and a sense of engagement among ex-combatants, which are crucial for maintaining their motivation to remain part of the peace process, especially given that some nonstate armed groups continue to offer lucrative alternatives. The ex-combatants’ active engagement in the projects, their leadership skills, and their commitment were important catalysts for wider community engagement and critical elements in the reconciliation and reincorporation process. Furthermore, the intervention increased the economic value of local perishable products; generated local markets in an area largely cut off from wider markets, allowing community members to diversify production and increase income, nutritional intake, and food security; and made communities more resilient to the impact of climate change (Delgado 2020).

Similar kinds of action can help build sustainable and equitable local food systems in violence-affected urban areas as well. Capacity building and skills training for vulnerable youth in gang-controlled areas in San Salvador, which involved linking up with restaurateurs and retailers, had a dampening effect on gang recruitment. It is worth noting, however, that capacity building and skills training to give young people the chance to obtain jobs can have the unintended consequence of serving as a push factor for irregular migration abroad. A cook in El Salvador earns US$300 per month on average, whereas a similar job in the United States pays on average US$500 a week. Nationwide in El Salvador, more than 360,000 young people enter the job market each year whereas only 127,000 jobs are created annually (ECLAC 2019). While economic migration per se can be positive, irregular migration risks exposing individuals to severe violations of their human and civil rights in countries of transit and destination (Delgado 2019).

These examples illustrate some of the pathways for strengthening food systems and helping generate conditions conducive to peace. Sustainable, equitable food systems offer food and nutrition security while limiting negative environmental impacts. They are socially inclusive and improve general well-being. They thus contribute to allaround community resilience, which equips communities to respond well to challenges such as climate change, extreme weather events, economic shocks, and the risk of violent conflict (CIAT 2019; Policy Link 2021). The fact that food systems are social systems (as well as natural, agricultural, and logistical systems) means that strengthening them demands much more than technical knowledge and resources. Especially for those undertaking or supporting interventions from abroad, contextual knowledge and sensitivity to conflict risk are essential attributes.

Unintended consequences pose risks

While progress is always possible, care is always needed. The risk of unintended consequences, seen with the San Salvador culinary projects, arises in different ways in many places. In the Colombian agricultural projects, reincorporation of ex-combatants may ultimately depend on fundamental social change; if that does not happen, setbacks may occur. Further, project-based interventions can be unsustainable and generate aid dependency. Enhancing food security enhances the prospects for peace but does not guarantee it; any return to violent conflict generates vulnerability to food insecurity—and the risk of a return to violent conflict is always present. A World Bank study found that of the 103 countries that experienced civil war in the 65 years after 1945, only 44 avoided relapse after peace had been agreed to; in fact, most civil wars today are, in one way or another, continuations of previous conflicts (Walter 2011). All who are attempting to build peace would do well to pay attention to these risks. In rural Colombia, one community that had integrated former combatants yearned for improved infrastructure. However, they cautiously rejected the construction of a road to the community for fear of retaliatory attacks by other nonstate armed groups (Delgado 2020).

The complexities of food systems and of conflict and peace-building environments present many difficulties. It is hard for individual organizations and institutions working in the fields of food security and peace building to take full account of the diversity of actors, the multiplicity of levels and processes, and the effects of feedback loops. The scale of the task, however, does not constitute a reason not to try. At a modest level of ambition, the challenge is to ensure that food assistance is delivered in a way that is sensitive to the risk of conflict. More ambitiously, in working to achieve the linked goals of sustainable food security and sustainable peace, the challenge is not simply to avoid doing harm but to do good. This work calls for integrating a peace-building lens into the effort to create resilient food systems and a food security lens into peace building. To move along that road, we see four priorities.

Priority 1: Adopt a flexible and agile approach

Understanding local context is crucial. How peace is understood can vary dramatically along ethnic, sectarian, regional, or political lines, where perceptions of risks and grievances may differ (Kanbur, Rajaram, and Varshney 2010; McKeown, Cavdar, and Taylor 2019). Using a definition of peace from one group can create grievances with another. Challenges in building peace also evolve over time, and new concerns are identified.

