The global institutional landscape of food and agriculture: How to achieve SDG2
This paper (PDF) by ECDPM describes the food and agriculture (F&A) global institutional landscape and its challenges and looks at ongoing reform efforts and their shortcomings. The world is not on track to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2. Achieving SDG 2 requires urgent action at country level, but also a more effective F&A global institutional landscape. The F&A institutional landscape grew over the past decades as a reaction to crises, identified needs, funding priorities, strategic considerations, humanitarian goals, and individual visions, to become the patchwork of interconnected institutions that it is today. One key feature today is the wide recognition that food is intrinsically linked, accompanied with a dizzying level of complexity, to many of humanities’ biggest challenges. Food, thus straddles almost all SDGs, yet it remains unclear whether or not the current fragmented F&A landscape can effectively coordinate across the whole spectrum of interrelated issues and goals. Renewed effort is urgently needed, but progress is hampered by high fragmentation, overlapping mandates, and budget shortages. Achieving SDG 2 requires stronger reform momentum and larger budgets, supported also by increased coordination across the F&A landscape. In the short term, the paper proposes to increase coordination through an inclusive consultative process to streamline SDG 2 actions across committed F&A institutions, which could culminate in an SDG 2 Leaders Alliance. A next phase of this consultative process could increase coherence, coordination, and accountability between the SDG 2 Alliance and other (F&A) institutions. For the long-term reforms necessary to address the challenge of increasingly complex food systems beyond 2030, a process aimed at delivering stronger food governance through a well-built institutional architecture is proposed. Current and upcoming challenges now necessitate a wider debate on the state of food security and the purpose of F&A governance, especially given its impact on the many related global issues outside the traditional purview of F&A institutions.