Reports – Sustainability

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.

Open Food Network (website)

The Open Food Network (OFN) is a global network of people and organisations working together to build a new food system. OFN believes a sustainable and resilient food system needs to reconnect producers and consumers.

Together OFN members develop open and shared resources, knowledge, and software to support a better food system. They aim to empower people and communities and give them the tools and knowledge to develop the food systems they need to build new food systems for their community.

OFN has many case studies on their website. They highlight some of the over 847 amazing food enterprises selling on their platform. The case studies go deeper to know more about them – their stories, how they do things, what they care about, and how they make localised food systems happen in their communities.

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:

Restore all national school meal programmes lost to the pandemic by 2023
Reach the 73 million most vulnerable children who were not reached even prior to the pandemic by 2030
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 Health. https://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

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.”

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 – Americas, 36, 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

The Food Planet Prize

The Curt Bergfors Foundation was established on August 30th, 2019, in acknowledgement of the perils that our current food systems pose to the health of people and the planet, and with the conviction that the ways we produce, distribute and consume food must be radically and urgently reformed if future generations — and the planet itself — are to survive and thrive. Immediate action is required.
* The vision is a well-nourished world population on a thriving planet.
* The mission is to drive a rapid transition to a sustainable global food system. They do this through research grants, awards, and information campaigns. Most of their activities are centred around the Food Planet Prize.

Through the foundation and the founding capital that Curt provided (500 million SEK came from his private assets), Curt acknowledged that our current ways of producing, distributing, and consuming food are causing significant damage and that we must urgently and drastically change our modus operandi to save both human and planetary health. The foundation supports the transition to sustainable food systems through research grants, awards, and information campaigns. Its primary tool is The Food Planet Prize. With an annual award of two million USD, it is the world’s most significant environmental endowment.

The Food Planet Prize rewards innovative initiatives that will improve the global food system within a ten-year period while supporting a resilient biosphere and feeding a growing world population. It is Curt’s brainchild and his greatest legacy. He wished to contribute to a better, more bountiful Food Planet and was confident that it could be nursed back to health.

We share this with you as there is a long list of winners and nominees you can gain inspiration from, or partner with, as you work to further Sustainable Food Systems wherever you are.

Or maybe you will apply to win the award yourself!

Winners & nominees