On Mother Earth Monday: Stakeholders call for action; Good Food Finance takes center stage; the UN looks to science
It's Mother Earth Monday, with major events underway to address the escalating planetary emergency and related polycrisis. The cascading effects of interacting crises also help to reveal the opportunity inherent in shifting to policies and practices that value risk, vulnerability, and resilience, and support inclusive sustainable development and the health of people and nature.
Talanoa Dialogue: Stakeholders call for climate leadership
Last Week, Citizens' Climate International held a global Talanoa Dialogue for Climate Ambition, inviting citizens and stakeholders to take stock of where we are, envision a future in which we have succeeded in abating climate emergency, and explore strategies for making that future a reality.
We heard that vulnerability is a present-day concern. Climate-related impacts are disrupting food supplies, driving involuntary migration, sowing the seeds of conflict, and creating conditions for global instability. And maybe the most important insight of all: People—including the most vulnerable and marginal communities—are the solution to human-caused crisis.
Good Food Finance Week
Good Food Finance Week has opened, with a high-level Leaders Dialogue.
Leaders in finance, science, and advocacy, and from multilateral institutions came together to discuss emerging opportunities for investing in food systems transformation, the expansion of science insights and data systems in decision-making, and the practicalities of establishing a new Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation. The Platform would coordinate investment partnerships, provide insights into the optimal tools and strategies, and measure and report on impact, to help deliver more finance where it can do the most good.
The President of the General Assembly Csaba Kőrösi crystallized the challenge the Co-Investment Platform will respond to, by saying:
“Food system finance will be efficient only if the value we create is not less than the value we eliminate.“
The week of sessions will include further meetings on multidimensional data systems and toward the Co-Investment Platform:
Data Systems Dialogue – Wed, Apr 26 – 15:00 CEST
CIP Landscapes Portfolio – Wed, Apr 26 – 16:00 CEST
CIP Private Sector Briefing – Thu, Apr 27 – 16:00 CEST
CIP Instrumentation – Fri, Apr 28 – 16:00 CEST
General Assembly to bring science into decision-making
The President of the General Assembly hosted a special science briefing for member states of the United Nations, outlining the value of information rooted in science for improved decision-making. The day-long symposium also featured the launch of a new Group of Friends on Science for Action—countries coming together to support science-based insight in formal decision-making.
Today, PGA Kőrösi hosted the 12th Interactive Dialogue of the General Assembly on Harmony with Nature in Honor of International Mother Earth Day, in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Chamber at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The programme included discussion of the scope of a high-level Earth Assembly, including dialogue with stakeholders.
Tuesday is International Delegates Day at the United Nations—marking the anniversary of the first day of the San Francisco Conference, April 25, 1945, when delegates from fifty countries came together to map out the future of international cooperation under the rule of law. The founding of the United Nations was motivated by a shared aim to achieve sustainable peace through ongoing cooperation.
The effort to bring science and data into formal decision-making is essential to the United Nations honoring this mission in our time of converging crises.
Capital to Communities: civics to transcend crisis
In response to the rising stakeholder demand on all continents for swift, everyday, sustainable action to reduce the risk of climate emergency and related impacts, Citizens’ Climate International is again highlighting the core insight of the 2022 Reinventing Prosperity Report on delivering Capital to Communities: that stakeholder participation is an accelerator of informed, grounded, durable investment to reduce risk and build resilience.
Ahead of the recent Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, CCI citizen stakeholders from 31 countries contacted Executive Directors of the World Bank that represent their country or region. They asked that the evolution of the World Bank’s mission and operations honor four core principles:
Support the Bridgetown Initiative of the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley. It is gaining support and beginning to work.
Ground all reforms in human rights and gender equality.
Give citizens the opportunity to share meaningful input into the reforms. This must go beyond the World Bank Civil Society meetings.
Investigate how money can be dispensed directly to households in need and then develops an implementation plan to do so.