Dubai: Against a backdrop of the overlapping environmental, political and economic challenges confronting humanity, young delegates will meet next month during the World Food Forum to explore sustainable solutions to the problems facing agriculture and food systems.
The organizers describe the five-day forum, which will run from Oct. 1-5, as an “independent global network of partners, created for and led by youth, to spark a movement to transform our agri-food systems and achieve the (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goals, including zero hunger.”
The event, conceived by the youth committee of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, aims to encourage the inclusion of young people in the decision-making process surrounding food security and sustainability.
Although enough food is produced to feed the entire population of the world, about 700 million people continue to go hungry. This ongoing crisis has been exacerbated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finding innovative solutions that can help to create more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems is key, experts say, to ending hunger and meeting the needs of a global population that is forecast to grow by 2 billion by 2050.
“We need to think outside the box and ‘futurize’ our way of fighting hunger,” Qu Dongyu, the FAO’s director-general, said on Wednesday. “We need to tap into a new source of energy … so we launched the youth committee as a way of empowering youth.” Arab News
