Around 60% of Italy's territory is classified as inland, marginalized areas. Here, a long-lingering crisis is unfolding that began in the 1970s where thousands of hectares of land have been abandoned due to migration. The diversity of institutional arrangements and historical heritages that characterize Italy’s inland areas represents a great source of experimentation for sustainable food systems.
Professor Laura Prota and the MA in Food Studies have convened an 'independent dialogue' as part of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 titled “Food systems in inland areas: national policies and local coalitions”.
The dialogue will take place online between the 12th and the 19th of July. Producers, associations, local institutions, and researchers from all over Italy will gather to discuss biodiversity, access to food, cooperation, and land rights in the inland areas.
The need to involve local communities in the definition of new sustainability models emerges as a common trait but also as a complex and contradictory process.
The ability to identify common needs and to co-design solutions by mediating conflicts and particular interests seems to be the culmination of sustainability, rather than its precondition.
Starting from the stories of the protagonists of these experiences, this dialogue aims to identify the common elements that favor or limit the functioning of food systems as a driving force for growth for inland areas and provide guidelines for future actions.
To join our discussion you can register here https://summitdialogues.org/dialogue/13965
Food Systems Summit Dialogues offer a powerful opportunity for people everywhere to have a seat at the table at this milestone UN Summit. Dialogues bring together a diversity of stakeholders, and provide an important opportunity for participants to debate, collaborate, and take action towards a better future for food systems.
The United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021: Rome, 26-28 July 2021
In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit will launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 SDGs, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable, and equitable food systems.
The Summit will awaken the world to the fact that we all must work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food. It is a summit for everyone everywhere – a people’s summit. It is also a solutions summit that will require everyone to take action to transform the world’s food systems.
Guided by five Action Tracks, the Summit will bring together key players from the worlds of science, business, policy, healthcare, and academia, as well as farmers, indigenous people, youth organizations, consumer groups, environmental activists, and other key stakeholders. Before, during, and after the Summit, these actors will come together to bring about tangible, positive changes to the world’s food systems.
The Summit process aims to deliver the following outcomes:
- Generate significant action and measurable progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Summit will succeed in identifying solutions and leaders and issuing a call for action at all levels of the food system, including national and local governments, companies, and citizens.
- Raise awareness and elevate public discussion about how reforming our food systems can help us all to achieve the SDGs by implementing reforms that are good for people and the planet.
- Develop principles to guide governments and other stakeholders looking to leverage their food systems to support the SDGs. These principles will set an optimistic and encouraging vision in which food systems play a central role in building a fairer, more sustainable world. Principles of engagement
- Create a system of follow-up and review to ensure that the Summit’s outcomes continue to drive new actions and progress. This system will allow for the sharing of experiences, lessons, and knowledge; it will also measure and analyze the Summit’s impact.