UN Food Systems Summit 2021

 UN Food Systems Summit 2021

Over this past weekend, the UN hosted its 2021 Food Systems Summit. The summit brought together experts from all UN member states to engage in a productive dialogue about food systems around the world. The summit’s ultimate goal was to hold a discourse that resulted in measurable and significant actions and outcomes that serve to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals by 2030. While I was unable to attend the summit itself due to previous commitments, after the summit was over, I explored the incredibly informative website detailing the summit’s events and outcomes. There is no way I could explain all that the summit covered in a single blog post, but I will describe certain events that particularly struck my interest. 

Firstly, I read about a number of ways any ordinary individual can support the summit’s goals from much smaller picture point of view. The article listed things like joining Sustainable Sunday’s, which is essentially a weekly gathering of friends and family in which you cook a climate friendly meal. The website included a very user friendly pdf document that offered a number of different methods of cooking such a meal. If you are interested in this, the link to this PDF document is here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un-good_food_for_all-toolkit-v8.pdf

Other actions that were listed as recommendations were things like following the summit and its events, spreading awareness of the event, and educating yourself and others about food systems and their role in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals by 2030. 

A summit event itself that I found to be of particular interest was an article on the potential role of sustainable blue foods. “Blue foods” are any kind of food coming from a body of water such as rivers, lakes, and oceans. These blue foods not only offer a variety of health benefits, but they also share a low carbon footprint. In conversations about food systems, these blue foods are often overlooked when the focal point is placed on land agriculture. The UN sustainable food summit sought to ensure that these blue foods are a part of the conversation on food systems. 

To anyone interested in food systems or sustainable practices, I would highly recommend they check out the UN sustainable food systems summit website, which includes a bevy of information about how food systems can play a role in achieving the UN’s sustainable goals by 2030. 

Website link:

https://www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit