Notes from the Chair

Recent Note

Good Governance and Renewed Multilateralism: Including Territories and Excluding Multinational Corporations

Oct. 5, 2021

Johanna Wilkes, Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer

As the devastating impacts of climate change and growing food insecurity become increasingly apparent, there is converging agreement among food systems actors that transformation is needed. However, division remains on what exactly transformation means and what is required to achieve it. Supporting place-based approaches to food systems could be key to a more equitable path forward. Recognized within Solution Cluster 6 of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (the Summit), territorial governance includes “encompassing rural and indigenous territories, landscape partnerships, city-regions, and other place-based approaches[i]–to deliver integrated strategies for food systems transformation led by local stakeholders.” In addition, a truly integrated form of territorial governance can open space for genuine dialogue and action to ensure human rights, including the Right to Food, and establish agroecology (part of Solution Cluster 3) as a transformational pathway that centers on climate change, community resilience, and equity. As both a set of practices and a political movement, agroecology is local in implementation but global in impact, connecting across territorial networks and transnational civil society. Agroecologists are critical knowledge-holders, land stewards, and protectors of biodiversity at regional and community scales.

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Previous Notes

• Statement on Systemic Racism and Anti-Black Violence (June 11, 2020)
• COVID-19 Reveals Gaps in our Food Systems (April 16, 2020)