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NAIROBI, KENYA, Sep 22 (IPS) – Meals safety specialists have raised an alarm that with as many as 811 million individuals the world over or 10 % of the worldwide inhabitants going hungry, the world is off-track to ending starvation and malnutrition.
Extra so, after a decade of steadily declining, the variety of malnourished individuals grew by 161 million from 2019 to 2020 alone, a spike attributed to complicated international challenges comparable to COVID-19, local weather change and battle, in keeping with the United Nations.
Towards this backdrop, the European Institute for Innovation and Sustainability (EIIS) launched a three-month, challenge-based and solutions-oriented meals sustainability certificates course in Might 2021 to actively assist international locations repair their meals techniques.
“Our intention is to supply a complete base for a deeper understanding of the complicated dynamics of meals, giving course individuals the instruments and insights to carry out higher at work, shift careers, and change into much more aware and accountable shoppers,” says Sveva Ciapparoni, the Meals and Sustainability course coordinator.
With a particular deal with G20 international locations, as they’re most consultant of the world’s inhabitants and financial system, the EIIS meals sustainability programme makes use of the Food and Sustainability Index (FSI) to assist learners perceive the dynamics behind meals techniques and their inherent energy to advertise or derail the attainment of UN’s Sustainable Growth Objectives (SDGs).
Developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Heart for Meals and Diet Basis, the meals index collects information from 67 international locations worldwide to showcase greatest practices and spotlight key areas for enchancment in the direction of the manufacturing and consumption of enough, sustainable and wholesome meals.
The EIIS programme breaks away from conventional meals programs solely centred round gastronomy, culinary administration and hospitality to deal with manufacturing, distribution and consumption points on the very coronary heart of the SDGs.
Marcela Villarreal, the Director of Partnerships and UN Collaboration Division on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), signifies that the “course straight addresses a number of SDGs. These embody combating starvation (SDG 2), selling the well being of each individuals and planet (SDGs 3, 13, 15), and inspiring aware and accountable consumption (SDG 12).”
“The meals system method adopted by the course by particular challenges is especially conducive to understanding the SDG agenda and proposing strong and interconnected options,” Villarreal, additionally one of many foremost specialists from the Meals and Sustainability course’s school, says.
As such, individuals, who have been a part of the Might 2021 cohort of learners, had a chance to intersect the three important pillars of any meals system, together with sustainable agriculture, dietary challenges and meals loss and waste, with the three areas the place meals specialists say options to the damaged meals techniques lie: innovation, schooling and coverage.
Additionally distinctive to the course, the programme is taught by a Problem Primarily based Studying method that “permits for the sensible software of the ideas realized all through the modules.
“ feed 10 billion wholesome meals, preserving the well being of individuals and planet is the formidable problem tackled by the individuals,” says Villarreal.
Participant Anant Saraf confirmed that being taken by on-line tuition mixed with sensible workshops enabled them to analyse meals techniques, perceive the complexities of the meals techniques, and determine essentially the most urgent issues going through particular meals techniques to supply options.
Importantly, Ciapparoni says that the course is a chance to work together with matters more and more essential to meals manufacturing, distribution, and consumption in step with the SDGs and the UN’s first-ever meals techniques summit that kicks off on September 23, 2021.
Held inside the UN Common Meeting week in New York, the digital UN Food Systems Summit will set the stage for international meals techniques transformation.
To take action, the UN will have interaction residents from all around the world, together with youth, researchers, meals producers, indigenous individuals, civil society, and the personal sector, in a discourse to remodel how the world produces and consumes meals.
As with the EIIS meals sustainability course, the UN Meals Methods Summit is a golden alternative to empower individuals to know and use the facility of meals techniques to recuperate from COVID-19 and get again on observe to finish world starvation and malnutrition.
Ciapparoni signifies that course individuals have been conscious that they might be contributing to the Summit.
The course problem aligns with the UN Meals Methods Summit agenda because it was developed in session with Martin Frick, deputy to the UN Secretary-Common Particular Envoy for the UN Meals Methods Summit 2021, he added.
Subsequently, on the coronary heart of the EIIS course was an pressing have to construct a era of meals leaders that may successfully rework meals techniques for meals safety, improved diet, and reasonably priced wholesome diets for all.
In the direction of this goal, Villarreal says that course individuals have been “divided into groups based mostly on their backgrounds, range being the primary standards and that every crew obtained assigned a G20 nation to be analysed, with a selected deal with its meals system.”
“After figuring out the nation’s key challenges, every crew proposed attainable options to enhance their assigned nation’s meals system. The underlying concept is that, by proposing methods through which single international locations can enhance the sustainability of their meals techniques, individuals will have the ability to counsel find out how to promote meals sustainability globally – and thus handle the course’s most important problem,” Villarreal provides.
Crew South Africa, as an example, mentioned the nation’s speedy urbanisation and unfolding meals manufacturing and safety challenges in gentle of local weather change and complicated social, financial, and environmental challenges.
As for Saudi Arabia, the crew concluded that the meals system faces quite a few challenges, as highlighted within the meals and sustainability index of 2021 that ranked Saudi Arabia final in comparison with different G20 international locations.
Saudi Arabia has the very best reliance on meals imports among the many G20 international locations. The crew aimed to determine how the nation might overcome the meals manufacturing challenges brought on by its dry and sizzling local weather.
Crew India had the duty of figuring out how the nation, ranked thirteenth among the many world’s extraordinarily water-stressed international locations attributable to inefficient irrigation techniques, groundwater depletion, and excessive manufacturing of water-consuming crops, can overcome these challenges.
With regard to the USA, the crew analysed how the nation, which has the very best meals waste per capita globally, can handle this drawback.
Crew Russia sought to repair the nation’s defective meals manufacturing techniques, processing, and transportation.
Crew South Korea’s problem was discovered within the globalisation of the nation’s meals system has elevated consumption of extremely processed meals resulting in a meals disaster.
Individuals navigated by these challenges beneath the steerage of meals and sustainability specialists, together with Villarreal. By offering options to repair damaged meals techniques in particular international locations, the EIIS course can have contributed in the direction of sensible options on find out how to feed 10 billion individuals by 2050 wholesome meals with out harming the planet.
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© Inter Press Service (2021) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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