GFG - Global food governance in an era of crisis: Lessons from the United Nations Committee on World Food Security

Abstract

The increasingly destructive impacts that today's global food system visits upon local food provision, biodiversity, and the environment have been highlighted by a number of contributors in this special issue. Viewed through a global governance lens, public responsibility has been progressively sold out to markets and corporations while the front-line actors of food provision-families, communities, and small-scale producers-have been disempowered. Decisions that affect food security are most often taken at tables located behind closed doors, from which the vulnerable are excluded. The global food system is largely orchestrated by powerful corporate, financial, and political actors to serve their own interests. Now is the time to build better food governance, not only because we are getting very close to the absolute ecological, socio-economic, and political limits of today's dominant system, but also because alternatives do exist. As articles in Section 5 of this issue have illustrated, a diversified and articulated network of different ways of thinking and going about food provision has sprung up, rooted in territories and cultures throughout the world. These solutions are practiced and advocated by increasingly authoritative organizations of peasant farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban poor, and other constituencies, many of whom recognize themselves in the food sovereignty movement. They are mobilizing around their common experiences at all levels including the global, where they have been instrumental in establishing a unique governance site.1 Issues raised in this article are addressed in detail in McKeon (2015).

Repercusión de la pandemia sobre la seguridad alimentaria mundial

“…Entre los privados se encuentran por ejemplo las empresas transnacionales agroalimentarias 12 y las diferentes Organizaciones no Gubernamentales (ONGs). Entre los actores públicos, como los Estados, nos encontramos además con más de una treintena de organizaciones multilaterales de alcance global pero también diversos foros constituidos por grupos determinados de Estados (Mckeon, 2011), (Clapp & Cohen, 2009).…”

Global Food Governance

“…5 Sovereign states engaged in political deliberation in splendid isolation in the UN and FAO from their foundation to the 1980s, when a series of factors stimulated the UN system to open up to other actors, principally civil society and the private sector (McKeon 2009 ). The CFS, reformed in an unprecedentedly inclusive process in 2009, moved up to pole position in the line-up for inclusive global food governance within a multinational human rights framework by assigning priority voice to those actors most impacted by the policies under discussion while retaining final decision-making for governments and hence maintaining their accountability (McKeon 2011 ). The opposing vision, dubbed ‘multi-stakeholderism’, has been elaborated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) through a process of ‘Global Redesign’ which involves replacing what is judged to be a clumsy, ineffective multilateral system with a series of ‘coalitions of the willing and able’ charged with addressing burning global problems.…”

Mise en place d’un projet d’espaces collaboratifs de transformation alimentaire au Saguenay−Lac-Saint-Jean : une action du CRRASA-CCLF inscrite dans la planification stratégique de la stratégique de la démarche Borée

“…À l'heure actuelle, les systèmes alimentaires sont marqués par de nombreuses inégalités sociales et a Candidate à la maîtrise en études et interventions régionales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi b Professeur en éco-conseil, Département des sciences fondamentales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi entraînent un gaspillage des ressources alimentaires, ce qui limite leur capacité à assurer une sécurité alimentaire universelle (Foley et collab., 2011;Gustavsson et collab., 2011;McKeon, 2015).…”