Concurrently, new challenges to the community arise—an extreme weather event, an economic downturn, violent conflict in a neighboring area, a pandemic—and responses to them may be decisive for sustaining or undermining the prospects for peace. Likewise, food systems are highly contextual, face evolving challenges in achieving security, and must thus be supported with flexibility and responsiveness.

Lastly, both food systems and peace are generated by the intersection of different processes and dynamics and are challenged by a cluster of different risk factors. Thus, action to support peace building as part of food security interventions must be flexible, agile, and able to adapt to changing circumstances and concerns.

Priority 2: Work through partnerships

Although understanding the local context is crucial, it is not enough. It is also important to know what has worked in other contexts, what has not worked, and what has caused problems. This is where partnerships come in. The insights of the people, groups, and organizations who truly know the locality must be brought together with the knowledge generated through research and action in a range of different contexts. National governments and international organizations, whether NGOs or UN agencies, cannot be successful without local partners, and local partners are likewise unlikely to be successful on their own. No single person or organization can know or do it all—the answer is to work together.

It matters, though, how partnerships are designed. All too often, national governments and international agencies conduct their own strategic planning and bring in local groups only as implementing partners. To be more effective, partnerships must involve local partners at the idea stage of strategies and projects, as well as during implementation and monitoring.

Priority 3: Pursue integrative ways of working

If peace is a precondition for food security, while food security is a precondition for peace, and resilience in the face of climate change strengthens both, it makes sense to find ways to work on all three issues at once. Working in partnership makes this easier. One way to do this in a conflict-affected country is to institutionalize cooperation in the form of food-and-peace hubs. This proposal for hubs, which emerged in the buildup to the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, would draw in those organizations—from communities, from provincial and national governments, and from international actors - that are working to tackle food insecurity and build peace. The aim is to convene them all, enable access to resources, and encourage and incentivize cooperation. This approach would connect not only different actors but also different issues and problems in fruitful ways.

Many issues remain to be worked out to make this concept viable. Connecting the different actors and stakeholders—a key part of the concept—will work only if there is enough mutual respect and commonality of purpose. Forward movement on peace and food security will depend on what the World Bank’s seminal 2011 report Conflict, Security, and Development referred to as “inclusive-enough coalitions” (World Bank 2011).

However, it is not easy to assess whether coalitions and partnerships are inclusive enough in the abstract. It takes the test of experience: we will know they are adequately constituted if they work. Bringing actors together in food-and-peace hubs does not guarantee the consolidation of peace and sustainable food security. The hubs are only a mechanism for achieving what is fundamental— partnerships of equals involving everyone who needs to be involved.

Priority 4: Break down funding siloes

This essay’s emphasis on intersecting risks is increasingly widely accepted. No international conference on these issues is complete without several ministers and senior officials saying that we must all break out of—or break down—the siloes in our thinking and in our actions between different but evidently related issues. The fact that this exhortation is a cliché does not make it untrue or uninteresting. Such statements are obvious but generate no action. Why not? A large part of the answer is because financing is still siloed. Governments, aid agencies, and donors that claim to want an integrative approach must reexamine how they allocate funding and try new, more integrated funding models that direct funding precisely toward the points of intersection. To do so, they need a mechanism that is able also to act on those points of intersection—such as the food-and-peace hubs.

2020.

It’s been a year that none of us could have predicted. Yet in many ways it is a culmination of the predictions we have heard for decades.

Warnings about the emergence of new viral pathogens are nothing new, but the failure to heed or act on those warnings has contributed to the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects.

At the same time, as predicted, humans’ impacts on the environment are leading to more frequent and severe extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and soil degradation. These impacts, when coupled with failure to invest in sound biosecurity practices, contribute to an increasing threat from emerging, boundary-crossing infectious diseases in humans, animals, and plants (Yadav, Singh, and Malik 2020; Royal Society and NAS 2020; Gray and Merzdorf 2019; Edwards 2017; Sundström et al. 2014; Seneviratne et al. 2012; Waage and Mumford 2008).

Cyclones have caused widespread damage in many South Pacific island countries and in South Asia in 2020, and heavy rains in usually dry regions have given rise to massive swarms of locusts that threaten crops in East Africa, South Asia, and the Gulf countries. The fall armyworm is decimating staple crops across Africa South of the Sahara and Southeast Asia, and control efforts are complicated by COVID-19 restrictions in many countries (Bourke and Sar 2020; FAO 2020f).

