Nobel Peace Prize Forum 2021: The Food Effect

yesterday at the city hall um by providing his speech for the nobel peace prize 2020 awarded to the world food program the executive director david beasley who is with us today mentioned the dramatic hunger consequences worldwide after an eruption of indonesian volcano in 1815. 70 years later the the devastating eruption of another volcano in indonesia the krakatoa volcano with it debris all over the world created strange atmosphere at uh atmospheric condition uh also about uh norway with vivid red and orange color in the sky and this has actually probably inspired one of the most famous painting in the world the scream by edward mook and today we are sitting here in the university of oslo in this avala also decorated by monk we are just in front of one of his other master pieces representing other sky conditions the sun as moon said with this uh avla paintings he wanted to communicate both a sense of the specifically norwegian and the universally human with the idea of enlightenment this could also we hope be the red string for our debate today concerning food and we have also another link with monk today you will maybe notice that i'm on this stage we have some very nice comfortable chairs which are actually the same used made special for our new monk museum which opened this year the furniture is produced by a norwegian company which is also famous for its sustainable engagement um using among other recycled aluminium and steel and with an idea of eternal life for their products my name is eric oszeim and i have the pleasure to moderate this year's nobel peace prize forum the food effect we will talk about hunger malnutrition climate we have a program with the great speakers but first let me introduce ulav nuersta the director of the norwegian nobel institute who love the floor is yours [Applause] thank you eric this morning we will hear a lot about how food or rather the pursuit production distribution and consumption of food not only can but must be part of the solution shall we succeed to combat hunger and solve the climate crisis however since this is after all the noble peace prize forum hosted by the norwegian noble institute in cooperation with the university of oslo and the municipality of oslo let us not forget how food and food security is also of vital importance to peace and stability both within and among nations twenty years ago as we were commemorating the 100th anniversary of the nobel peace prize with a centennial conference here in oslo i had the privilege to meet and listen to the great indian economist and nobel laureate amartya sen he was a pioneer in exploring in a scientific way the multiple causal connections between hunger and military conflict in his work professor sen demonstrated that they were at least as strong as strong a causal link going from war and conflict to famines and destitution than from the latter to the former in other words if we cannot get rid of war and armed conflict we will never win the battle against hunger today two decades later there is no one making a more consistent case for the same proposition both in words and deed than the noble peace prize laureates of 2020 the world food program dear friends and colleagues it is a true honor to introduce our first keynote speaker of today mr david beasley executive director of the world food program david the floor is yours [Applause] olaf thank you very much someone just died from hunger another person just died from hunger in a world of over 430 trillion dollars worth of wealth how is it conceivable that people and especially children are dying from starvation tony blair called me two years ago it was coveted was just beginning to start and he called me he said david you travel more around the world than anybody i know tell me what you're seeing out there and i i said tony i'm very worried i said we're making decisions about covent in a vacuum not understanding the ripple effect that it's going to have and creating a hunger pandemic and if we're not careful the cure will be worse than the disease it's not covert versus hunger we must deal with both at the same time and as i began to explain what was happening particularly in some of the low-income countries and the ripple effect that will be happening over the next two to four quarters tony said oh my god you've got to go speak to the national security united nations security council and explain the reality that we're facing and we did and the leaders began to realize we must be careful how we handle both pandemics the good news about 2000 2021 was we had such strong economies in 2018 to 19 we had plenty reserve funds to be able to put toward both but we anticipated thinking the world leaders believing that kova would eventually cycle out and by the end of 2020 we would see the economy start coming back and the number of people that were devastated economically because of covet would begin to subside only to find that covet recycled again and again continuing to exacerbate economic decline creating extraordinary circumstances around the world and especially in the lowest income poorest countries around the world when i joined the world food program four and a half years ago my goal was to put the world food program out of business that we would in fact in hunger creating resilience sustainable systems such that outside support would not be needed in fact as i've been out in the field we assist about 115 20 million people on any given day week or month and i meet a lot of beneficiaries out in the field in the toughest conditions and i haven't met one yet that wanted to rely on outside support they want to be able to take care of their own family their own village their own communities and so to me it was an exciting opportunity at that time when i arrived there were only 80 million people marching towards starvation right before covet hit the number had spiked from 80 to 135 million well the first question would be why has that happened because it's hard to believe this but 200 years ago 95 of the people on earth were in extreme poverty so women and men leaders like you over the past 200 years have worked so hard to build systems organizations and programs to share more wealth to reduce poverty and hunger around the world such that we'd reduce it to less than 10 percent of the world's population great news and as i tell a lot of my young people be careful as you fight for things you believe in not to tear down the systems that actually are supporting 90 but try telling the 10 percent who are not experiencing the sharing of the wealth and so we cannot lose hope nor forget about the 10 we have to drive and work and strive to reach every single person left that means tweaking the system what systems aren't working throw them out what systems are working but can work better let's make them better so when i came in i'm sort of a big picture type of guy i like to come in and see what works and doesn't work and i would go to some of the countries and i'd see some of the government or u.n programs that had been there 30 40 years and i would be like you know maybe it's not working maybe you should step back and reevaluate what do we need to do differently so people can be food secure independent self-sufficient and i was hoping that we could begin putting programs like us out of business but when we went from 80 to 135 million again that's a different issue than chronic hunger it's now at 811 million people 150 million more than it was just a year ago that's chronic hunger different than emergency crisis shock hunger so the number going from 80 to 135 why first man made conflict syria yemen afghanistan now ethiopia i could go on and on 80 of our operations sadly are in war zones and conflict areas billions of dollars in fact in terms of the gdp as i said yesterday 15 trillion dollars a year is lost on violence conflict and war that could be put toward humanitarian aid around the world as well as redesigning systems to help people in need in so many low-income countries so man-made conflict and then climate change in fact last year alone for the first time i known you in history more people were displaced last year because of climate 30 million than any time period in history 10 million were displaced additional by conflict extraordinary and as we look to the future that's a whole another discussion in how we need to approach the future but that was pre-coven and so covent comes along economic ripple effect and that number of 135 in shock has moved to 283 million people and this is what really is disturbing me with the media today when i look at the last five years that's just been an obsession is he with the brexit brexit brexit brexit le pen le pen trump trump trump trump kovakovakovic and we've lost this balance that people want to know yes okay whether you hate or like trump or whether you dislike le pen or brexit or this or that there's more news to be covered especially today when you've got in the last two years about 20 million people have died from starvation 4 million have died from covid both should be covered not one at the exclusion of the other so now when you break the 283 million people these are not just numbers these are children with names and when you break it down into a country by country then i can tell you which countries very well will be destabilized where my mass migration will take place and you will pay for it a thousand times more if we don't address it in the united states the washington post did an article because i i really get on my democrat and republican friends in the in washington many times i said it's like leaking water lines in the ceiling and the leaking water lines you're going to have to replace the oak flooring the mahogany table the curtains the carpet and our political leaders are fighting over where to put the buckets well it's a lot cheaper to go up there just fix the water lines root cause we need to address root cause and so the washington post did this article and i happen to be in guatemala the day this article came out because of climate impact in central america the dry corridor along with economic deterioration and many other issues people are in fact flooding toward the border of the united states and the united states is spending 60 million dollars a week for shelters for children at a price of 3 750 per child per week and we have a program for one to two dollars per person per week that will give resilience and sustainability in their home village in guatemala or honduras or el salvador or nicaragua or wherever it may be now tell me i don't care if you're left-wing or right-wing you would support common-sense solutions versus a whole lot of money after the fact a thousand times more now multiply 60 million dollars times 52 weeks and you really begin to see the atrocity of what we're talking about germany and this is this is typical of any european country but we can feed assist the syrian in syria for less than 50 cents a day that same syrian ends up in germany the total support package is going to be 70 to 75 dollars per day a million syrian refugees in germany 125 billion dollars 70 50 cents which makes more sense the sad news is in that 283 we now have 45 million people knocking on famine's door in 43 countries and i can begin to break down each of these countries how serious it is in which of those countries will have serious implications not just there but also on you everybody pays a price when people struggle and people suffer one way or the other and so the good news is we do have solutions when i arrived at the world food program one of the things i also wanted to do was how do we take the resources that we provide in