Thank you, Dear Madame Chair.
- Thank you very much for presenting this important report about Urban and Peri-Urban Food Systems.
- As the report highlights: The majority of people living in food insecurity today, live in urban or peri-urban areas. This creates a global food security challenge.
- Urban and peri-urban markets are crucial for strengthening local value chains, which are less vulnerable to geopolitical disturbance. Emphasis should therefore be placed on alternatives to supermarkets, such as community-supported agriculture, market gardens, cooperatives, and other small-scale food production. Such initiatives also rely to a greater extent on agroecological principles that are important to preserve agrobiodiversity in urban areas.
- Norway would like to emphasize the importance of small-scale producers, women, and indigenous peoples in urban food systems, and support local authorities with integrating the right to food, climate, and social protection into urban food policy.
- We would also like to highlight the importance of green urban spaces in cities, as these contribute to a great amount of diversity, and at the same time bring people closer to each other and to the food that we eat.
- Norway also supports and encourages all countries in developing national action plans for urban and peri-urban food systems with the right to food as a framework. The plans must be gender- and age-responsive, build on locally-led initiatives and support agroecological solutions. The plans must also explicitly respect the rights of indigenous peoples in line with UNDRIP and ensure the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). Norway has been a financial supporter of the work of the Indigenous Peoples Unit in FAO and we call on FAO and its member states to provide funding so the Unit’s good work can continue.
- It is important to ensure true participatory processes to create urban and peri-urban food systems that can help reduce malnutrition and food insecurity, especially by the population groups most affected by political decisions. And to ensure transparent and democratic processes.
- In this regard, it is essential to focus on young people as key drivers of change. This engagement is crucial to achieving welfare defined by food sovereignty, decent living conditions, and healthy environments in rural and urban areas.
- Finally, we encourage member states to integrate urban and peri-urban food systems into global investment and trade dialogues.
- To summarize, it is important to work towards a holistic approach to the right to food, connecting the right to food with other human rights in urban and peri-urban food system plans.