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The road to the 2nd FAO International Symposium on Agroecology
During the next nine months, FAO and its partners will be getting ready for the 2nd International Symposium on Agroecology, which will take place in Rome, April 2018. With this and future newsletters, the Agroecology team in FAO wants to share with you the latest updates on the preparation of such an important event. There is a lot of work ahead, so let’s start!
2nd International Symposium on Agroecology: Scaling up agroecology to achieve the SDGs
The major goal of the Symposium is to scale-up agroecology within and beyond FAO and to achieve that, three main objectives have been set:
- Conduct Regional Consultations, based on the lessons learned and recommendation from the regional symposia. The Consultations will collect updated information on the strengths, constraints and needs of each region to adopt and scale-up agroecology in its countries.
The information collected will cover existing policies, main actors involved and synergies between agroecology, the Sustainable Development Goals and climate change.
- Embed Agroecology in FAO to ensure further integration of agroecology in FAO’s vision and Strategic Framework, including its contributions to FAO’s Strategic Objectives.
- Implement a Scaling-Up Initiative, to address country and regional needs and requests for replicating successful experiences of agroecological practices and policies. The Initiative will be set up as an umbrella programme hosted by FAO and it will be articulated around different thematic areas – like policy support, capacity building, evidence provision, etc.
The Initiative will be open to other partners, including national and sub-national governments, relevant United Nation agencies, civil society and farmers’ organizations, research and academia institutions, and private sector institutions directly involved in agroecological production.
Building upon the past, reaching for the future
The 2nd International Symposium on Agroecology will build upon the Global Dialogue on Agroecology triggered by the 2014 International Symposium. At that time, more than 400 participants attended the discussions on how agroecology improves the livelihoods of rural communities, changes diets for a better nutrition thanks to diversification, protects and improves the health of agro-ecosystems and develops transformative changes in agricultural practices moving towards sustainability. Following the Symposium, a total of five regional meetings took place between 2015 and 2016, involving more than 1,300 participants from 162 different countries.
In all those meetings, representatives from governments, civil society, farmers and academia stressed the key role of agroecology in the transition towards fair, sustainable food systems. Food systems are at the center of the global development agenda for the coming years. Several relevant global initiatives, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, the 13th Biodiversity Conference and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, promote key aspects that depend on or are closely related to food systems: eliminating hunger, improving health and well-being, preserving wild and domesticated biodiversity, strengthening resilience of human and natural systems and reducing inequalities, to name just a few. Agroecology can contribute to all those elements, becoming a fundamental piece to the sustainable development agenda.
The Symposium will also provide an opportunity for sharing and discussing policies that can support agroecology, and how agroecology can be instrumental in achieving a wide range of policy targets, from sustainability related goals to reduction of rural poverty.
In summary, agroecology has a great potential to drive the transition towards more sustainable, fairer and more human food systems that not only provide food for all, but do so in a respectful and decent manner to both the people and the planet.
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