a community and not just give the food create dependency uh even in emergencies or longer term and of course the dynamics have changed and the old systems that were designed were humanitarian aid in this silo and development aid in that silo and the two did not talk to one another but the systems that were designed 50 60 years ago don't necessarily work as much today because we have long-term protracted conflict and particularly especially in places like the sahel where it's not quite so simple so our belief is that every dollar should also be a community improvement opportunity and to give you an example on food for asset type programs working with our beneficiaries who are rehabilitating their land who are being impacted by climate change more than any other people on earth they haven't contributed to the climate change but they're the one that's paying the price and they're the actual ones who are rehabilitating the land to green it back up so just with our beneficiaries in the last five years over three million acres of land have been rehabilitated over a hundred thousand water ponds small dams reservoirs 81 000 kilometers of feeder roads bridges thousands of miles of water canals harvesting water changing the landscape so people can survive that's adaptation while at cop26 most of the discussion was mitigation but these people got to survive in the next few years while the wealthy nations contributing of course to the climate impact who have a moral obligation in places like madagascar and other places to come in and help people survive they don't ask for much help them survive not just giving them food but giving them hope and i can remember and i i can tell you i i i can't begin to tell you the entrepreneurial spirit particularly of african women i remember we were in the on the hillside in nigeria where the sahara has been moving down and see as the horror moves down the tension between the herders and others is nomadic the farmers is quite quite real and then you have isis and al-qaeda trying to exploit that and destabilize that and so when we can come in with a food for asset program and on top of that a homegrown school meals program let me tell you what happens migration drops off the chart marriage rate of 12 and 13 year olds drops off the chart teen pregnancy drops off the chart recruitment by isis al qaeda extremist organization drops off the chart and i remember standing there with this african woman with so much pride and she said mr beasley i now have five acres of land because the world food program working with others like fao and unicef and others we've rehabilitated this land i'm now no longer feeding my family i'm now feeding the village and i'm now going to buy five more acres and i plan to sell into the marketplace the entrepreneurial spirit this innate within the nature of every human being and particularly women who want to take care of their children remarkable i see i'm out of time and i haven't even got started good yet but you can see we're facing a crisis but we have an opportunity i'm hopeful that the young people will rise up and not allow anyone no matter where they are around the world because these are our brothers our sisters our neighbors our equals and let's make certain that no child anywhere goes to bed hungry and when i think about the food waste which we're going to hopefully talk about in a little bit we've got so many things we've got so many wonderful speakers so many wonderful friends and i so much appreciate the norwegian nobel committee providing this opportunity because i really believe it was a wake-up call first thank you to the 20 000 women and men of the world food program that lay their lives on the line every single day to bring peace and hope but it was also a wake-up call to the world to realize people are starving children are dying and we have a moral obligation and we have the resources if we just put it where it needs to go to get it done so norway amazing nation with an amazing heart that impacts the entire world thank you thank you very much gary [Applause] thank you thank you so much david beasley uh you have said that the world food food programs mission is saving life changing life but how do you work when it comes to to malnutrition and obesity it really also takes a lot of life you know it's it's really disappointing when i see a lot of cultures who actually you'll take like a country like guatemala they have plenty of calories they have the wrong calories and so there's a malnutrition in the wrong way and so what we try to do in countries like guatemala is change the eating habits and growing more nutritious meals or you'll get into the countries where the malnutrition issue is because of the lack of food and in addition to eating the wrong foods and so that's been one of the great things about homegrown school meals we can come in for example take southern africa not south africa but southern africa when the mining operation started hundreds of years ago they wanted calories carbohydrates so they push corn corn corn or maize maize maize for carbohydrates well it changed the diet and that's not good so now we're taking advantage of the fact of the negative fact that climate change is increasing temperatures reducing the productivity of maize to find better crops that are more heat resilient but yet at the same time better nutritional value for the children and if we can do it with homegrown school meals we bring in the mothers the small holder farmers and we try to change the culture this and that takes a while because you know you've been cooking this way in this particular product for so long it takes time it takes an investment of of really building trust and there's so many other things we do and especially when it comes to war zones like in yemen where we have special nutritious products and i can tell you i've gone into these hospitals where children are literally are just hours away from dying and they'll get this some people up or some of these special nutrients that we have and we do this with unicef and different uh acute malnutrition severe etc and you'll see a child within two days like a whole different person and that's what fires you up because people ask me how do you not get depressed when you see so much suffering there's the hope you know where is the hope that's the key question when you see that little girl or that little boy and you you can be in the middle of a war zone i can remember walking uh like in aleppo or in yemen and there's nothing but rubble homes are just torn down from the bombings and you'll see this little bright-eyed bushy-tailed child five or six-year-olds come out and it's just like a sunrise and that gives you the inspiration to just not give up on that child and uh that's what it's all about you know and you work you know it's it's it's not free it costs we have to speak just at the end about the people with the money uh yeah you asked the billionaire billionaires to revolutionize how the planets eat and to reinvent the food security what did the billionaires answered you well there are three or four things the billionaires can do number one because we are in an emergency the houses are burning down we need your help right now and i've if i've said to the billionaires this is a one-time appeal i understand how some of them won't do what not want to be involved in that type of philanthropy every year that's a different discussion but we have the house is burning down we have unprecedented one time perfect storm because of conflict climate and covert those three things and look when you begin to see that there was 3.76 trillion dollars of loss of income to the poor during covert and yet the wealthy the billionaires net worth increase was 1.8 trillion dollars about 5.2 billion dollars per day all we're asking for is one day's worth of your net worth increase point three six percent is that too much to ask to get us through this one time perfect storm the second thing is these women and men have extraordinary ingenuity i mean what they do with phones cars rockets retail for example elon musk i'm like you had uh you had a polymath with him actually and he he sold his stocks in tesla because that was uh the result of it the discussion with him well and bezos stepped up to it cop 26 and so even if they don't bring it to us bring it to someone do something to help humanity because you've made this money particularly off of the poor how about give back but i'm asking not just long-term philanthropy because that is not the long-term solution the long-term solution is sustainability and that's where the private sector needs to be strategically engaged in like in in norway yara has been a tremendous partner stepping up yes they're helping charitably but they're also helping us out in the field with better fertilizers for the farmers be more productive and this is what i want the private sector to do there you get in these poor countries the private sector smallholder farmers those that's private sector are really feeding the country and they've got to survive they got to thrive how do we make them more productive so they don't depend upon the outside world so to speak but you're also dependent on the money from the the world richest person that's also you have to have them or is it not possible to do your work without without it i would like to see an elon musk step up not because of shane but because i want to help the world and then when you've got 100 200 trillion a billion billion dollars worth of and we only need five or six billion that's one time that's not too much to ask and if they want to help true world food program you wouldn't say no oh my goodness i'll be running out of this room in a heartbeat david beasley thank you very much [Applause] our next speaker is a very well-known scientist known for his work on on global system sustainability juan rockstrom helped lead a team of scientists that presented the planetary boundaries framework which has been embraced uh as an approach to sustainable development and has since been used to help governments international organization ngo and company considering sustainable development he also co-chaired eat landsat commission for unhealthy diets from a sustainable food system published in 2009 now he is here live from potsdam institute for climate impact research where he is the director yuan rockstrom the floor is yours thank you so much and a privilege to be with you and what i will do over the next 15 minutes is to give you a scientific justification for david beasley's story but i can't keep away from just also giving you an anecdote on the adaptive capacity of local farmers in africa 20 years after we kicked off a nordic supported water harvesting research 20 years ago i came back in the middle of the pandemic and can you believe it in the villages around machacos the southern part of nairobi where dowry is paid by the groom's family to the bride to be able to wed your youngsters always paid with livestock or money or bicycles today the most precious dowry is a water harvesting pond it is about building resilience in the food system and i think that is proof of david's story of the enormous adaptive capacity among communities around the world the food system is indeed broken and this is just to give you the stats that they've pointed out it's very worrying that we're following a trend line where we are according to current statistics at least not on track to achieve the 20 30 targets of eradicating hunger it is very worrying it is a trend line that is reinforced by the pandemic just as david pointed out we have the statistics on this adding 30 40 million people in malnourished states and we don't even know the