Unsurprisingly, the overlapping disasters of 2020 have led to economic and health-related hardships across the globe, hampering food security for millions by disrupting agricultural production, the availability of food, and people’s ability to obtain and utilize food, disproportionately harming those living in poverty.

The world was off track to reach Zero Hunger by 2030 even before each of the 2020 disasters exacerbated hunger and undernutrition.

Five years ago, the UN member states committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2: “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” (see Figure 2.1). After a long, slow, progressive decline, the number of undernourished people started rising in 2015 and continues its upward trajectory. In 2019, even before the recent crises, nearly 690 million people suffered from chronic hunger, and 135 million people experienced acute food crisis. Child stunting and wasting are falling but not fast enough to meet SDG 2 (FAO et al. 2020; FSIN 2020; UN 2019b). Now the health and economic crises generated by the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in income losses, food and labor shortages, and health service disruptions that affect the most vulnerable, threatening to set back progress even further. The World Food Programme warns that an additional 130 million people could be pushed into acute food crisis by the end of 2020, bringing the total to 265 million people (UN 2020f).

In the decade leading up to 2030, how can we overcome these shocks and setbacks to achieve Zero Hunger for all? The events of 2020 are laying bare many of the vulnerabilities of the world’s food system; they reveal that it is woefully inadequate for coping with the kinds of overlapping global and regional crises that we are currently experiencing and that we may expect more of by 2030 (FAO et al. 2020; Nguyen 2018). We have seen how the crises disrupt the food and agriculture sector, jeopardize the stability of human, animal, and environmental health, and have lasting implications on the global economy, livelihoods, and food security (FAO et al. 2020; OECD 2020). We argue in this essay that by taking an integrated approach to health and food and nutrition security, it is possible to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. To do so, we must design responses to the current crises and their underlying causes and move forward in ways that support the transformation of the current food system to one that is more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient.

An important element of this endeavor will be to employ a holistic One Health approach. Sectoral responses alone rarely deliver sustained positive outcomes for complex problems such as climate change, chronic hunger, and unsustainable agricultural practices. One Health therefore works to achieve optimal health outcomes based on a recognition of the interconnections between humans, animals, plants, and their shared environment, as well as an understanding of the role of fair trade relations (CDC 2020; FAO 2020j). While the framing and use of the term “One Health” is relatively new, the concept is not: as far back as the 1800s scientists recognized the similarity in disease processes between animals and humans and coined the term “zoonoses” for diseases that can pass between animals and humans.

More recently, it has become clear that human impacts on planetary health, including land use change, soil depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss, are inextricably linked to animal and human health. To prevent, respond to, and recover from such challenges, cooperation among multidisciplinary teams is needed to safeguard agricultural production and public health from natural disasters and boundary-crossing diseases and to ensure that people have access to safe, nutritious, and healthy food. Currently, One Health tends to be implemented through consultation between sectors; it will become fully functional only when circular food, health, and economic systems - based on continual reuse of materials and products and elimination of waste - are implemented at local, national, and global levels (CHF 2020).

The One Health approach - with its focus on increasing sustainable practices in agriculture and improving the overall health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environment - has the potential to be transformative (Cleaveland et al. 2017; Garcia, Osburn, and Jay-Russell 2020; Alders et al. 2017; Lysaght et al. 2017). By highlighting the ways our current challenges are interconnected, One Health points to the need to tackle human, animal, and environmental health holistically in order to avert future health crises, restore a healthy planet, and sustainably end hunger.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of globalized food systems, their inherent inequities, and their inadequacy to provide for healthy people and a healthy planet.

Our globalized food systems pose a threat to human, animal, and environmental health

We are hitting planetary and social boundaries—that is, the ecological ceiling and the social foundation beyond which humans cannot safely and equitably thrive—and our food systems are part of the problem (Figure 2.2; Raworth 2017b). Globally, we are seeking to achieve Zero Hunger at the same time that all societies are grappling with the need to manage the impacts of climate change, emerging diseases, extinctions and loss of bio- and agrodiversity, overconsumption of freshwater, rising rates of malnutrition, soil depletion and degradation, land use change, and biological and chemical pollution, while also meeting their immediate needs within national budgets (Alders et al. 2018; Rampa et al. 2019; also see Box 2.1 on the overlapping crises in the Horn of Africa).

