WS 27 - Food Security & Nutrition: Essential Ingredients to Build Back Better

In 2022 the world is faced with the competing, and compounding, threats of COVID-19, climate change, economic shocks and ongoing conflicts. These threats have caused unprecedented levels of need with disrupted supply chains, food price spikes and crop shortages testing already fragile food systems. The resulting food crisis exacerbates all forms of malnutrition. From increasing states of undernutrition, childhood wasting and stunting as thousands are pushed into states of hunger; to rising levels of micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity as economic shocks make healthy diets unaffordable for more than 3 billion people and highly processed foods, which are often high in unhealthy fats, sugars and salt, become economic necessities.
Food security is defined as when all people have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences. While urgent action is needed to overcome the immediate states of food insecurity and ensure food availability, it is also essential to apply lessons from the past in the dangers of a siloed focus on calories at the expense of providing adequate, nutritionally balanced food and working towards long term accessibility by building resilient food systems. This vision requires action across food, health, social protection, trade and education sectors and effective food system governance to ensure the immediate and long-tern food and nutrition needs of populations are met. Without action, food security and malnutrition threaten to exacerbate global threats, driving food systems contribution to climate change and inciting states of conflict.
This workshop aims to explore the current challenges to food security and nutrition posed by global threats, innovative and evidence-based solutions to meet immediate needs, and long-term solutions to build resilient food systems to deliver healthy diets for all.
Shortage of fertilizers is one of the elements of the current crisis. The workshop will explore potential solutions, considering particularly the issue of access inequalities and shift to more environmentally sustainable choices.