- Norway congratulates HLPE for their important report on the sustainable transformation of food systems, which is critical to reach the SDGs and achieve the Right to Food, gender equality, and humanitarian rights overall.
- We need to build food systems that can mitigate shocks and stresses.
We welcome the report’s call to enhance diversity and more equitable food systems as key to ‘equitable transformative resilience’ (ETR). - Norway regards building of resilient global food systems a strategic priority, also for international security and development, and supports actions and resources, as part of a comprehensive approach in our Government’s food security strategy; including
- To prevent hunger and malnutrition, working via UN, World Bank and NGOs for humanitarian aid, social protection, school meals, in alliances with Brazil, African Union, EU and other nations.
- To promote climate-resilient, agroecological food production, including small-scale family farmers, as well as plants and seeds protection for biodiversity, including opur support to Crop Trust and the Svalbard Seed Vault as a Global Public Good.
- To protect tropical forests and biodiversity, partnering with nations of the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Indonesia and others in our Climate and Forest Initiative, also as part of our commitments under the Paris agreement.
- And to preserve the multilateral system, including working within WTO for rules-based international food trade and supply chains, and within the UN for sustainable management of fish stocks and healthy oceans. We value our work with FAO on African fisheries research with the flagship ‘Nansen’ research vessel.
- Norway supports the framework and wants to highlight:
- Firstly, access to social protection, to meet urgent needs but also as a platform for long term development. School meals programmes address hunger and malnutrition by supplementing children’s food intake and strengthen local value chains with purchase foods from local smallholder farmers.
- Secondly, addressing gender gaps: The FAO report on women in agrifood systems show that women face significant gaps in productivity, wages, and access to resources compared to men.
- Thirdly, food production systems that foster plant and soil diversity help enhance the capacity of ecosystems to respond to shocks and stresses. Here, we support the recommendation on promoting agroecological approaches.
- The role of climate finance in transforming agrifood systems is vital. FAO recently announced that despite absorbing 1/4 of climate-related losses and holding the potential to cut about 1/3 of global emissions, agrifood systems currently secure less than 8% of global climate finance.
- Therefore, accelerating climate action and resilience through financing for sustainable food systems and agriculture is key. We welcome the 2025 Committee on Finance Forum that was recently held in Rome as an important step to channel climate finance to the agriculture sector.
CFS 53. Building resilient food systems for food security and nutrition
Statement held by Special Envoy for Climate and Food Initiatives (Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Paul Gulleik Larsen.
| Rome, Italy