Back To The Future?
Is the summit to future-proof the world stuck in the past?
Was it only a few weeks ago that I was writing about unbearable heat in Europe? And a few months ago about Asia suffering from unprecedentedly high temperatures?
Well, parts of Europe are still battling wildfires. On Wednesday, Portugal declared a state of calamity after fires killed seven people and devastated over 15,000 hectares.
But others are battling a different disaster: floods.
At least 24 people have died in central Europe and new areas are being threatened. In Southeast Asia, Typhoon Yogi has so far killed over 500, of which nearly 200 were in my home country Myanmar. A humanitarian crisis is brewing in West and Central Africa too, where inundation in many countries caused hundreds of casualties.
“The worst floods to hit central Europe in at least two decades have left a trail of destruction,” said Reuters, without a single mention of climate change, unlike this NYT piece which quoted the head of a research network in the third paragraph: “These floods are a clear reminder of the growing threat of climate-induced extreme weather events.”
I worked in a wire agency setting for many years so I get the deadline pressure. I also get the need to adhere to strict word counts. But I think it’s a big problem to not include even a line on a key driver of this wild weather.
These disasters are not a result of divine intervention. We are doing this to ourselves with our addiction to fossil fuels, but it seems we are still stuck in the past and unwilling to do the work needed. Like the topic of this week’s issue.
It has been billed as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate multilateralism”, an occasion “to fully equip the multilateral system in a rapidly changing world with major new, evolving challenges” and “a chance to get back on track”.
Big words? Indeed. But the challenge is big too.
Let’s talk about the “Summit of the Future”, being held in New York starting today (Sep 20-23) as part of the 79ᵗʰ session of the United Nations General Assembly.
What is it?
The Summit was borne out of a declaration made at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was in commemoration of the U.N.’s 75ᵗʰ anniversary and world leaders committed to a host of things, including upgrading the U.N., protecting the environment, achieving gender equality, and working with the youth.
According to its website, the “Summit of the Future” is a four-day event that includes two “Action Days” and two days of pow-wows attended by world leaders.
“Bringing together representatives from Member States, civil society, private sector, academia, local and regional authorities, youth, and many more, the Action Days will provide an opportunity for broad engagement and inclusion,” said the micro-site dedicated to the first two days.
I’m still trying to decide what that actually means and whether we’ll see something more than statements, panel discussions, and a chance for networking.
The provisional programme for the Summit is similarly unclear. There are long plenaries and long lists of speakers for the four “Interactive Dialogues”. I suspect this is partly because a lot of the negotiations on the key outcome documents will have already been concluded and these days are about nations reaffirming their commitments.
Nevertheless, the key things to look out for are three documents: “Pact for the Future”, “Declaration on Future Generations”, and the “Global Digital Compact”, which are being negotiated and revised. You can find the latest versions here.
The Pact for the Future is the main text while the other two will be annexed to the Pact.
Why do we need it?
Because we seem to be living in a permanent polycrisis, a term coined by a French theorist of complexity called Edgar Morin, popularised by historian Adam Tooze, and which refers to a situation “where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part”.
The world has barely recovered from a pandemic that battered public healthcare systems, economic resilience, global cooperation and people’s physical and mental well-being. We are now facing multiple wars, worsening hunger and malnutrition, and the reality behind the persistent warnings that climate change is a “threat multiplier”.
Overcoming the polycrisis requires cooperation and collaboration, as well as collective resilience, responsibility, and decision-making. In other words, ‘multilateralism’.
Instead, we are busy putting up barriers and shutting our doors. More than one potential world leader - but particularly one whose election would have global repercussions - have embraced fossil fuels and played down climate threats.
We have governments that openly espouse neo-fascist sympathies. We have governments intent on destroying vast swathes of populations. We have billionaires so wedded to libertarian ideals they’re willing to let the world burn to achieve it.
Instead of collective resilience and responsibility, we have collective fragility and shirking of responsibility.
So we definitely need to bring multilateralism back in vogue .
Does that mean we can expect newfound enthusiasm for global cooperation from this Summit?
Hold your horses right there. Just because we need it desperately doesn’t meant we’re going to get it.
Also, it’s always good to temper your expectations for these events, because when decisions are made by consensus, ambitions tend to coalesce around the lowest common denominator.
In July, I wrote a commentary on the Summit for the Nexus25 project, a transatlantic initiative focused on the renewal of outdated multilateral structures. I spoke to many veterans of multilateral negotiations and found widespread disillusionment. They “have grown weary of a never-ending roster of summits and conferences that consistently fail to deliver substantial results”.
Below are some excerpts:
““Sofía Monsalve Suárez, secretary general of human rights organisation FIAN International and member of the International Panel of Experts on Food Systems (IPES-Food), illustrates this frustration.
She criticises the draft Pact for the Future for its omission of the right to food and the lack of prominent focus on food issues. “The only concrete measure regarding food insecurity and malnutrition pertains to science, technology, and innovation”, she noted.
David Archer, head of programmes and influencing at ActionAid, echoed this scepticism, expressing doubts about the event’s potential for meaningful change.
