Excellencies, colleagues,
Italy warmly welcomes the new edition of the flagship “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” Report and wishes to thank FAO, IFAD, WFP, UNICEF and WHO for their continued joint cooperation and partnership on food security and nutrition.
We appreciate the focus of the report on how urbanization is driving changes in agrifood systems across the rural–urban continuum and on how these changes are creating challenges and opportunities for accessing affordable healthy diets, food security and nutrition.
The interlinkages between urbanization and food systems directly touch upon at least 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals: more than the 80% of the 2030 Agenda.
It is therefore necessary to adopt integrated and multi-sectoral policies which include demographic, infrastructural, social, economic, climate and environmental considerations in this discussion.
This report is also complementary to the SDG Special Edition Report of the Secretary General and the Report of the Secretary General on “Progress on food systems transformation since the UN Food Systems Summit 2021”.
The picture of challenges and opportunities is therefore clear enough.
Now it is time to act and to deliver urgently, especially for those people – between 702 and 828 million – affected by hunger and the roughly 2.4 billion people currently facing food insecurity.
In particular, those most vulnerable people are the same people left behind in urban or rural settings and suffering from poverty and lack of access to essential services including water, education, health, social services etc.
Investing on them therefore means unleashing a multiplier effect for all the relevant SDGs and this accelerator can and should start from ensuring their right to adequate food.
Dear colleagues,
We are just 11 days away from the anticipated Food Systems Summit+2 in Rome. The Summit represents a unique opportunity to unleash a new wave a global action for the implementation of food systems transformation pathways and additional sets of multi-sectoral policies and commitments for food systems and for sustainable development.
Let’s use these data to make the Rome Summit a transformational Summit.
You can continue to count on Italy as host Country of the Rome-based Agencies, as Host Government of the Summit and as Chair here of the New York Group of Friends of Food Security and Nutrition to push this agenda forward, including at the next SDG Summit.
I thank you.
