Page 59 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 15

Health & Healing

tists have been working with food
Summit bypasses UN processes producers for decades to increase
In the last dozen years after the food productivity, output, diversity
2008 world food price spike, the and resilience through better agro-
UN Committee on World Food ecological practices, thus cutting
Security (CFS) has become an costs and enhancing sustainability.
inclusive forum for civil society and
corporate interests to debate how The evidence is unambiguous that
best to advance food security. Un- agroecology has delivered far better
surprisingly, CFS has long addressed results than ‘Green Revolution’
food systems. innovations. A survey of almost 300
large ecological agriculture projects
CFS’s High-Level Panel of Experts in more than fifty poor countries
Jomo Kwame Sundaram was Assistant Secre-
tary-General for Economic Development in the (HLPE) is widely acknowledged as reported rising farmer incomes due
UN Department of Economic and Social Af- competent, having prepared bal- to lower costs and a 79% average
fairs (DESA), (Honorary) Research Coordinator anced and comprehensive reports productivity increase.
for the G24 Intergovernmental Group on Inter- on matters of current and likely
national Monetary Affairs and Development and future concern. In the UN system, This contrasts with the record of
Assistant Director-General and Coordinator for CFS is now seen as a ‘multistake- the Alliance for a Green Revolution
Economic and Social Development at the FAO. holder’ engagement model for em- in Africa (AGRA) launched in 2006.
In 2007, he was awarded the Wassily Leontief ulation. Yet, the Summit bypassed With funding from the Gates and
Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic CFS from the outset. Rockefeller Foundations, it prom-
Thought. Jomo has authored over 35 mono-
graphs, edited over 50 books and translated 12 ised to double yields and incomes
volumes besides writing many academic papers Nominally answering to the UNSG, for 30 million smallholder farm
and articles for the media. Summit processes have been largely households by 2020. Despite much
set by a small, largely unaccountable government spending, yields hardly
coterie. UNFSS organisers initially rose as rural poverty grew.
moved ahead without representative
Growing corporate sway in the UN stakeholder participation until his Agroecological innovations have
system got a big boost with the UN intervention led to some consulta- proved effective against infestations.
Global Compact. Such influences tive processes. Thus, safer, more effective biopesti-
have affected governance of UN cides that do not kill useful insects
agencies, now better known as the Mainly funded by the WEF and and microbes, and non-toxic alter-
World Health Organization strug- some major partners, they remain natives to agrochemical pesticides
gles to contain the pandemic. mindful of who pays the piper. have been created.
Hence, they mainly promote sup-
Difficult negotiations followed posedly ‘game-changing’, ‘scalable’ The UN Food and Agriculture
growing developing country dis- and investment-inducing solutions Organization (FAO) hosted its first
appointment with the MDGs, not claiming to offer technological fixes. International Agroecology Sympo-
delivering on climate finance as sium in 2014, before committing
promised in 2009, and failure to Agroecology innovation to ‘Scaling Up Agroecology’. But
better address the 2008 global finan- An HLPE report has approvingly for Kip Tom, President Trump’s
cial crisis and its aftermath.
considered agroecology or ‘na- representative, FAO was no longer
ture-based solutions’. Many scien- “science-based”.
Hence, the negotiated Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) com-
promise enjoys greater legitimacy
than the MDGs. However, achiev-
ing Agenda 2030 was undermined
from the outset as rich countries
blocked needed funding at the third
UN Financing for Development
summit in mid-2015.

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