The Nyéléni Global Forum (2025)

The world is in unprecedented turmoil, and we are all facing deep-rooted overlapping crises. We need a paradigm shift to reclaim the right to shape our own food systems for the well-being of people and the planet.

Launched in 1996 at the World Food Summit, food sovereignty promotes a people-focused approach to food systems, prioritizing locally produced, stable, healthy, and affordable food over dependence on global markets and neoliberal policies.

The International Nyéléni Forum in Mali (2007) established this vision as a global standard, uniting movements and organizations dedicated to food sovereignty and social justice. In 2015, the Nyéléni International Forum on Agroecology reinforced this,
placing peasant, indigenous, family agroecology at the centre of a strategy for addressing climate and biodiversity crises.

That is why the Nyéléni Global Forum are calling for a new mobilization within and beyond the food sovereignty movement, to build our response at both global and local levels, and tighten alliances with climate justice, antiracism, health, labour, feminist, and social and solidarity economy movements and organisations. Through a multi-year process, they’ve brought together thousands of grassroots organizations and other allies across six world regions, to discuss and put forward joint proposals for a system change and a strong political agenda for the years to come.

The Nyéléni Global Forum, to be held in 2025 in India, will be the space for strategy and organization, and to kick off this new phase of the food sovereignty movement.

These can be ideal spaces for D-Ns to get involved with either during or between events in Food Councils or other collaborations. Click through to find the organizations near you who are involved.

Upcycled Food Association (UFA)(Website)

Upcycled Food Association (UFA) is a nonprofit trade association focused on reducing food waste by growing the upcycled food economy. The mission of the UFA is to champion upcycling as one of the most critical solutions to mitigate the climate crisis and advocate for the best interests of the upcycled food industry.

They envision a global food system where all food is elevated to its highest and best use. UFA is leveraging market forces to prevent food waste by coordinating hundreds of companies around the world and empowering millions of consumers to prevent climate change with the products they buy.

UFA has four main objectives:
1 Attracting more support for the upcycled industry
2 Connecting the upcycled business network
3 Improving the upcycled supply chain
4 Increasing consumer demand for upcycled products

UFA has 3 impact areas:

Research Fellowships – Upcycled Food Foundation research fellowships are dedicated to supporting evidence-based industry progress and educating consumers about the environmental and social benefits of upcycled foods.

Policy & Advocacy – We work to elevate and amplify the upcycled food industry by urging policymakers to support progressive policy and programs. Learn about our policy priorities, where we are advocating, and how we mobilize and represent UFA members.

Food Waste Funder Circle – Helping to fund the fight against food waste, the Food Waste Funder Circle is a network designed for private, public, and philanthropic funders interested in using their capital to solve food waste challenges.

Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN)(website)

The Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) is an international NGO on a mission to eliminate diet-related deaths globally. By making nutrition a core part of healthcare and by engaging health professionals in efforts towards healthy and sustainable food environments they are advancing the food transformation needed to mitigate the three largest global health crises: chronic disease, climate change, and pandemic risk.

One in 5 premature deaths globally is due to poor nutrition. The current food system is also fuelling the climate crisis and pandemic risk. At the same time, physicians tend not to use the immense power of nutrition to prevent and treat disease in the first place. Their mission is to address this issue at the source and educate medical students and physicians about how nutrition can be used as an effective tool to treat their patients. Through empowering healthcare professionals with the tools, techniques and know-how to treat their patients differently, PAN enables them to save more lives. The PAN Academy has an online learning platform that makes nutrition education accessible to everyone.

PAN also approaches the bigger global problems of the broken food system by engaging an international community and support network of physicians, dietitians, medical students, and other healthcare workers. Through combined efforts, they can influence policy-makers and change food environments for the good of human and planetary health.

PAN’s influence is expanding and they regularly establish new national branches around the world. By partnering with like-minded international colleagues they can work effectively at a local, national and international scale to maximise impact. They have established branches in various countries in Europe and beyond, and they continue to grow their reach globally. Their national branches are all registered non-profit organisations in their respective countries.

In 2018 PAN signed a joint open letter on the need for a strong proposal on an EU legislative framework for sustainable food systems.

By empowering healthcare professionals with the tools‭, ‬techniques‭, ‬and knowledge to treat their patients differently‭, ‬PAN empowers‭ ‬them to enhance patient care and save lives around the world‭, ‬while also protecting our planet and global resources‭.‬

2025 January

School Meals Coalition. (2021 website)

The School Meals Coalition is a prominent and innovative vehicle for multilateral action and addresses multiple Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) outcomes. The School Meals Coalition is a government-led and partner-supported effort that aims at ensuring that by 2030 every child worldwide can receive a healthy meal in school. Led by Brazil, Finland, and France, the Coalition was one of the most impactful and successful initiatives coming out of the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021.