unexpected feedbacks coming out of this so we're following a trend line where we can really talk of of a broken food system and we're not on on track to stabilizing the world but not only that as we know unhealth is also a major driver of the crisis we're facing in the food system in fact we now have for the first time three independent studies that shows that in the order of 10 to 11 million people die prematurely each year because of unhealthy food and this is along the lines you see to the left here everything from over consumption of processed food to unhealthy consumption of red meat and diets loaded with starchy foods lack of whole grain all forms of diets that are in the order just to remind us that the pandemic which is a global disaster has prematurely so far ended the lives of roughly 5 million so the food system is still the world's singles largest terminator of life in the world and not only that economically we now have two independent studies showing that the global market value of the whole food chain which is roughly 10 trillion us dollars per year if you just factor in the basics of the externalities on health costs on environmental costs on economic cost the food system actually has a true cost of roughly 12 trillion meaning that the global food system is not only killing us not only lacking the ability to create peace and security it's also a major cost it's subsidized by cheap labor planetary health and human health so this is indeed a broken system and we have to place this in the context of the challenges over the coming years we are now in the anthropocene in fact the original introduction you had which i think was really good about the volcanic eruptions that impacted so tremendously on human security over the centuries well today we humans are in the anthropocene we exceed in pace and scale the impacts even of the pinatube of volcanic eruptions in 1990 even the major impacts of earthquakes and solar forcing we are now in the driving seat we're in a new geological epoch the covet 19 pandemic was a predicted manifestation of the globalized world where we're now starting to put so much pressure on your system that we see these kind of zoonotic disease outbreaks biodiversity loss intensive livestock farming exhaustive bush meat trading all forms of unsustainable exploitation of nature in our food system has led to a new hockey stick and this hockey stick as you see to the right is actually the hockey stick of rising zoonotic viral disease outbreaks all the way from the swine flues to the avian flus to mirs sars ebola all the way to covet 19. so it's not surprising that we can really talk of a point where we're approaching really risky outcomes also for peace and security and we have as david also pointed out more more data on this to prove the links between global environmental change and security ultimately peace this is just a map showing the last 15 years of conflict in the dots and overlaid with drought index and you see the enormously strong correlation between armed conflict and drought extreme events caused by drought so we have more and more evidence around this challenge and we go to glasgow and we enter the glasgow cup 26 on a scientific path to disaster we're following a pathway that at best would take us to 2.7 degrees celsius of warming which is a point we've actually not been in for the past 4 million years we leave glasgow on a pathway to danger even if all countries implement every pledge all the ndcs all the net zero promises all the deforestation promises and methane promises we could hold the two degrees celsius line but that is still the warmest temperature on earth over the past three million years it is twice as high over the past 12 000 years in the holocene we have a maximum global mean temperature variability of plus minus one degree so we have already at 1.1 degree celsius crashed through the warmest temperature on earth since the last ice age since we shifted from being hunters and gatherers to becoming farmers and starting our journey towards modern civilizations with the food system we know today so we really are still going to face um inevitably more turbulence in the future and the challenge for the food system is scientifically so well established this is the map of the journey over the next 50 years so we focus all our attention as david pointed out on mitigation which is to stay within the global carbon budget of 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide for fossil fuel emissions the grey curve you see here is cutting emissions by half every decade to reach this net zero point by mid century this is all good all necessary we need to phase out fossil fuels but that will not take us to 1.5 degrees celsius we also need to have a food system transition from being the single largest the metro greenhouse gas is shown in brown here to become the single largest sink of carbon shown in orange an agricultural revolution so not only do we have the 800 million malnourished and the challenge that david pointed out we also have a food system transformation to keep this planet stable we also need to scale negative emissions through ccs and becks shown in orange but also keep natural carbon sinks on land in green and in oceans intact the natural ecosystems the biodiversity which is threatened primarily by food system transitions so we've come to this point where scientifically we can say we're threatening the stability of the planet this earthrise photograph taken on christmas eve in 1968 by the apollo 8 mission was the moment when we understood the little precious home that we depend on well we also now understand scientifically that the food system is the primary driver of change of the stability of the planet but not only that the planet hits back and the food system is not only a culprit but also a victim and we've mapped this showing on the planetary boundary framework which you see here how the food system is the single largest cause for us transgressing planetary boundaries not only climate it's actually the number one driver for loss of biodiversity expansion of uh land into deforestation consumption of freshwater 70 percent of the fresh water in rivers ground waters and lakes are consumed for agriculture and it's the number one cause why we are changing the entire global nitrogen phosphorus cycle causing eutrophication across coastal zones and having an impact back on the climate system being in norway not least it's important to recognize that this is not only about land it's equally important in food provision in the ocean with 30 of the over exploitation of the oceans causing threats to life support in terms of marine based diets in the future so we have this perfect storm arising with insecurity global environmental change and rising impacts of extreme events hitting the food system now and increasing in the future the ipcc six assessment put a lot of data behind this as you know confirming now unequivocally that not only extreme events are becoming more severe which we've known for a long time but they're becoming more frequent we see more droughts more heavy rainfall more extreme events at a worse level so the maps today from a world food program perspective is is really you know a very big red lamp blinking here you have in yellow the regions that are now observed to have higher degree of drought frequency meaning water scarcity impacting food systems directly northeast brazil the whole african continent southeast asia western u.s and if you combine this with the latest science on tipping points you end up in a really risky situation this is a paper that came out just before the pandemic where we after 10 years of science on tipping points mapped out the nine show here of the known 15 big biophysical systems that we know have tipping points if they cross tipping points they go from stability cooling and dampening to self-reinforcing warming and instability and these are the nine that are showing signs already today of instability the amazon rainforest west antarctic ice shelf arctic sea ice the green and ice shelf are also picked up clearly as risk in the ar6 of the ipcc i put this here because we know increasingly about the interconnectivity between these when the green ice sheet and the arctic melts faster it releases cold fresh water into north atlantic slowing down the whole overturning of heat in the north atlantic the amoc the atlantic circulation which in turn pushes the monsoon systems further south which can impact on rainfall patterns in west africa in south america which can also explain why we see more droughts and forest fires over the amazon rainforest these are the cascades that will undermine further the resilience and stability of the food system so we're talking about connectivity here between climate stability food security and the sdgs so this is the diagnostic the question then is what do we do about this well as as pointed out we we've been trying to gather science from the health sciences the sustainability sciences and the agricultural sciences to for the first time explore the following question can we define a healthy diet from sustainable food systems and explore what are the win-win outcomes for health for people and health for planet this is um a work that was published um two years back uh we're now working on on updating the science because this has led to tremendous amount of of of follow-up research and let me just share with you the scenario analysis we do here so the planetary health diet is a flexitarian diet it's a diet that not surprisingly increases fruit veggies plant-based proteins reduces animal-based proteins moves away from starchy kilocalories and and reduces on on salt and sugar and processed food it's not a vegan diet but it's a flexitarian diet with five servings of animal protein per week one on red meat two with fish and two with white meat that is what you see here in in terms of the diet column then we have to the left if we change waste food waste lost and to the furthest left you have different analysis of whether we continue business as usual production at the farm or if we invest in sustainable farming systems and on the x-axis on the top you see the planetary boundaries the definitions of the quantitative safe space for humanity i just want to point to two things here if we continue as today the second line from the top business as usual we continue waste food we continue eating unhealthy then as you see in red we will be continuing just risking the stability of the planet which will hit back on all of us and peace and outcome for humanity but if we furthest down if you go to the bottom line here invest in sustainable intensification if we can cut food waste by half and transition towards healthy diets we can transition back within a safe operating space so and this is based on current known technologies there's been so much research showing how small-scale farmers in particular but farmers around the world are testing and adopting and scaling different forms of sustainable intensification recycling carbon conservation tillage systems water harvesting systems crop rotations landscape management and we've recently looked at this turnaround where we show that if we with current practices we would only be able to feed three billion people within planetary boundaries so if you care only about the planet we would have an even larger challenge for willful program but we have a turnaround with investments in known technologies that we at least assess can take us to actually feeding 10 billion people within planetary boundaries so i want to leave you just with this graph which is basically putting the sustainable development goals putting under hunger and