One manifestation of the overshooting of planetary boundaries is the increasing frequency of the emergence of new infectious diseases and their rapid spread. As humans have encroached upon and destroyed natural habitats to establish, among other things, pastures for livestock, the result has been that wild animals live closer to areas where humans rear livestock and poultry, exposing domestic animals to a completely new range of pathogens and vectors to which they are highly susceptible. These diseases can spread rapidly, resulting in heavy morbidity and mortality among livestock, trade restrictions, and economic losses (Garcia, Osburn, and Jay-Russell 2020). Domesticated livestock and companion animals have been associated with increased risk of emerging infectious diseases (Johnson et al. 2020, Kock 2014), antimicrobial resistance (Graham et al. 2019), and introduction of disease into susceptible wildlife populations (Yadav, Singh, and Malik 2020). And the spread of COVID-19 shows the simultaneous vulnerability of public health, the economy, and food and nutrition security to emerging diseases.

Our food systems pose health hazards to humans and the environment and have a big part in the rise of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Through land use change, intensive agriculture, large-scale livestock production, and other practices, food systems have led to agroecological degradation, destroyed habitats, and contributed to climate change (IPES-Food 2017). Indeed, the food system contributes 21–37 percent of total net human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases and accounts for 70 percent of freshwater use. Agriculture—cropping and pasturage—occupies nearly 40 percent of global land (Willett et al. 2019; IPCC 2020).

Overall, the huge increase in intensive livestock production has been the most significant cause of the huge loss of biodiversity in recent decades; the extinction rate is now estimated at between 100 and 1,000 times that of preindustrial levels (Ceballos, Ehrlich, and Raven 2020; Ceballos et al. 2015; Pimm et al. 2014; Barnosky et al. 2011). Changing lifestyles and diets in recent decades have led to increased demand for animal-source foods such as eggs, meat, milk, and fish, resulting in higher rates of diet-related noncommunicable disease as well as in the intensification of production systems, overcrowding of animals, and increased risk of animal disease outbreaks and spillovers of disease from animals to humans (Yadav, Singh, and Malik 2020; FAO et al. 2020).

Half of the emerging zoonotic diseases between 1940 and 2005 have been attributed to changes in land use, agricultural practices, and food production (IPES-Food 2017). As land in low- and middle-income countries is converted to grow feed crops for cattle feedlots and intensively raised pigs and poultry in other parts of the world - sometimes as a result of land grabs by rich countries and corporations - the change in land use destroys forests and contributes to loss of carbon sinks (Blanco 2018).

Similarly, a significant part of the animal-source foods imported into low- and middle- income countries come from intensive livestock production in the exporting countries, with adverse impacts on global ecosystems, pastoralists’ livelihoods, and human health (Coordination SUD 2019). At the same time, domestic supply chains show weaknesses that threaten people’s food and nutrition security, including inadequate food preservation facilities for perishable foods such as fruits, vegetables, and animal-source foods (FAO 2017). Since the emergence of COVID-19, there has been an increasing focus on the human-animal-environment disease interface as encompassed in the One Health concept (Kock et al. 2020), with wet markets and their role in pathogen transmission from wildlife to people frequently cited (Restif 2020). However, wet markets have long played a key role in distributing fresh food in many societies and will continue to do so (Ribeiro et al. 2020). In a number of countries, consumers are concerned about a lack of access to affordable animal-source foods (owing to high animal mortality and market failure) and have little confidence in the safety of intensively produced food (Duggan 2015; World Bank 2016a); they worry, for example, about contamination of food with hormones, antibiotics, or pesticide residues. These concerns frequently underlie their preference for non-domesticated animals sold through informal markets (Alders 2020).

Our food systems are inherently unequal and further exacerbate inequities

Global food governance is tilted against low-income countries and smallholder farmers. The world’s increasingly globalized food systems have been accompanied by increasing dependence on food imports by low- and middle-income countries as well as underinvestment in local farmers, farmer associations, and smallholder-oriented value chains (FAO 2014, 2017; Poole and de Frece 2010; McMichael 2013). In 2017 the trade gaps between low- and middle-income countries on the one hand and high-income countries on the other were reported to be widening, with low- and middle-income countries projected to be net importers of meat and dairy products by 2030 (FAO 2017).