The Coalition is an example of a new generation of multilateralism; It’s about governments and partners agreeing to join forces and work together to improve the quality, sustainability, and scale of national school meals programmes and complementary interventions. It is about breaking silos and pooling resources – best practices, experience, information, and technical support. Through its multisectoral and holistic approach, the Coalition addresses implementation bottlenecks, strengthens evidence for decision-making, provides opportunities for improved coordination and generates the political will and buy-in needed for change through advocacy.

Besides food provision (SDG 2), school meal programs boost agriculture, create jobs, increase school attendance and learning, and enhance health. They function as in-kind cash transfers, promoting social stability, gender equity, and comprehensive social protection efforts. Additionally, school meals programmes can integrate complementary interventions, including WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), nutrition education, and other routine school health and nutrition services.

School meals represent a powerful, multisectoral tool, which can contribute to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including poverty (SDG1), hunger (SDG2), health (SDG3), education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), economic growth (SDG8), reduced inequalities (SDG10), Responsible consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13) and strengthened partnerships (SDG17).

To achieve this member states have set three objectives:

  1. Restore all national school meal programmes lost to the pandemic by 2023
  2. Reach the 73 million most vulnerable children who were not reached even prior to the pandemic by 2030
  3. Improve the quality and efficiency of school health and nutrition programmes globally by 2030

2025 January

Planet-friendly school meals: opportunities to improve children’s health and leverage change in food systems (2024)

Pastorino, S., et al. (2024, November 18). Planet-friendly school meals: Opportunities to improve children’s health and leverage change in food systems. The Lancet Planetary Healthhttps://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00302-4

Planet-friendly school meals, defined as programmes delivering equitable and healthy foods for children, produced in ways that do not pollute or overexploit natural resources and protect biodiversity, are a platform to tackle many food system challenges.

Multiple stakeholder collaborations are required to move towards planet-friendly school meals. This entails changes directed at two sets of policies as outlined in the Planet-friendly school meals conceptual framework (figure): those making immediate changes to school meal programmes; and those developing demand-driven planet-friendly procurement policies that promote ecological farming and develop sustainable regional food systems.

School meals, mostly state-funded, reach 418 million children every day worldwide offering an opportunity to improve diet quality, and ultimately nutrition and health, and act as a catalyst for food systems transformation contributing to meeting global climate, food, and biodiversity goals.

2025 January

Options for reforming agricultural subsidies from health, climate, and economic perspectives (2022)

Springmann, M., Freund, F. Options for reforming agricultural subsidies from health, climate, and economic perspectives. Nat Commun 13, 82 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27645-2

Agricultural subsidies are an important factor for influencing food production and therefore part of a food system that is seen as neither healthy nor sustainable. Here we analyse options for reforming agricultural subsidies in line with health and climate-change objectives on one side, and economic objectives on the other.

Using an integrated modelling framework including economic, environmental, and health assessments, we find that on a global scale several reform options could lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in population health without reductions in economic welfare. Those include a repurposing of up to half of agricultural subsidies to support the production of foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics, including fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural products, and combining such repurposing with a more equal distribution of subsidy payments globally.

The findings suggest that reforming agricultural subsidy schemes based on health and climate-change objectives can be economically feasible and contribute to transitions towards healthy and sustainable food systems.

2025 January

Justice on the Menu: Legal & Policy Strategies to Address Structural Discrimination in the US Food System (2024 Oct)

ChangeLab Solutions. Justice on the Menu: Legal & Policy Strategies to Address Structural Discrimination in the US Food System. 2024. https://www.changelabsolutions.org/product/justice-menu

Food is a basic human necessity, and access to nutritious food is essential to people’s health and well-being. However, racial injustice and oppression embedded in the US food system cause economic, environmental, and health harms for many Americans — from farmers, producers, and distributors to restaurant workers, food retailers, and consumers.

The ideas and guidance in this resource aim to foster new conversations, advocacy efforts, partnerships, and research to advance racial justice in our food system. To aid changemakers who wish to center racial equity in food systems research, policy, and action, Justice on the Menu offers the following information and tools:

  • Introduction & Key Concepts: Background information on the history of racism across many dimensions of US food systems, resulting in land loss for BIPOC communities; low pay and poor working conditions for farm and food workers; and unjust racial and ethnic disparities in rates of hunger, food insecurity, and diet-related diseases
  • Policy Menus: state and local policy options that can be implemented to advance health and racial justice through the food system
  • Community Spotlights: stories describing how communities are putting policies into action
  • Practical & Legal Considerations: notes for changemakers working at the powerful nexus of food justice, health justice, and racial justice, to inform their community partnerships and help them navigate various legal landscapes

The report can be downloaded in full or in individual sections or fact sheets to meet specific needs.