peace and security within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries which i would believe today is the new definition of our sustainable future for humanity on earth thank you so much and back to you [Music] [Music] thank you so much uh yuan rockstrom as we heard uh earlier around 800 million people suffer from hunger so we have no choice we need to produce food in a more sustainable way and we must utilize this food in a better way this is the backdrop for neura's information campaign the food effect which explains how the right kind of food policy can help us to actually achieve the global sustainable development goals and we are happy and proud to launch this campaign internationally here at the noble peace prize forum take a look [Music] food can do so much more than fill empty stomachs the right type of food produced in a climate smart manner is a precondition to achieving the sustainable development goals while bad food systems lead to hunger and poverty inequality and climate change improving global food systems will have a profound ripple effect this food effect has a positive impact on a whole range of sustainable development goals from ending poverty to achieving gender equality giving quality education and combating climate change from life below water to life on land including all humans on earth food is part of it all and we can all take part in the food effect researchers and politicians activists and the private sector as well as you and i of course can choose to put food that makes a difference on our plates we can achieve the sustainable development goals with food it's a great pleasure to welcome director general of the norwegian agency for development cooperation in norway also called nurad por regards welcome our applause to borvega thank you what's the idea behind the food effect so basically it's it's our shot at the million dollar question how to produce and distribute enough nutritious food for a growing population without destroying the planet i mean nature and the climate so we neurad we manage large part of norwegian development assistance and food is an important and growing part of that and we wanted to show the effects it can have on a range of issues i mean we've heard about hunger uh it's probably 30 percent of the climate solution through increa to change land use policies and forest preservation but also there's another food effect and we've seen food uh changing from beaming in a marginal issue in global politics to becoming a key issue uh in in a way it's at the intersection of issues like like hunger climate but also peace and of course health and and that is another important food effect how food can be a major solution to a range of other issues also clearly massive challenges related to to the food we eat uh can you explain us about the positive effects of food because it also has a lot of positive effects we have a look here it has and it's really important to tell about that and what we did with we created new words and i mean of course strange words and that was away the idea we took uh commodities and we linked them with sdgs and and we know we we set up new concepts to to try to show a chain how a chain of events can unfold let me give you one example the educational bean so we know right that ninety percent of a child's brain develop before the age of five and bad and uh unhealthy food can create stunting and hamper cognitive development but on the other hand nutritious food can change a life and lay the foundation for for education for instance so researchers have shown that by growing beans with higher iron content and bean is an important staple food this can lead this can be this nutritious food for many kids that can lead to them attending school learning and then again graduating from school as an adolescent and then you have a food effect an educational bill and of course then leading to economic growth and sustainability because education is important for that but the the word says is is really nice you know honey of hope you know i would like to hear more about that we don't have the time if you want to i like them at that point especially so go online on ura to learn more about the honey of hope but we will actually have a look at now the finance fish first take a look at this film the food effect can transform a small fish into a source of finance sustainable fish farming can provide more fish reduce world hunger and create more opportunities for employment this will require a new and improved infrastructure that paves the way for innovation in this way one small fish can be the start of a major sustainable industry which is global goal number nine we can achieve the sustainable development goals with food this is all also about that one thing leads to to to to other things uh so tell us more about uh the finance fish what's the what's the story behind oh it was inspired by one concrete project and we we see it here actually fish farming uh from tilapia on in madagascar and this project done by norgis val partner of us they increased uh productivity and and also increased the produce uh in the project and that led to higher profitability right and i should add that it was done in a climate adaptive way and again that created the financial basis for employing more people doing more producing more in a sustainable way and then again providing more nutritious food than fish farming is we know if it's done sustainably a really important part of both fighting hungary and hunger and and creating a more sustainable uh uh uh aquaculture and you just been to ghana what did you learn there yeah i i visited four sub-saharan countries recently and ghana most recently we work with them on the fish industry it's it's a similar story it's really important for the country ten percent of the population employed directly or indirectly but huge challenges with overfishing with illegal fishing so we work with them partner with them to manage the fisheries sustainably putting up management systems using research uh fighting illegal fishing and if we're able to do that we can go from a situation with huge problems to a situation where they produce more uh where we by by managing sustainably get more uh food onto the market but also get more income to fishers and all the others in the value chain so again an important food effect um the nobel peace prize 2020 clearly linked food and peace uh you know also elaborated by by david beasley uh this picture saw was a uh a peace mace from finance fish to peacemakes what is this about this was not not an obvious one when we first created it but but after listening to david beasley it's really obvious it it's of course about the basic effects also on on conflict uh on of food but the specific is that i mean researchers have told us that if you grow mace uh in hollows around other crops and this is especially important in in areas that are drought affected then the moisture is retained in the ground so there's a better chance of actually getting a good produce even though there's drought and and take a region like the sahel other regions where where which are affected by climate but also by conflict that could be the difference uh that you actually have a food secure situation and you know when you think about peace you tend to think about negotiations or or u.n operations but but mace i mean could also be an important part of the solution and one of the things that that that creates a situation where you don't have to bring in negotiations or an operation because you produce food security uh as a basic tool but when i when i look at this campaign it's uh it's it sounds so simple how come we don't act right away well i wish it was simple it is yeah thank you uh but i mean we're trying to take something that's really complex and show that it's simple we know the technology we know many of the solutions but i would say that maybe our in most important master message is that we can do it and humanity at our best we have this ability in us we have fought back i mean hunger diseases great catastrophes wars extreme ideologies when we understand the problem when we use the science when we cooperate and say that this is the most important thing to do now to fight hunger to fight climate change to use food as a tool then we are able to do it but this campaign it's launched internationally today but uh who is the target group is it the 20 000 people working in in world food program or is it you and you and i or you know well i i'd love all 20 000 of them to see it but but no they're not debate not the main target group the the idea is to take something that is complicated uh and and challenging and try to explain that uh in in a way that's possible to understand and thus we also show but because we use measures here that that challenge you a little bit okay so it's not obvious we want you to think to stop what is this because we want to show how something uh uh i mean a crop increasing productivity things like that can be connected to other goals so our whole idea is to take something that's extremely important a little bit complex and to challenge people to take a little look at it with uh with new tools like this so if we are you're more curious about this uh project uh just take a look at the neural's uh homepage or take a google search on the food effect and neurad you will find a lot of information and films and articles etc thank you so much for explaining the food effect thanks great pleasure to be here [Music] [Music] our next speaker has been a driving force linking climate health and sustainability issues across multiple sectors for to to transform the global food system doctor good student is founder and executive chair of it she advises on several councils including the united nations scaling up nutrition movement lead group and the world economic forum stewardship board on food system and in 2020 she was also appointed to chair the so-called action to track of the un food systems summits uh i have asked her to give us a call to action so goodness to all the floor is yours thank you so much eric and hi everybody so after listening to david and yuan i trust you see the picture here we simply have to fix food it's code red for humanity and we must transform our food systems starting now if humanity is going to have a future worth having so i've been asked to give a call fraction so buckle up here we go here's the good news we have the solutions we can get the great food transformation underway now so here are my top six solutions really my call to action for all of us the first solution is for governments to put in place holistic food systems policies across sector they the norwegian government included must wake up and stop the nonsense of one policy area completely undermining the other think of what norway just recently did revoked the sugar tax to reduce cross-border trade despite knowing how that undermines their public health policies madness or what's even worse the fact that some 90 percent of agricultural subsidies around the world go to something that undermines climate biodiversity public health objectives and generating enormous costs to society so what we need is for policies to be designed so that food prices start to reflect the true cost and the true value of food today as you are well aware of healthy and sustain sustainable food tends to be more expensive sometimes much more expensive than food that is bad for us and bad for the planets despite these foods obviously have an overall much lower cost to society and our planets so logically the good stuff should obviously be the cheaper option always and last food which accounts for one third of the global emissions