World Food Prize Laureate (2018) and Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Lawrence Haddad and I are sharing a coffee on alternate sides of a Zoom screen. Energized by the momentum of September’s Food Systems Summit, the first global summit to address food systems issues, November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and December’s Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G), Haddad shares that he would like to see more convergence of food systems and climate agendas in the months and years to come. “Like a symphony,” he says, of the opportunities for harmonization. I listen intently.
“Our strategy at GAIN is to improve the consumption of safe and nutritious food for all people as our contribution to ending the scandal of malnutrition. But we cannot divorce nutrition from the environment,” says Haddad. “The two are inextricably linked.”
Haddad describes that in the context of lower income settings, for example, the consumption of animal sourced foods is often vital to support the nutritional needs of people with monotonous diets, such as young children, adolescents and women of reproductive age. But the production of these foods can be highly greenhouse gas emitting.
Haddad believes that in emerging economies, as populations and incomes grow, increased production of animal sourced foods is inevitable, and as such, it is absolutely critical that these foods become more available, affordable and attractive in ways that mitigate emissions to levels that are compatible with the Paris Climate Accords. Studies also show that when there are higher levels of CO2 in the air, nutrient density of staple crops is lower, so adaptation is also essential.
“We need to boost the nutrient content of staple crops using conventional breeding techniques,” Haddad adds.
In this light, GAIN has begun to rewrite the script on how it addresses food systems issues, positioning itself as an environmental front runner for nutrition. In June, the Swiss-based foundation, already a member of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), announced that it would be teaming up with conservation organization, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to develop ideas and accelerate the adoption of new solutions in food systems transformation that improve nutrition while also supporting efforts to meet the Paris Accords.
“There’s a cacophony out there and we have to convert it into a symphony— there is simply too much noise,” says Haddad of the “performative chatter” and the “easy” radical calls to action that he believes have distracted progress towards gradual but real change. “The hard work is to be done at the country level. This is where the synergies are realized and the tradeoffs can bite.”
Anyone deeply involved in either the climate or food systems space has heard the criticisms: food systems did not play a strong enough role in the agenda at COP26, there has not been enough focus on the contribution of agriculture to climate change… Many critics argued that the summit should not have served meat to delegates.
A re-think food exhibit at the COP26 Green Zone inside Glasgow Science Centre at the United Nations ... [+]
Haddad rejects sweeping solutions such as banning meat. What we need, he says, is “more nuance.”
“Different parts of the world need different solutions and we should all respect their right to determine solutions for themselves rather than impose solutions from outside,” says Haddad, indicating that the discord or “cacophony,” is taking “the climate folks” and “the food folks” away from the context-based nuance required to create harmonized action, or what he refers to as a “symphony” towards meaningful change.
“Both the private sector and the public sector need to be in the orchestra. The private sector represents the primary players in the food system so if they don’t change, food systems will not transform. Yes, there are some players in both public and private sectors who do not always act in the public interest, but the best way to hold them accountable is to engage with them.”
“I don’t want us to see us as distant cousins but as brothers and sisters in arms,” says Haddad of the synergies between players in the food, nutrition and climate space.
“We’ve finally realized how critical it is to move past these typically siloed agendas or ‘notes’, in the areas of biodiversity, nutrition, climate change, livelihoods, resilience and hunger. We are fighting very similar battles and if we join forces we can do it much more effectively.”
Coming out of the UN Food Systems Summit in September, Haddad (who served as Chair of Action track 1- Nutrition) and the four other Action Track chairs, representing Biodiversity, Climate Change, Resilience and Hunger, recognized that they would have to join forces and harmonize their missions to effectively address the multifaceted dimensions that all touch on social and economic development, nutrition, food security, health and the environment.
“I have spoken to more climate people in one year than I have in thirty years,” he shares. “The Food Systems Summit kind of drove us all together and pushed back these curtains. We were talking to each other and saying oh, you’ve been working on very similar issues for the last twenty years. The objective now is to draw on all those horizontal connections that were made and turn them into one powerful force for change but with different emphases.”
Building on the partnership that was announced in June, between the WWF and GAIN, to support the convergence between climate and nutrition issues, the UN Food Systems Action Track organizations are developing the “Food Forward” Consortium, to better align previously disjointed efforts and to accelerate action.
On November 10, the group teamed up on a panel at COP26, entitled “Food Forward – Achieving Climate Goals through Food Systems Transformation” with the objective of demonstrating that food systems transformation is a win-win for policymakers across the spectrum of climate, nature, hunger, health, resilience, and livelihoods.
“Food Forward – Achieving Climate Goals through Food Systems Transformation” panel at COP26, ... [+]
“We can’t deal with these problems one at a time. It’s like saying I am going to deal with human rights, one human right at a time,” says Haddad, whose organization also helped to organize the Eat4Change dinner at COP26, in support of a more prominent role for food in the multilateral process. Youth leaders played a critical role at the event, posing questions that urged attendees to make the relevant connections.
Haddad believes that the youth are critical to the integration of food,nutrition and climate agendas.
“The youth get this idea of symphonic action. They haven’t dealt with 30 years of being ossified in silos,” says Haddad, who also helped develop #Act4Food #Act4Change, a global youth-led movement calling for youth to pledge action to combat hunger, improve health, and heal the planet.
Haddad argues that real change will require commitment at the national and sub national levels with cohesive direction from previously segregated players in the nutrition, food and environment space in the areas of innovation, knowledge sharing, advocacy, planning, communications and performance metrics.
“We need radical change and for that we have to align all of our musical notes first,” says Haddad. “Organizations like GAIN… we have been like beautiful notes and now we need to come together with other notes in a beautiful symphony. To that end I want GAIN to become the greenest nutrition organization around, and it’s the nuance, backed by science, that will get us there. Find the nuance and then be radical in our drive for synergies and the minimization of tradeoffs.
Food is a part of the problem but now more than ever, it must the biggest part of the solution to climate change as well as malnutrition.”