Most high-income countries provide international agricultural development assistance designed to help increase smallholder farmers’ production and income in low- and middle-income countries, while at the same time retaining trade advantages through non-tariff barriers to trade (Gourdon and Nicita 2012). Domestic production in low- and middle-income countries cannot compete with cheap imported goods (such as ultra-processed foods or powdered milk) that benefit from subsidized production in the country of origin (Blanco 2018).

Furthermore, some food assistance from high-income countries to low-income countries still requires the recipient country to procure food from a restricted number of countries or award contracts to companies in donor countries, thus weakening local food systems in recipient countries. A considerable share of global food assistance therefore remains an export subsidy masquerading as charity (OECD 2018). While the United Nations food agencies work in pursuit of food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture, trade regulations discount the health impacts of trade in food commodities and can constrain low-income countries’ nutrition policies (Thow et al. 2017). At the same time, the globalization of food systems, along with persistent 19th-century approaches to food prices (that is, pricing based on weight or volume rather than nutrient composition and density) and the siloing of the agricultural, health, and environment sectors, places huge stresses on smallholder livestock keepers, small-scale aquaculture, and family farmers worldwide (Alders et al. 2016).

Given that family farms represent more than 90 percent of all farms globally and produce 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms, supporting these mostly smallholder farmers will be key to achieving SDG 2 (FAO and IFAD 2019).

Lack of secure land tenure and resulting food insecurity are a persistent issue for rural communities, indigenous people, women, and marginalized groups. Land grabs have a long history, from the colonial era to the present, and they continue to increase hunger and distort land management (Anderson et al. 2019). Displacement of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous people is ongoing as international investors and corporations seize existing farmland and clear new land for agricultural endeavors across a range of countries (Twomey 2014). These land grabs are frequently driven by global capital and corporate agribusinesses that are responsible not to local land or people but to faraway shareholders (Deininger et al. 2011). A lack of enduring links to this land and its associated ecosystems contributes not only to a reluctance to employ sustainable practices requiring long-term investments in landscapes, including soil and water, but also to ecosystem damage resulting from the expansion of agricultural land into previously uncultivated landscapes, thereby increasing the risk of emergence of new pathogens (Anderson et al. 2019).

Insecure land tenure is a major contributor to degraded land and inadequate diets, the impacts of which are frequently felt more by women and marginalized groups (Alders et al. 2016). Women and other marginalized groups are disproportionately harmed by cultural and legal proscriptions and norms, including unequal access to credit and information, that prevent them from participating fully and equally in agricultural and other livelihood activities and from reaping the benefits of these activities (Alders et al. 2016; Quisumbing et al. 2014).

In Africa South of the Sahara, for example, women play a dominant role in the production, processing, and postharvest storage of food, yet they make up only 15 percent of landholders (Alders et al. 2016). When women have a lower income share within a household, that household spends less of its budget on food (Hopkins, Levin, and Haddad 1994). Widespread and ongoing iron deficiency in women of reproductive age, as well as a higher global malnutrition rate compared with men, reflects systemic discrimination, including within health and nutrition services (FAO et al. 2020; Alders 2018). The poor nutritional status of women interferes with their daily activities and livelihoods and crosses generations because poorly nourished women are more likely to give birth to children with a low birth weight (FAO et al. 2020). The 2020 GHI also shows that rural and indigenous regions often present higher rates of child stunting (see 2020 Results).

Formal and informal education on agriculture and nutrition is insufficiently tailored to local conditions. Individuals’ choices about their diets and farmers’ decisions about their agricultural practices are influenced by factors besides education, but without appropriate educational opportunities it is almost impossible to achieve optimal results, especially in resource-limited circumstances. A series of avoidable barriers mean that too many children lack access to the education necessary to learn life skills and help them thrive (UNICEF 2020b). Vulnerable households often cannot afford the costs associated with schooling or need children to supply farm or household labor (ILO 2020). School curricula are often poorly adapted to local circumstances, including local agroecological zones and marketing systems (Epstein and Yuthas 2012), and insufficient attention is given to understanding sustainable agriculture, human nutrition, and how to meet nutrient requirements with locally available, nutritious food (Garcia, Osburn, and Jay-Russell 2020; CHF 2020).