is missing in almost all national climate plans the so-called nationally determined contributions if we are to stand even a tiny chance of staying within the 1.5 degree targets this has to change now from cop27 in egypt next year the second solution is a massive overhaul of public procurements of food it's nothing but ridiculous that hundreds of millions of meal are served every days in all kinds of public institutions kindergartens schools hospitals elderly homes prisons school work cantinas whatever that are not healthy not sustainable and often a far cry from the same government's own national dietary guidelines so folks we should no longer tolerate that our governments are not even following their own advice that must be a bare minimum and it's not hard to fix the third solution is actually a fun one government should direct and incentivize public and private financial institutions to create financial instruments to unleash healthy and sustainable food innovations because food is way too important to be left to entrenched food industry policy makers bureaucrats experts we really need to unleash the creative juices of farmers of cities of entrepreneurs of young people with brilliant ideas like sophie sitting there that really can help shape a tastier better more sustainable and equitable food future for everyone everywhere the fourth solution is to make it much easier for people in their everyday lives to actually choose healthy and sustainable food today you basically need a phd in nutrition to understand what's in your food and just forget about understanding the impact on the environment or social consequences of the food you choose that information is hardly available anywhere so we need clear easy to understand labels on all foods covering nutrition carbon and nature footprints animal welfare and of course social responsibility along the value chain and all these labels must be backed by traceable information that can be verified and this is actually really important because it will help drive an accountability revolution in the food industry that we desperately need the fifth solution is to come in behind david and world food program and make the fights against hunger a top priority but doing this recognizing that the climate crisis as davis has told us will be the largest driver of hunger over the coming decades so this logically means that world food program and all of us really must be a driving force for shifting to regenerative nature positive carbon absorbing food production and also for dietary shifts shift to healthy nutritious diets for all otherwise the math simply doesn't add up my sixth and final solution is about you and me we must start to eat differently starting now with our next meal and just to be clear i'm not talking about the people david are referring to 3 billion people in the world today cannot afford a healthy diet and of course have no choice at all i'm talking about almost 5 billion people of us who actually do we can make small changes on our plates starting now every time we sit down to eat choices that are good for us and good for the planet and good for our local communities we can choose more plants more real foods support our local farmers we can demand sustainably produced seafood we can reject cheap factory farmed industrial meats and we can stop wasting food it's really rather simple so i'm saying just do it so folks there are literally no excuses for inaction just numerous arguments for why we need to fix food and why we need to get going right now and just do it let's get on with it thank you so much for your attention [Music] [Music] thank you all students and the message is clear just do it our next guest uh grow up grew up in a refugee camp in uganda she is the former minister of agriculture in rwanda and today agnes calibata is here as the special envoy of for the u.n secretary general for the 2021 food system summit we will meet her in a few seconds but first take a look at this [Music] you don't need an invitation and i think that's the beauty of the food system summit to me the un food system summit is the opportunity to help us achieve the sdgs connecting catalyzing sharing discovering it's a people summit and it's a solution summit this summit seeks to have inclusion of the youth marginalized people communities that are not regularly engaged in these types of summits the summit is really a timely opportunity for us all to refocus to ensure no one is left behind by putting the dignity of those who produce and distribute our food first we can change the whole system going forward young people are amongst the hardest working in many parts of the world the youth have led from the front and are the leaders of today young people are leveraging technology passion and their commitment to a safer future to change the course in global and local food systems when we empower women those women turn around and invest in their families and their communities women are very important in increasing food security put resources money in the hands of the women that's how we change the world there is no transformation of food systems without producers it's the next generation of our farmers who are being called into action it is critical that our farmers and ranchers are seen at the table as leaders in their own right one of the global leader changing the food system that's you doctor anias kalbata welcome to us here in oslo thank you for having me thank you uh it's a pleasure to to to have you here we can take away uh the the thing we have on the screen here uh uh thank you and uh yes you spent 35 years in a refugee camp in uganda your family left rwanda during the independence period when there was a war as a refugee what is your first memories about food thank you um two things really when i look at what i got to know about food it's just how much food is part of our culture let me tell you something they would bring us someone can you believe it someone first of all wonders don't think that eating fish will kill their cows so we would definitely throw the someone away so so very early on i understood understood that food is culture but more importantly it it's so incredible how much at that in those rural communities food is everything it's their economy in addition to nourishing their bodies it's what they do to send children to school it's what they do to buy what they need so it's so central to everything they do that you quickly understand and appreciate the place of food in people's lives and probably it did shape how i moved on to really work in the food area as a way of improving people's livelihoods but when you grow up in a refugee camp did you you know did you have enough food or was it always a a kind of uh you know search to have to get enough to eat so the world keeps evolving refugee camps back then and in particular in my situation i think it was decided very early on that we wouldn't go back to rwanda or my families wouldn't go back to rwanda so unhcr bought land and was settled and we lived like any rural community in uganda that's how we ended up being 35 i went back to rwanda when i had finished my phd so it had already been decided that this particular community would not go back to rwanda so really i wouldn't say that i lived very different from any other rural community so my appreciation of food is very similar to an appreciation of food for a rural child growing up in a village in uganda the u.n food system summit in september we saw something from that in this film was called a people's summit uh and it focused on solution for people planet and prosperity and i read that member state experts and stakeholders contributed with more than 2 000 id for for really action as we also heard unity just talk about you know if you have to pick three brilliant ideas among those two thousand what do you pick so that's complex i think the most brilliant idea of what we did in the food system was recognizing that the food system is so complex that one brilliant idea in one place will not work in another place but let me tell you three things that resonated with me we it has come come through in many of the conversations before the true cost of food recognizing that we are spending so much money on nutrition and environmental damage recovery that we could actually spend on doing the right things on decent work and ensuring a living income for communities covered 19 has thrown so many people off track so the idea of building a coalition that can actually start addressing that challenge becomes extremely important and then the last one that really did reason at very well this whole idea of sustainability and health diets recognizing that everyone in two people is living with a condition that is related to unhealthy diets this is something that is within our control so for me those three ideas in addition to ensuring that we also deal with some of the challenges of hunger i mean we have 321 321 million children that don't have access to food so there's so many ideas that came out and yeah those three stood out and we we definitely have to do something about them but how how how does your your food revolution looks like so my food reversion looks like understanding first of all that we have run out of the luxuries of the world that have defined our lives recognizing that we live on a finite planet and we have to use it as a finite planet so we we really need to to start by thinking that whatever we do we need to be addressing sustainability we need to be addressing the challenge of um in making sure that um that we we start building sustainability into the programs we are doing building uh going into new ways of doing business around food that recognize that we can't continue doing what we are doing so really we we need to revolutionize the type of food we produce we need to come off that horse where we are doing and producing food at any cost driving the costs down at any cost is no longer acceptable we cannot do that because our planet cannot handle it but then again you know because this a lot of people you know agree about the how to do it that's the key question so there are so many ways we are going to have to to deploy to to to do that uh windhill was just giving a few examples there we first of all if we started with the challenge of dealing with the challenge of hunger that that david busey was talking about we already know what it would cost us to reduce hunger i mean away from the conflict we need to resolve the challenges of conflict which is contributing huge to hunger but in terms of dealing with the basic challenges that we already know we know that it would cost us about 33 billion a year to deal with the challenge of hunger and yet we are spending 570 billion a year on things that are incentivizing the wrong behavior and producing food so we could start putting some money into ensuring that actually that challenge goes away in dealing with the challenge of biodiversity loss again we are putting and environmental damage again we are putting 570 billion dollars in things that drive down drive towards many of them many more of that more environmental damage i mean we could again rethink and repurpose some of these resources to ensure that we do the right things but as we heard david beasley also speak about earlier hunger is on the rise again but still you believe it's actually possible to to to to come through zero hunger uh you really believe that i mean just the cost of driving down zero hunger just like it i just told you it's not like it's undoable 33 billion a year for the next 10 years we only need about 330 billion to invest in systems that would ensure that we don't have hunger that's one two dealing with