“The draft Pact has warm words but little real substance. We are focused on making breakthroughs in changing the colonial nature of the global financial architecture”, he said, mentioning activities outside the Summit such as the Financing for Development process and ongoing negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which he believes hold more promise for real breakthroughs.
Reflecting on the unmet commitments made at past climate summits, Dhanush Dinesh, founder of Clim-Eat, questioned the need for an event such as this. “These summits are increasingly becoming platforms for countries and international organisations to greenwash citizens, making promises they do not intend to keep”, he said, criticising the significant time, financial and human resources these summits consume.”
There are concerns too that the multilateral process is being co-opted by powerful transnational corporations and private organisations.
In March, the People’s Working Group on Multistakeholderism published an open letter criticising a pre-Summit gathering in Nairobi for bringing “back to life ideas and methodologies that States and civil society organisations themselves have already definitively rejected throughout the process towards this Summit”.
It said there is a worrying sign “of the increasing corporate capture of the UN multilateral system, and subversion of the very basis of multilateralism rooted in decision-making among states”.
The working group is made up of civil society organisations including FIAN, Friends of the Earth International, and Transnational Institute.
That doesn’t sound promising, does it?
It doesn’t, unfortunately. It also brings back the concerns and divisions created by the 2021 Food Systems Summit (FSS), which I have written about before and which you can see in the screenshot below.
But setting aside these concerns, let’s look at what the main outcome document say, because it is a good indicator of how ambitious we will be.
The 30-page “Pact for the Future” is the main text and covers five areas: sustainable development and financing for development; international peace and security; science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance. Since the zero draft was published in January, it has been revised four times.
I’m going to compare the latest version, dated September 13, with a previous version dated May 14, because the latter is the only draft that mentions food systems and sustainable agriculture.
Both versions feature climate change prominently and across four out of five areas, but this pledge in May…
was dropped in favour of a blander and weaker sentence:
These terminologies may sound identical but I do think there is a difference.
To me, food systems encompass a wider range of actors and activities, including the policymaking process, where agrifood systems, a term used mainly by the U.N. food and agriculture agency FAO, seem to have a narrower focus on agriculture and related activities. The agency does say this includes “all the interconnected activities and actors involved in getting food from field to fork” but I feel like it’s still lacking in the big overall picture. Please do tell me if I’m reading this wrong!
There was no other mention of food systems or sustainable agriculture. There was no mention of the right to food.
There were six mentions of food insecurity, but hunger and food security is being used, repeatedly, to keep up support for polluting, intensive, large-scale agriculture and it concerns me that we are playing right into this.
Beyond how many times a word was mentioned, what was also lacking was more ambitious targets to protect nature and the environment when we have both a climate and ecological crisis in our hands.
The 2030 biodiversity targets, which include goals and targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and put nature on a path to recovery by 2050, were mentioned, but there was no new impetus beyond reiterating the same talking points.
Where does that leave us?
After focusing on the bad news, I’m going to reverse ferret a little and say all is not lost. The need for inclusivity is acknowledged all over the document, whether it’s for governance, education, trading system or economic growth.
The biggest space – nearly nine pages – was dedicated to “Transforming Global Governance”, possibly the most important as well as the most difficult area.
This includes the reform of the UN Security Council, currently seen as ineffectual, biased, and a prime example of concentration of power (in the hands of the five permanent members).
There is also a pledge to accelerate “the reform of the international financial architecture to strengthen the voice and representation of developing countries”, “so that countries can borrow sustainably to invest in their long-term development” and “can meet the urgent challenge of climate change”.
All of this is commendable. But my concern remains the same: when our ecosystems collapse and when climate catastrophes mount, our harvests will fail and our already-ailing food systems will fall apart. Then everything will become secondary.
Some of us had a glimpse of this dystopian future during the COVID-19 crisis, when some nations and neighbours hoarded food for themselves.
Food - and the systems around it - is the very basis of our survival. It is also worsening climate change, which in turn is threatening long-term viability of our food systems.
This relationship should also be at the heart of any vision for the future. It is a crying shame that is not the case here.
I know many people who are attending the Summit will be making this point, but we should also continue to make the point and act on it. The Summit and the “Pact for the Future” may provide a guide but we will be the ones to turn these commitments into reality.
Thin Talking About Food
If you’re in Athens and/or Torino next week, I’ll be on two panel discussions around food systems and investigative journalism. Come and say hi.
On the afternoon of Sep 27 (Friday), I’ll be moderating a discussion with three awesome women at the iMedD International Journalism Forum. We’re going to be talking about how to bring investigative journalism into the food lifestyle media.
On the afternoon of Sep 29 (Sunday), I’ll be sharing the stage with three other great speakers at the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, Slow Food’s biennial multi-day extravaganza.
We’ll be discussing the role of investigative journalism in shaping sustainable food systems and why it is important for journalists to collaborate with farmers, who are the on-the-ground experts.Slow Food kindly interviewed me about my journey in anticipation of this event. It was slightly uncomfortable to be on the other side but I thought that’s the least I could do given I’ve done the same to countless other people.
As always, please feel free to share this post and send tips and thoughts on bluesky @thinink.bsky.social, mastodon @ThinInk@journa.host, my LinkedIn page, twitter @thinink, or via e-mail thin@thin-ink.net.