Social protection remains insufficient or misdirected. Support for the most vulnerable - that is, programs to boost the well-being of poor people, children, the elderly, and others through cash transfers, food transfers, subsidies, and social insurance - is crucial for people’s food security during crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the degree to which social protection is lacking. In many low- and middle-income countries, rural households increasingly rely on informal off-farm sources of income and are becoming net food consumers vulnerable to shocks (Rapsomanikis 2015).

Even before COVID-19, 55 percent of the world’s population was not covered by any social protection programs (Ortiz 2018). Carrying out such programs requires significant investment in avenues for connecting with individuals and households, especially those dependent on the informal sector (Razavi 2020). The lack of accurate data on the number of people involved in the informal sector and insufficient government and civil society links with informal networks increase the difficulty of organizing distribution programs. Furthermore, overseas remittances play a critical role in maintaining many households’ incomes and food consumption. Now, as a consequence of COVID-19 control measures, countless migrant workers worldwide are losing their jobs, and remittances to low- and middle-income countries are projected to fall by 19.7 percent to US$445 billion (World Bank 2020d). As unemployed migrant workers return to their home villages, they will place further strain on limited food stocks and social protection programs (Pancawati 2020). Finally, the agricultural and supply chain workers who feed the world receive low wages, have little to no job security (Martin 2016), and are frequently at high risk of contracting COVID-19.

Inadequate emergency responses are disrupting local food systems and fail to support local producers. COVID-19 containment measures, enforced without a clear declaration that agricultural and food services are essential, have endangered food security in many locations (Swinnen and McDermott 2020). Restricted labor mobility in areas dependent on seasonal or migrant laborers and the difficulties associated with accessing markets and transporting food both within and between countries are disrupting food supply chains and hampering people’s access to essential goods and services (FAO et al. 2020).

These restrictions not only cause short-term shocks to food supplies but also weaken local producers’ ability to prepare for the next sowing or production cycle, further diminishing the likelihood of achieving Zero Hunger in the coming decade (UN 2020d). This situation highlights the costly result of failure to coordinate preparedness and response activities between different sectors, such as health, agriculture, and trade.

Carry out a global, multisectoral review of food, health, and economic systems through a One Health lens to chart a sustainable and resilient pathway for governments and donors that paves the way for environmental recovery. This review should be convened and implemented by a neutral entity with representatives from the public, private, and civil society sectors across all geographical regions. Among other things, it must address the need to strengthen data collection in order to better monitor the management of agricultural and natural resources on which smallholder food systems rely and to support the surveillance of animal, zoonotic, and foodborne diseases. Biosecurity legislation will need to take into account findings on crises such as COVID-19, the locust plague, fall army worm infestations, and African swine fever to enable the transparent trade of safe, high-quality food commodities and agricultural inputs that adhere to agreed-upon standards. Evidence on the impact of crises on low- and middle-income countries and on vulnerabilities in high-income countries, including evidence on how malnutrition increases health risks from pandemics, provides lessons that should be used to accelerate ongoing reforms, such as universal health coverage, global health security, and disaster risk reduction commitments. A new global coordination mechanism is required to enable food and other allied international thematic institutions to align policies in support of resilience and sustainable food systems (United Nations General Assembly 2019; UN 1992; WHO 2005; UNDRR 2015). These efforts must be accompanied by enhanced investments in sustainable food systems at the territorial level—including, where feasible, through properly regulated mechanisms blending public and private finance, such as public guarantees and responsible and just governance of tenure of land, fisheries, and forests (FAO 2012)—to reduce the investment risk associated with the food and agriculture sector.