the challenge of conflict that is leading to all the hungers we are seeing in the world that is something that is within our human control three dealing with the challenge of climate change which is something we have created again we need resources adaptation resources we are talking about 100 billion a year we are not even anywhere close i'm to getting those 100 billion to ensure and support communities that are now off balance because of climate change so it's the is it a challenge of resources based on what david was saying no we are swimming in resources but are we putting them in the right place i keep asking myself when our planet crashes what will happen to that money so we are definitely not putting it in the right places we do have the resources we need the resources the will and the action and it said that you know the the the u.n uh food system summit that that that throughout this process uh governments and stakeholders have found new ways to work together which ways i mean we did put in place dialogues what you would call spaces for dialogue so governments did have dialogues within their countries and brought different stakeholders on the table to be able to have conversations different sectors that touch food all the from production to processing all these sectors are speaking so that's number one number two their communities as well producers fishers uh indigenous people there's these these are also talking with governments on dialogue and dialoguing around some of the changes that need to happen so that is one way of looking at it at country level at global level we do have coalitions which are spaces that where people are coming together to resolve some of the biggest challenges we we we have in our in our middle east so these are places where people recognize that no one partner can do it alone we need to come together so all these have facilitated and ensured that we are actually speaking and discussing challenges of our lifetime i don't know people also you know that they can't ask this u.n meeting why is why is this one different from all the other human meetings that maybe we don't always feel that you know a lot of things are happening afterwards so this uni meeting really needed to make sure that we are reaching people gun hill ended on a call for you and me this is about what you and i do this is about the decisions that inform the type of planet we live on so we've reached millions of people we designed it like that we are very clear that that's how we're going to be to design it but also we understood that we have millions of solutions we now have over 52 solution clusters that have informed the coalition that are being formed that we we know what needs to be done so we really wanted to make sure that everybody comes along that's the next step yeah yeah so now after the summit you know what is concretely the next step uh as you see it we need to get to action we need to move into a different spaces and get to actions but we have to do those actions recognizing three things that we can no longer produce food at the expense of our health or put food on the table or process food at the expense of people's health we also need to recognize we cannot produce food at the expense of the environment if we need to pass it on uh to our children which we must we need to protect it right so so so whatever we do now we need to be doing those things uh as we we wind down as a secretariat and move into into ensuring that there's a follow-up mechanism that will support the the landscape of all these partners that's what is in their minds and they'll put in place a mechanism of tracking results tracking commitments that actually every two years we come back and talk to heads of state around these are the commitments you made talk to communities around these are the commitments you made and this is how we are showing up versus those commitments the problem is we have sdgs we've committed to but we're really not making progress so this was really about putting fire under our feet building the right level of consciousness which we believe is there but we will be able to deliver it will depend on the actions we all take so all the commitments made will be followed up actually that's that's the main that's the main message hide afterwards yes we know the the un system has now put in place a hub which will start uh beginning with january and that hub will be really it's its main work will be to do three things ensure an appropriate coordination that ensures that actually we keep the full system thinking together because all of us are doing different things but can we actually continue tracking a food systems approach to what we are doing impacts to nature impacts to people and impacts to to to food itself ensuring that we are producing food and then ensuring that that we keep all stakeholders engaged there are so many people that got engaged in the food system summit this is not the time you get to drop the ball on that this is the time you get to actually make them feel that they too can contribute something and then of course report back ensure that we are tracking and reporting back to the secretary general and he is reporting back to heads of state and yes you you were you have been minister of agriculture in rwanda from 2008 to 2000 and what are you most proud of having achieved in that period so if you know a little bit about africa you know that rwanda is one of the is the smallest country on the african continent average land holding in rwanda is 0.3 of a hectare average land holding and yet 85 percent of the population is farming so this is the smallest you can ever farm as a farmer and probably anywhere in the planet on the planet so being able to get that farming to be up and running and move from a country that is largely food insecure when we started working wondered the food security numbers were way below what fa well commends around 1 700 and we had to raise it by about nearly more than 65 percent to get it to recommended levels so to be able to get people to feed themselves but also use that as an opportunity to have incomes is one of the biggest things that i'm i'm proud of in one and i didn't do it alone one day is not a miracle it is hard work people work very hard to get where they are at people say the world calls the london miracle no it's not a miracle it's the hard work of london's and and i just feel that being able to contribute to that to ensuring that actually small people the smallest farmers in the world can be viable in their environment is something that i'm extremely proud of i know that you you you put into places for programs that ensure your country's huge security helping more than a million rwandans run how do you say it dance is very difficult out of poverty uh but where were the crucial uh factor behind this success because we could call it a success yeah so the number of places first of all recognizing that we needed to have you know access to land so in every in in wonder every farmer owns their land however small so the moment people own land they want to do the best with that so that was number one number two we created an enabling environment that allowed investments in you know in the country that will again attract businesses one of the biggest investments for example is the baby food factory which was a partnership between rwanda government and world food program and this baby factory believe it or not is really attracting so much you know so much from farmers themselves and farmers are able to supply the factory you know able to have a living so that environment political environment that attracts one of the biggest businesses in the world and brings it to a small country like rwanda it's something that we had to work on very well and and of course then just finding solutions that we are typically rwandan we designed what we are calling land consolidation which was based on the fact that farmers had access to land so they could consolidate it without fear that they would lose their land things then things like crop intensification that ensured that farmers had access to inputs that would help increase their yields so and then of course using science all the time trying to find which is the best way to make this landscape productive how do you protect it because we've also made very daring moves of moving people and protecting land even though you know that basically you you really have very limited limited land yeah and and you are also uh president of agra called it means growing africa's agriculture and and is this you know are you working now you know the same way there as you you know you did us as a minister you know to try to help people to improve food security and get them out of poverty you know that's the same model you know have been exported to other countries right yeah so agra stands for alliance for green version in africa started by kofi annan as secretary general of the u.n in the midst of the aid pan aids pandemic thinking why is africa not able to unlock the potential of the agricultural sector to be able to really remove poverty deal with all these challenges and it was created as an african institution really with the ability to work across the continent and quickly we found out that the biggest challenge was capacity capacity of research institutions to deal with agriculture and agriculture as a science capacity of governments to put in place systems that allow private sector to exist capacity to move policies forward so our work focuses on other things supporting private institutions we now have over 600 phd's trained in science and breeding and stuff like that supporting smes in villages where nobody else wants to invest to make sure that there's a business case that can take things to farmers seeds and fertilizers to farmers supporting markets to exist in those environments and of course working with the governments to rethink some of the policies that are making it very difficult for private sector to exist so is that model scalable we we are now reaching 12 million people 12 million households with extension with networks of what we are calling retail agra dealers or retail shopping system that can help them access seeds and fertilizers and this is something we are prepared to take across the continent we established a continental forum the the african green revolution forum which is now looking at bringing leaders every every year we have about 10 leaders heads of state from different countries to discuss the progress we are seeing in some of the countries we are seeing so that we can have some of these things really be scaled up quickly so that we can help they can have the opportunity to ask questions but also to get to the experts that we we are proud we have in the institution that we really can get to to scale up some of these models yeah dr agnes calabata good luck with your african green revolution thank you for uh joining us today this is no longer a green revolutionary it's going to be let me tell you something we are also moving on we are focused on ensuring that we really focus on making sure that where we are going sustainable right we are actually going to be changing our name very soon and you're one of the first ones to know we are focused on regenerative we are focused on nutrition we are focused on sustainability we are focusing on ensuring that that we get african farmers where they should be sustainable productivity but really sustainable productivity that focuses on the impact on our environment as well so we will be moving on from that so anes calabatta good luck with your food revolution thank you for joining us the next on our stage is a young woman who is making