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.

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

Good Practices in School Gardens and School Meals: Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (2024)

As part of food and nutrition education actions and a component of Sustainable Schools, the Programme encourages school garden initiatives, considering their potential to transform food habits of current and future generations, training students to be aware of the impacts of food production on the environment and on agri-food systems. In addition, with the greater impact of climate change, this educational tool becomes even more relevant as it can offer concrete contributions to the mitigation of climate effects.

Since 2009, the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Programme for School Meals, an alliance between the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE), the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has been developing activities to strengthen and institutionalise school meal programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

About 2 billion people in the world are overweight or obese due to a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. Around 133.4 million Latin Americans and Caribbeans do not have access to a healthy diet. In addition, this region has the highest healthy food costs (LAC Food and Nutrition Security Overview, 2023).

Given this scenario, the cooperation has promoted actions aimed at offering healthy and adequate menus, public procurement from smallholder farming, improvement of school infrastructure and food and nutrition education actions such as school gardens, exchanges of experiences, training and technical visits between 26 LAC countries, within the framework of the Sustainable School Feeding Network (RAES).

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

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

LM1 Part 1: What is Sustainability? (1 hour)

Sustainability has many definitions that vary by discipline and culture. We provide here a few concepts that may help you.

Commonly, we think of achieving sustainability as human development that balances environment, society, and the economy in a way that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Netukulimk is the Mi’kmaw (First Nations, Canada) concept for “the use of the natural bounty provided by the Creator for the self-support and well-being of the individual and the community at large.” In this case, community refers to the interconnectedness of all things—land, animals, water, human beings, plants, customs, laws. For Mi’kmaw, this understanding comes out of wejisqalia’timk, which means literally “we sprouted from the earth” and this speaks to the generations and generations of Mi’kmaw who have lived in Mi’kma’ki.  Sable, T. & Francis, B., 2012, p. 17.

These definitions are helpful to envision sustainability, but it becomes much more complex when we begin to dig into the details of how to achieve that.

Below are three videos (4-10 minutes) that help explain sustainability using natural science. The videos are from Sustainability Illustrated (where you will find many more!). The links here are for the English videos but are also available in French. Please, have a look at each one. There is some repetition, but that is good for learning!

1.1 Watch (~25 minutes)

Video 2: Four Principles of Sustainability (6:23). This video goes deeper into the principles introduced in video 1.
Video 3: Five Principles of Social Sustainability (8:37). This video explores the 4th principle related to social sustainability introduced in Video 1

1.2 Reflect (~20 minutes)

After watching the 3 videos above, reflect on the following questions. Remember that there are no “correct” answers to these questions, and your responses will likely change over time as you learn about sustainability.

1 – Describe sustainability. Use words appropriate as if you are explaining it to a colleague at work.

2 – What makes something (an action, a thing, a process) sustainable, or not sustainable?

3 – Describe the four principles of sustainability. Use words appropriate as if you are explaining it to a colleague at work.

4 – Describe the five principles of social sustainability. Use words appropriate as if you are explaining it to a colleague at work.

1.3 Keep Learning (optional)

1 – Discuss with colleagues about what sustainability means to them.

2 – If you enjoyed learning about sustainability using this lens and want a much more in-depth exploration, you could look at other resources and other ways of understanding sustainability before moving on:

  • Check out our list of Sustainability Courses. Most listed are free, but certificates and longer university courses often have fees attached, which we try to identify clearly in the links.
  • Have you heard of the” Triple Bottom Line?” watch this 4-minute video to understand how this framework can be helpful in expanding your ability to talk to others about sustainability.

Continue to LM1 Part 2. What are food systems? (1.5 hours)

Return to the Learning Modules’ Main Page

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Please cite the authors of the resources (and the ICDA SFS Toolkit if you can).


Feedback? Questions? Ideas? Contact the ICDA SFS Coordinator:
ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca

updated 2024 December

LM1 Part 2: What are Food Systems? (1.5 hours)

Food systems are complex and dynamic systems. In the Glossary you will find this definition used by Canadian Dietitians: “Food systems are complex, non-linear, systems… that embrace all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructure, institutions, markets, and trade) and activities …[of] production, processing, distribution, marketing, preparation, and consumption of food and the outputs of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcomes.”

Food systems are inseparable from the environment on which they depend, and the people who shape them. For example, Andean peoples, the Indigenous inhabitants of the Central Andes in South America, consider food systems to be deeply interconnected with their environment and cultural identity. Their agricultural practices, which have evolved over millennia, include paying tribute to Pachamama (Mother Earth), emphasizing sustainable land use and the relationship between the land, environment, and their culture. (Read more about Pachamama Day on the Cusco Peru website). Similarly, the Sámi, a group of people Indigenous to what is now called Europe, consider food and food systems as interconnected with broader cultural and geographic contexts. Tervo, et al. (2022) emphasize that … “…traditional Sami food and livelihoods relate to the natural environment and are part of their way of life; they are interlinked with the Sami people’s identity and dignity…”

Thinking of food systems as complex systems is very helpful in the context of sustainability.

2.1. Watch (4 minutes)

Start by watching the short video below to explore the concept of food systems.

Note that although waste is listed as a stage of the food system, food loss & waste happens at several stages of the food system.

Produced by No Line Communications What is a Food System? (youtube.com)

2.2. Read (1 hour)

In this section, we encourage you to read the Building Block “What are Food Systems” published online by TABLE. It is about 6 pages of content and should take less than an hour to read.

At the end of the document, you will find many “recommend resources” and “references” that you can explore. Note that a few of the links are outdated as of 2024, but many are still good.

What are Food Systems a Building Block from TABLE

2.3. Reflect (20 minutes)

After reading, reflect on the following questions.

1 – Describe a food system. Use words appropriate as if you were explaining it to a colleague at work.

2 – Why is it helpful to think of food systems as complex systems?

3 – Based on the videos and readings, how would you personally define a food system?

4 – Using the “Nourish Food System Map” from the reading as a guide, what roles do you have in the food system as an individual, and as a nutrition and dietetics professional?

2.4. Keep Learning (optional)

If you enjoyed learning about food systems as complex systems, you can check out the courses and readings:

  • The Indigenous Food Systems Network: This website includes various videos, stories, and tools related to Indigenous food sovereignty and sustainable food practices.

Continue to LM1 Part 3: Why are Food Systems (including diets) Currently not Sustainable (1 hour)

Return to the Learning Modules’ Main Page

This Toolkit is made to be used & shared - feel free!
Please cite the authors of the resources (and the ICDA SFS Toolkit if you can).


Feedback? Questions? Ideas? Contact the ICDA SFS Coordinator:
ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca

updated 2024 December