“No single policy pursued in isolation can dismantle structural racism or make transformational change in the food system. Changemakers who use this resource should consider individual policy options as “bricks in a brick wall” — meaning that over time, and when connected to broader social justice movements, they can be part of the pathway toward more transformational change.

Deliberate, racism-conscious legal and policy interventions can help to codify and institutionalize ideas and values that emerge from these movements to drive long-term food justice and racial justice. Legal and policy strategies can address the distribution of money, power, opportunities, and resources and undo fundamental drivers of inequity, including structural discrimination, which is the preeminent driver of inequity.

Efforts to address historical and ongoing harms and advance food justice, health justice, and racial justice would be incomplete without law and policy changes.”

Untapped opportunities: Climate financing for food systems transformation (2022)

Global Alliance for the Future of Food. (2022). Untapped opportunities: Climate financing for food systems transformation. https://futureoffood.org/insights/untapped-opportunities-climate-financing-for-food-systems-transformation

Growing, processing and transporting food accounts for one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, but just 3% of public climate finance goes to food systems. Untapped Opportunities: Climate Financing for Food Systems Transformation presents the case for food systems as a climate solution and priority, with recommendations for action.

This includes the need to align public financial flows to food systems with climate ambition and action plans, and channelling public climate finance into food systems to support policies, programs, and projects that deliver on climate goals and a host of co-benefits for biodiversity, health, and food system resilience.

Despite the potential for climate mitigation and adaptation, food systems are consistently underestimated and underfunded. This report is designed to inform policy development and implementation, climate advocacy, and climate finance structures, with clear recommendations and opportunities for directing climate finance to food systems as a climate solution.

Translated versions of the report are available in Español and Français.

2025 January

Serving hope: rethinking school meal programs in Latin America (2024)

López, D. S., Gamba, M., & Uriza-Pinzón, J. (2024). Serving hope: Rethinking school meal programs in Latin America. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas36, Article 100818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2024.100818

Fig. 1 School meal programs in Latin America.

This article is a commentary providing a good overview and links to improving school meals programs, including issues to foster and educate on Sustainable Food Systems.

Snippets from the Article: “To bolster the effectiveness of school food programs in LAC it’s imperative to adopt innovative strategies. The above involves integrating nutritional education into the school curriculum, establishing sustainable school farms with local products, and incorporating gastronomy into SMP to enhance menu acceptance and reduce food waste. Community involvement ensures cultural relevance and supports local farmers, while technological solutions aid in addressing socioeconomic disparities, infrastructure, and logistics, facilitating better monitoring and data-driven decision-making. Moreover, long-term initiatives for enhancing school food programs should focus on aligning policies, raising awareness, capacity building, and conducting research and evaluation.”

“Fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targeting hunger mitigation and universal food access within the framework of SMPs is crucial for global well-being. Enhancing quality and coverage in SMP across LAC is essential, requiring concerted efforts to improve nutrition, promote sustainable development, and advance global health.”

2025 January

Sustainable healthy diets: guiding principles (2019)

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) jointly held an international expert consultation on Sustainable and Healthy Diets from 1 to 3 July 2019 at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy. The Consultation agreed on guiding principles for what constitutes “Sustainable Healthy Diets”, which comes when the debate around the sustainability of diets is high on the agenda of governments, international organisations, civil society organisations, the private sector and academia.

Considering the detrimental environmental impact of current food systems, and the concerns raised about their sustainability, there is an urgent need to promote diets that are healthy and have low environmental impacts. These diets also need to be socio-culturally acceptable and economically accessible for all.

These guiding principles take a holistic approach to diets; they consider international nutrition recommendations; the environmental cost of food production and consumption; and the adaptability to local social, cultural and economic contexts. At the consultation, the experts agreed on the term “Sustainable Healthy Diets” which encompasses the two dimensions – sustainability and healthiness of diets. Countries should decide on the trade-offs according to their situations and goals.

These guiding principles emphasize the role of food consumption and diets in contributing to the achievement of the Sustatinable Development Goals (SDGs) at the country level, especially SDGs:
1 No Poverty
2 Zero Hunger
3 Good Health and Well-Being
4 Quality Education
5 Gender Equality
12 Responsible Consumption and Production
13 Climate Action

Also see our ICDA SFS Toolkit’s SDG Briefs: Dietitian-Nutritionist Roles that includes D-N Roles for SDG 4, 5, 12, and 13 above as well as:
6 Clean water and sanitation
8 Decent work and economic growth
14 Life below water
15 Life on land

2025 January