waves in the world of of food security she is an irish and a global activist for improved diet and sustainable food systems and is the co-founder of the global youth campaign coordinator at the act for food and act for change and a lead group member of the scaling up nutrition movement as well i will soon welcome sophie hilly though but first let's see what she is working with hunger and malnutrition climate change and safe food deforestation poverty soil erosion inequality human rights violations and abuses food systems adds to these problems we are the future the young generations but our future is uncertain food environment people we are all connected our beautiful planet should nourish us food shouldn't kill us food doesn't have to cost the earth food can be a way to create not to destroy to learn and to honor and to protect our past and our future to build mutual respect fairness understand collaboration we must act for food and act for change so we can have good food for all we can pledge we can act we can change our world join the movement for better food systems hi sophie hello welcome to oslo thank you very much know you are the you are the youngest member of the of our forum today um some people might look at you and see your age as a this advantage tell us why they are wrong wow that's easy uh young people today make up 16 of the global population in the world where the largest consumer network the world has ever seen and the food system employs more young people in the world today than it ever has so young people are the catalysts of the food systems they're the producers of the food systems they work with the consumers of the food systems and they are consumers themselves we have power we have so much power we have so much power that the world doesn't even recognize it sometimes young people don't even recognize it themselves they will i think after we finish our little session here on stage soon we will we will we will hear a lot of a lot of concrete proposal coming from you and and young people all over the world but look at this little slide here that you made the problem with our food system and we cannot go through all these different uh different aspects but but uh what's the key message here yeah so this isn't just my work this is the work of over 50 000 young people worldwide and act for food act for change originally began as a pledge a pledge to transform food systems with allies of youth and young people so it's about partnership and collaboration and right now we have over 152 249 pledges worldwide and we only launched in may but we realize that a pledge doesn't change the world it doesn't really create concrete action it creates a community so we reached out to young people right across the globe and they came up with these problems we asked them if you had a decision maker standing in front of you if you had a politician right in front of you and equally importantly if you had a friend and a family member standing in front of you what would you want them to do what would you want them to change and what can you change yourself and this is what they came up with exactly we will dig deeper in you know in this different subject uh very soon but first i'd like to uh welcome another guest jen liang you are live from l.a i couldn't join us the oslo due to to cover the restriction but welcome to you jen hi everyone lovely to join you and you are uh uh advocate for environmental and social justice and believe in the power of media and stories to to to activate the culture change and as a deputy director at the redford center gen you you use this the power of storytelling to inspire social change for environmental just justice and prevalence previously you were the climate director at the wild aid working with climate friendly consum consumption or jan let's start with one of the key words here mass communication why is that important yeah i think in an effective fight for the against the crime climate crisis it is so important to engage and empower as many people as possible and honestly as quickly as possible to make better decisions and mass communication campaigns are a really powerful way to reach the general public at wild day we promoted sustainable diets to help mitigate climate change and to do so we couple the power of celebrity with clear calls to action and we targeted youth um and the rising middle-class consumers for maximum impact and over the years our sustainability campaigns have reached over 200 million people in asia so i think just getting the word out there and generating uh interest is so key we will now look at uh one example jen where you where you learn a lot about the value of cultural relevance and the power of positive messaging this campaign is from i think 2016 and i guess we all will recognize the guy here take a look and consider what we eat meat production produces up to 15 of greenhouse gases and high meat consumption can lead to heart disease obesity and other serious health issues so for the plant and for your health please consider eating less less meat less heat more life thanks to arnold for joining us um jen how was this campaign received actually i think objectively we can all agree it's a great media campaign it's one of the world's most recognizable faces the production value was high very clear clean message but in china and in asia where it got the most distribution it didn't have the impact that we expected you know the the local audiences didn't relate to a foreign celebrity they didn't see his lifestyle as relevant to their choices they didn't aspire to you know be him essentially and they found that they really failed to be moved by fear and and fear the climate crisis so it was clear that we after that campaign that we needed to really understand what motivates our target audience how those specific groups make their food choices what aspirations they have and our later campaigns really tried to reflect those lessons so so you also found out that it's important to to also to tell positive uh stories just not a negative one and let's have a look at another example that you were behind in china that that maybe worked better in in china than uh than mr uh terminator here uh but let's have okay my chinese is not good but you it was some subtitles also here if you read quickly but this two people heard they are chinese uh celebrity journey what did you achieve with a campaign like this yeah i think we were taking the lessons learned and in some ways everyone could see exactly how the the campaign was the opposite we took local celebrities that the youth were really uh saw as influencers and and who they aspired to be we took a positive sort of happy tone people wanted to watch this as opposed to the fear factor where sometimes we often change the channel or click away and made it actionable you know we we took valentine's day created a creative campaign where you were giving love showing love to the planet to your loved ones through through food and encouraging people to eat a more planetary healthy diet so i think that was very much a lesson we learned um over the years of working on this campaign sophie uh i will continue with you now and let's have a look now at these uh global you know top five global priorities because you started to speak about you ask a lot of young people more than 100 000 has been responding um and here we have your that's the young people's top five global priorities yes exactly and i think looking at them here they they really link with uh the world food programs priorities uh dr steward's priorities and um dr calabata's priorities as well but we also find that you are agreeing but we also find that um over the course of history young people have been left out of decision-making positions within the food system but do you think you should go either further than than you heard from the other speakers today is it enough what you heard so far i i don't think it's enough um i think we have so much more to do and if you again the un sustainable development goals have been mentioned they were launched in 2015 there are 17 global goals to transform our world and tackle big issues but if you look at goal number two and if you look at the targets underneath goal number two only young people in the first 1000 days of life and young people under the age of five have been mentioned no young adolescent nutrition targets exist under goal two zero hunger and this is where young people from the age of about 10 to 25 or 30 come in they want to see it at a table and they want their priorities recognized and they want to be involved in the research methods and in the programs created by big decision makers and politicians right across the globe and this is them asking decision makers to stand with them but how are you working now to uh achieve this well right now we're moving into phase two of at for food act for change from may until now we were all about advocacy about campaigning about getting our word out there we went to the un food system summit pre-summit and showcased our global goals we went to the un food systems summit as well we went to the pre-cop in milan and cop 26 and we showcased our goals and now our young people want implementation they want programs they want to carry out their own programs in countries and they also want to work with big organizations like the world food programme like eat like any other big organizations and their governments to carry out these programs alongside them so we're really moving into programs right now so but you want to sit around the table you know and i'm not sure you you don't get yes all the time what do you do when you get no we push you push yeah we push and we push and we push until we get a yes because that's what it's all about big decision makers need to recognize that young people are equals even though they mightn't have finished their education yet or they mightn't have you know phds or sit behind a big mahogany table day in and day out signing papers they have lived experience and this is their world we have to suffer the consequences of decisions made by decision makers today and we're not part of that decision-making process so it makes economic sense for them to have us at the table because we are consumers as i mentioned we're the largest consumer generation the world has ever seen and that's only going to get bigger as as the world goes on but if you you know if you want to meet uh you know the most important ceo in in the food world in ireland or uk or i don't know in the states you know when he say no i don't want to meet you so what do you do how do you manage to meet him wait outside their offices send lots of emails and work with people they know so that we can get in the room um when we were at the fao we actually managed to secure many um meetings with big governmental decision makers by just walking up to them and asking can we have a meeting with you this is why you should have a meeting with us and if you look at um it's interesting these these these priorities as we started with it's it's really different from from region to region what could you say you know very shortly about about china here for example yeah well after food out for change although you saw the global priorities what's really unique about the campaign is that we can see them per country as well so if a young person from china as you can see this is like hundreds or even thousands of young people from china's top priorities so their first priority is back sustainable farming to regenerate our soils and reduce damaging chemicals education healthy school meals and sustainable school meals is actually a very interesting one because you can see it throughout