UN FAO produces end-of-year guide to equitable nutrition and climate change mitigation

22 Dec 2023 --- The Food Systems Countdown to 2030 Initiative (FSCI) is calling for equitable access to healthy diets that mitigate the impact of climate change, following the publication of its latest study. 

The first science-based monitoring guide for decision-makers in global agriculture and food systems, the FSCI is composed of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Cornell University College of Agriculture, US, and Life Sciences and the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University, US.

“The FSCI offers a feasible starting point for monitoring food systems at the global level,” José Rosero Moncayo, director of FAO’s Statistics Division, tells Food Ingredients First. “The FSCI is committed to publishing an annual ‘Countdown’ report that can be used for monitoring progress in the different dimensions of food systems and can also be used for countries to benchmark their results.”

“Its menu of indicators also intends to serve as a reference point for developing national systems that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of countries. This will allow national food systems stakeholders to assess the status of their food systems and decide where to act to accelerate change. The FSCI intends to guide and support countries in establishing these monitoring systems and mobilizes resources toward this direction.”

The FSCI indicator framework
The study, published in the journal Nature Food, underscores the ties between food systems, human health and planetary well-being under five thematic areas: diets, environment, livelihoods, governance and resilience to present a comprehensive monitoring framework. 

“As a pure data-driven initiative, the FSCI aims to improve the understanding of food systems and the interactions across different elements of the system of global and national stakeholders,” says Moncayo.

“Different countries have diverse food system challenges, and not everything gets better as countries get wealthier,” he explains. “For example, African and South Asian countries tend to have the biggest challenges with food security and adequate diets, but high-income countries have their own significant challenges with unhealthy diets that increase the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This needs to change.”

Environmental preservation
Another example presented by Moncayo concerns environmental preservation, where “high-income countries’ food systems are much larger contributors to emissions and environmental degradation,” while “low-income countries use resources like fertilizers and pesticides at more sustainable levels, though sometimes to the detriment of yield.”

 “A final example of the challenges is that low-income countries are more likely to have a food system plan, and they have less volatile food prices and variability in food supply. However, that simplicity also means fewer pathways for food to reach consumers and, therefore, greater potential for interruption. It is clear that no one has a monopoly on challenges or solutions, and we can all learn from each other.”

The FSCI’s harmonized baseline dataset comprises 50 indicators and offers a starting point for tracking changes in food systems worldwide.

Over the next seven years (2023–2030), FSCI plans to publish annual updates, incorporating new indicators to fill existing gaps. The focus in the initial two years will be on understanding country-level performance and dynamic interactions across indicators, domains and themes.

SDG and COP28 goals
The study asserts that the transformation of agriculture and food systems is essential to allow countries to meet — and possibly exceed — their nationally determined contributions in accordance with the UN SDG. 

“The FSCI effort intends to complement other global development monitoring efforts, such as SDGs, using the lens of food systems,” Moncayo says. “It is recognized that food systems are only partially captured by the SDGs goals and indicators.”

“The very small overlap between the SDGs and the FSCI framework reflects the fact that food systems were not yet considered a mainstream framework approach when the SDGs were developed.”

FAO noted that food systems played only a small part in climate negotiations at COP27 and, more optimistically, that the importance of agriculture and food systems received a much more appropriate recognition at this year’s COP28.

The organization points out that participant nations discussed the impact of climate change on nutrition and health, giving voice to global farming communities and outlining strategies to tackle global hunger.

“As food systems become more widely understood, with its holistic and systemic nature, the large set of FSCI indicators that are not in the SDGs, which includes dimensions such as resilience, governance and diets, provides guidance to policymakers on how to transform their food systems to deliver healthy and sustainable diets,” asserts Moncayo.

Addressing the recent Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture at COP28, he points out that the FSCI countdown indicators include “emissions from food systems in total and for individual food groups as well as data on land and water use for food.”

“They also include data critical to assess adaptation — diversity of production, food price volatility, food supply variability,” he adds.

Moncayo concludes that “it is the ability to compare these data with data on hunger, diets, livelihoods, gender, and social protection to identify synergies and tradeoffs that make the countdown initiative so invaluable for incorporating and tracking food system progress within nationally determined contributions and national adaptation plans.”

By Milana Nikolova