Launch a “Zero Hunger, Nourish the Future” Pledge for the Private Sector​

The evidence for the specific set of investments needed to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030 is laid out in a series of new authoritative reports.^[1]The evidence comes from Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger (2020), ZEF-FAO-IISD-IFPRI-Cornell (2020), SOFI (2020), PARI (2020). In the simplest terms, evidence refers to science-based information about what works and what does not work. Commitments refer to what institutions or institutional players, in particular governments, have promised to do. Ceres2030 involved 86 researchers from 26 countries and 53 organizations, with the findings published in Nature Research. The Ceres2030 report shows that if an additional USD 33 billion per year is invested in high-impact interventions, this will end hunger, double the incomes of 545 million food producers and their families on average, and limit greenhouse gas emissions for agriculture to the commitments made in the Paris climate agreement. Importantly, it will crowd in USD 52 billion of local private-sector investment per year.

Table 1 groups the evidence from the new reports around three areas of investment, ten high-impact types of investment, and an iterative list of examples of company-aligned investments to guide the private sector in their pledge.

Companies and investment funds will sign a pledge at the UN Food Systems Summit. The pledge will require a financial commitment in a specific country or region or across a set of investments. The pledges will be tracked and monitored through existing mechanisms, such as Grow Africa, Grow Asia, the Food Action Alliance, and the World Benchmarking Alliance. Further work will be done on the mechanisms for delivery that can facilitate and support better public-private alignment to achieve impact. This will include effective coordination with international organisations (FAO, IFAD, IMF, WB, WFP, and other UN agencies) as well as country-level consultation and implementation, which are fundamental to delivery, and this will be tailored to national circumstances, led by governments.

The solutions proposed include mechanisms for greater participation and autonomy of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in decision making and policy advocacy; enabling normative frameworks, recognition of local and indigenous governance systems, and recognition and use of existing capacity and knowledge; and recognising basic rights such as the right to food and secure land tenure. These are critical for rebalancing agency and promoting more equitable and sustainable food systems. This cluster is premised on a programme with a potential operational footprint to:

• establish trust funds and other mechanisms to facilitate access to and strengthening of assets, capacities, skills, and information to advance equitable livelihoods, and secure land titling, tenure rights, and other rights.
• promote communities’ and indigenous peoples’ agro-ecological approaches such as soil and water conservation; regenerative or conservation agriculture; indigenous seed and breed protection and promotion; agro-forestry, or sustainable fisheries; and including social, economic, and cultural aspects through co-creation of knowledge under an intercultural approach.
• improve the living environment of people in vulnerable situations and communities at risk through the creation of various community assets for disaster risk reduction.
• facilitate transparent and accountable land governance and resource management processes as stated in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), Right to Food Guidelines (RTFG) and Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries (VGGT).
• foster adequate investment and access to resources (financial, human resources, digital, etc.) by key stakeholders recognising the importance of secure land tenure in building sustainable food systems, in accordance with the CFS RTFG and Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (Principle 5: Respect tenure of land, fisheries, forests and water).
• uphold women’s equal tenure rights and promote their equal access to and control over productive land, natural resources, sustainable inputs and technologies, and access to education, training, markets, and information in line with the CFS RTFG and VGGT.
• recognise and respect all legitimate tenure right holders and their rights including, as appropriate and in line with national legislation, the legitimate tenure rights of indigenous peoples and local communities with customary tenure systems that exercise self-governance of land, fisheries, and forests, with special attention to the provision of equitable access for women, in line with the CFS VGGT.
• sustainably manage all terrestrial and marine agroecological systems for nutrition, healthy ecosystems, rural livelihoods, and resilient food chains as well as encourage low input pastoral systems to produce healthy animal source food that contribute to reducing poverty and hunger.
• support innovative and catalytic funding for research and learning platforms, leadership capacity building, and seed funding to replicate and bring to scale ongoing programmes and projects addressing climate change adaptation and livelihoods globally.

This solution cluster entails identifying solutions and models that 1) assist communities in vulnerable and marginalised situations with the skills and a broad-based set of partners to drive the initiatives forward, and 2) enable processes for all stakeholders and rights-holders to work together to encourage innovation and improve complementarities and synergies for resilience.

In April 2021, African countries committed to double agricultural productivity as the ADB and other institutions pledged USD 17 billion over the next 5 years to end hunger. The UAE and the US, with support from the UK, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, Australia, and Uruguay, announced the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM for Climate). In May 2021, the G7 communiqué reaffirmed the Elmau commitment to lift 500 million people from chronic hunger and malnutrition, including a ‘call on the private sector and foundations to increase their contributions,’ and the G7 pledged an additional USD 8.5 billion for humanitarian and related resilience-strengthening responses.