all countries in the top five priorities except for a few we are curious about norway since we are here norway of course so the norwegian youth really prioritize um restricting junk food advertising promoting healthy food which i actually think is really interesting because we just heard from dr steward allen about about the sugar tax and promoting plant-based diets and um again retailers and food businesses must reduce food waste so it is really interesting how these compare to china for example as well and how interlinked they are with china's and ethiopia so a different part of the world again and as you can see many of the priorities are very similar young people in ethiopia want to ensure that young people from all backgrounds benefit from food system change again sustainable meals at school college and nursery and education another one as well that's the last one uh i will go back to l.a now jen you are still with us uh as a as a deputy director at the redford center you use the power of storytelling to inspire change for for admiral environmental just justice among many things and now you are working with longer form films and to help energize people around the food system transition and battle the climate crisis let's have a look at a small part of a film that you you have already released there's so much bad news about our planet it's overwhelming truth is i've given up this is the story of a simple solution a way to heal our planet the solution is right under our feet and it's as old as dirt all of our soils that are under chemical conventional agriculture are almost completely devoid of microorganisms modern agriculture was not designed for the betterment of the soil fossil fuels are by no means the only thing that is causing climate change when we damage soils carbon goes back to the atmosphere when we destroy soil it releases carbon dioxide biosequestration is using plants trees and techniques of grazing and farming to capture carbon and store it in the soil we can fix a lot of our claimant issues we bring the co2 down into a living plant and put it back into the soil red belongs plants working with soil microorganisms it seems too simple healthy soils lead to a healthy plant healthy plant healthy human healthy claim how could these kind of films make make changes yeah so the reference center is an environmental organization that really believes storytelling through film is a powerful but very underutilized tool in the current movement towards climate and environmental justice so films like kick the ground we make we support them because we think it's important that these hopeful and solution driven contents are what is driving the conversation is bringing new people into this conversation creating new communities of practice and i think most of all empowering people to take action as opposed to being just passive observers and so a very important part of any film of support is really developing impact campaigns so to do that we engage subject matter experts activists look at youth voices and really try to understand where the greatest opportunities are work for progress where the public conversation is headed who's engaged in these conversations and then who needs to be engaged in these conversations and most importantly what role there is for film to play to move the target audiences towards action and i think you know looking at kiss the ground the trailer we just watched um some examples of their impact campaign include using films to develop curriculums for schools so that kids are learning about this at an early age offering different types of classes to farmers or regenerative agriculture creating magazine and additional content on these film topics a policy program where you're using this film to convince policy makers of how important these issues are and so these are just a few of the ways that in our impact campaigns we're using film to create change that goes well beyond the viewership of the film to generate action and activism and we support a number of films on these topics around food and the food systems transition thank you jen we are soon wrapping up this little session sophie uh but first the use of celebrities uh this kind of storytelling is that also the way you are working you know you yeah definitely i think what we we find is that young people really listen to stories through social media through documentaries like jen's and through influences that they look up to not just celebrities but maybe um sports stars or even you know younger or older brothers and sisters or their community leaders in different parts of the world what they say and what they do is even more important and and i also just want to link back to what you were saying is seeing as we're we're wrapping up i think i really want to just mention that even though i mean right now i think it's really special that we're in a university and because across the globe we've heard that food systems connect everybody but they they also disconnect people and right now across europe and across ireland we're seeing young people drop out of education because they can't afford food with the rising cost of living with the rising mental health crisis we're seeing rising rates of obesity while we're seeing rising rates of under nutrition stunting and wasting the food system connects every single young person right across the globe and when we see food banks on campuses run out of food within the first 20 minutes of opening we know we have a serious issue and we know that young people need to be part of the solution at the decision making table so i really hope that we can create that change sophie and jen thank you so much for joining us here at the nobel peace prize forum good luck with your important work [Applause] it's no time for our closing remarks and we are proud now to introduce our new minister of international development it's a pleasure to give the floor to annabelle [Applause] thank you eric thank you sophie thank you all of you for such an inspiring and motivating morning i'm sure we all you know we have the urge to step up and this has given given us uh food for thoughts and inspiration dear mr beasley david ladies and gentlemen friends just like good food peace has many ingredients tragically so does conflict and one of conflict's main ingredients is the lack of food few things spell out injustice more than people starving it's as heartbreaking as it is mind-breaking famine and starvation should not occur in a world that produces enough food history has a way of repeating itself doesn't it in 1922 freity of nunsen was awarded the nobel peace prize for bringing food to refugees in need nurman burleigh he was honored in 1970 for his contribution to global food security possibly saving billions of lives and he put it this way man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history and even today when media headlines all around are hit by food crisis by famines most people continue scrolling part of my job as a minister of international development is to put food on the everyday global agenda also in the time between the famines we must make people see that food is an irreplaceable ingredient in the recipe of peace as it is and irreplaceable ingredients when saving our planet from environmental destruction we must make people see the food effects last year the noble peace prize committee picked an organization that has found this recipe the world food program and its leader david beasley has demonstrated exactly the qualities we need in order to solve the enormous challenges that we're facing the combined will to act quickly in the face of crisis and the ability of visionary planning to prevent new crisis the world food program does a lot more than just addressing symptoms they are helping us to fill the gaps between humanitarian assistance and long-term development and that gap ladies and gentlemen must be bridged if we are to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve sustainable development for our planet a poverty reducing tool like education just to give you an example it will be little worth if conflicts empty the classrooms or empty the stomachs of the children vaccines medicine has reduced effects in malnourished bodies the wfp has been the facilitator of an impressive coalition on school meals shaped in connection with the un food summit of which dr agnes calibata spoken today providing nutritious school meals and getting and this is important and getting the local farmers and communities involved in that production that is creating positive value chains that is really really good development many of the humanitarian crises we know that we face are predictable and that's why we are also working with the wfp on forecast based financing we want to anticipate the disasters and mitigate their effects as professor rockstrom has just underlined for us today climate change is rapidly changing the world of millions of small-scale farmers around the world and that is why climate adaption and support to small-scale farming will be crucial for the new government we will assist small-scale farmers and climate-smart agriculture improving food chains providing early weather warning providing seeds that can withstand more rain more draft more heat and in the fight against poverty i can't imagine a stronger ally than the force of half a billion small-scale farmers around the world norway is also using our seat at the security council to work towards a more proactive council when we are warned about the risk of conflict-induced famine and making the council speak out more strongly against the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare the war against poverty against hunger is fought on many fronts from the assembly halls of new york to the castle fields of congo to the border crossings of yemen as it must because we are in a race to reach the global goals by 2030 ladies and gentlemen 2030 as agnes said yesterday that's just eight seasons away there is no way we can get there unless we learn from the world food programs grip the beastly grip of the obvious connection between food and peace so ladies and gentlemen friends let us finally stop ignoring the lessons of our past thank you [Applause] thank you so much [Music] i have a little book here from uh from uh from actually from uh the library of the norwegian noble institute from 43 you know they have incredible treasures up there uh and actually uh it's about united nations conference on food and agriculture it was actually the it was actually the first conference with this team and it was held in 43 in hot spring us and the statement was i quote to give conscientious plan direction to mankind's need for food in a modern sense nation should develop a national food and nutrition policy to the full fruit flutation of which related social and economic policy will need to be and they added given the will we have the power to build in every nation a people more fit more vigorous more competent a people with longer more productive lives and with more physical and mental stamina than the world has ever known and ladies and gentlemen this was in 1943 and i think we can almost say the same today um so let's go to work we start here um at this conference because as you see we have some fruits around us here is a paper bag we don't do food waste do we in these conferences so bring some fruit and vegetable back home um and as we heard today so many times everyone can do something on behalf of the norwegian noble institute have a wonderful weekend and thank you for joining us [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

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Published: Sat Dec 11 2021