Глобальный Диалог
EMPOWERING CITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO IMPROVE FOOD SYSTEMS GLOBALLY
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Discussion topic outcome
Theme 6, Group 6.1 COVID has taught us that the current approach for responding to emergencies is not effective. We need to move from short-term emergency planning to taking a more systemic approach and think about longer-term recovery planning. This will be particularly important as emergencies become more frequent in the wake of climate change (for example in Colombo they expect flooding every few years). Cities can build resilience by developing recovery plans as a stepping-stone to longer-term food strategies. Integrated into this approach should be capacity building. Building resilience i... Подробнееs to build capacities of people and institutions so they can cope with shocks and stresses by absorbing them. Building capacities of different institutions will ensure that all actors in the urban food system are becoming more resilient. Harnessing the power of different stakeholders, and effective coordination between them, is key to creating more resilient cities. It’s essential that different stakeholders coordinate in order to push forward resilience planning and projects in spite of local government’s budgetary and electoral terms, to ensure continuit. In one city, they were able to overcome one of the world’s strictest lockdown and still provide fruit and vegetables to their citizens because of effective co-ordination between local governments, police, municipal and private transport companies and farmers. COVID further highlighted the role of civil society in helping cities respond to shocks and stresses. We need to untap the potential of civil society and other community groups to help cities respond to emergencies. Civil society and citizens can also play an important role in holding local governments accountable for their (in)actions. The private sector is another important stakeholder group; school food and public/private partnerships are another obvious solution to help cities become more resilient. Schools provide a stable market for local businesses and we can leverage public procurement as a tool to protect cities. We should connect local producers to nearby school kitchens, ensuring that local businesses are supported, children have healthy and sustainable food, and markets are diversified. Schools are an important platform to deliver nutritious food, but cities would like some support to help cities to do this. Diversification of food chains to improve resilience. Increasing urban agriculture, promoting the school feeding programmes like those outlined above, or leveraging the new supply chains that have been created through COVID or through people moving out of urban centres, as some of the ways cities can do this. The solutions put forward in our discussion highlighted the importance for multi-stakeholder collaboration and coordination to create resilient cities. The responsibility should not fall on the shoulders of one group of actors, instead all actors should be empowered to play a role and sufficient resources should be invested in different stakeholder groups (e.g. civil society organisations, private sector, academics, schools) to build capacity and agency. This means that emphasis should be focused on creating multi-stakeholder partnerships and effective coordination between groups. It should also mean that individual stakeholders groups are given sufficient support and resource to be able to play a role in shaping their local food system. Ultimately, it is the role of national government to ensure that local governments are sufficiently resourced to be able to invest in multi-stakeholder partnerships. As some of the above actions are implemented, some of the challenges may be: Lack of data on emergency and recovery (knowing who needs access to food and support) Vulnerable differs from city to city, The large number of institutions and stakeholders can lead to governance fragmentation Local governance has become too complicated and there are too many institutions, making policy change slow. This is compounded by the issue of budgetary and electoral terms being too short/frequent to make any long-term, systemic change. Stakeholder lack agency or resource to be able to play their role Скрыть
Направления деятельности: 4
Ключевые слова: Data & Evidence, Environment and Climate, Finance, Governance, Innovation, Policy, Trade-offs, Women & Youth Empowerment