Take a One Health approach to invest in sustainable food production, distribution, and nutrient recycling. Smallholders and input supply services must be provided with the knowledge and inputs to make their production systems more resilient and sufficiently profitable so they can meet their nutrient requirements either directly through their own production or indirectly through fair farm-gate prices that allow them to purchase safe and nutritious food (CHF 2020). Given the importance of diversifying both food production and consumption to achieve more sustainable and resilient food systems and better nutritional outcomes through sustainable healthy diets (Alders et al. 2016; FAO and WHO 2019), nutritious but neglected food species amenable to sustainable harvesting should be integrated into smallholder household livelihood strategies. A One Health approach that engages various sectors and disciplines will help identify options that enable households to use the food resources available to them across the seasons of the year and work with them to identify optimal practices (Wong et al. 2018). The reintroduction of river prawns upstream from the Diama Dam along the Senegal River is an example of this type of One Health approach in action. The project provides a regionally tailored, sustainable approach to the control of schistosomiasis—a disease that affects some 240 million people across the world—while enabling the restoration of a previously established source of food and income for local fisheries (Sokolow et al. 2015; Shaikh, Rahman- Shepherd, and Dar 2018). Governments and donors need to promote effective smallholder production and marketing organizations; cost-efficient food preservation, marketing, and food safety systems, including improved postharvest management; better linkages between rural and urban areas to shorten supply chains (increasing the resilience of local food systems to international shocks); agroecological approaches that match plant varieties, animal breeds, and farming systems with local conditions and tailored educational and vocational training (FAO 2020a); and efficient recycling of nutrient-rich organic waste (Alders et al. 2016). These activities must run in parallel with strengthened coordination across agriculture, education, finance, human health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene to generate synergistic outcomes, both horizontally and vertically. Evidence-based approaches to managing wet markets (including improved measures for preventing and controlling infection and disease surveillance systems) and options for effectively preserving animal-source foods, fruits, and vegetables are essential to support people’s access to and use of safe, nutritious, diverse foods. Finally, significantly reducing industrial livestock production while ensuring access for those who need animal-source food the most—undernourished pregnant and lactating mothers and infants in the first 1,000 days of life in resource-poor settings (Grace et al. 2018)—would offer clear gains: more competitive pricing of local products in low- and middle-income countries, recovery of the environment and biodiversity, mitigation of climate change drivers (Jackson et al. 2020; Young 2018), reduced global risk of emerging and persistent zoonotic diseases (Alders et al. 2013), and reduction of malnutrition (Grace et al. 2018).

Implement formal and informal education programs that match people’s circumstances. School curricula should be tailored to local conditions, including local agroecological zones and marketing systems. Students should be introduced to the One Health concept early on (Thomson 2020) and instructed in human nutrition and how to meet the nutrient requirements of girls, boys, women, and men with locally available, nutritious food to ensure good outcomes for human well-being, food and nutrition security, and natural resources (Garcia, Osburn, and Jay-Russell 2020; CHF 2020). In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, farmer field schools and care group programs for women and children have been shown to be particularly effective.

Support regional trade initiatives that include social and environmental metrics. Trade agreements should do more than merely pursue short-term economic gains at the macro level. The 193 countries that signed the SDGs have committed to SDG 17.10: “a universal, rulesbased, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization” (WTO 2020). These countries must push global agricultural, environmental, and trade institutions to deliver a harmonized policy framework that is good for food producers, consumers, the environment, and the economy.

We are likely to face more shocks and challenges on our way to 2030, even as we work to build a food system that can sustainably support a healthy, food-secure, well-nourished human population with Zero Hunger. The 2020 GHI findings highlight the food insecurity challenges facing low-income countries as they battle multiple crises. Right now, low- and middle-income countries can make progress by including marginalized groups in policy making, working together more effectively at the regional level to increase their negotiating power on the global stage, and ensuring shorter food supply chains within their regions. Both now and moving forward, they can carry out policies and programs that promote the well-being of female and male smallholder farmers and engage communities with agricultural production and food systems that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.

We must not forget, however, that low- and middle-income countries cannot achieve the SDG 2 targets by 2030 without the full engagement of high-income countries. If Zero Hunger and the associated SDG 2 targets are to be met, high-income countries must also be active, positive contributors to dialogue and change. Among other things, they will need to use trade policy tools to create market incentives for sustainable food economies, untie aid and design food assistance to strengthen local and regional food systems, and change how agricultural products and services are valued so that nutrient content and ecosystem services are appropriately integrated into pricing mechanisms. A global transformation to a set of circular economies that feed all people through more sustainable food systems will not be completed by 2030, but by acting together we can achieve Zero Hunger while laying a solid foundation for a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable world.