Parminder Singh was invited to speak at an India Counter Dialogue on the UN Food Systems Summit organized by Jan Sarokar. This event was held over two sessions on 3rd and 4th September 2021.
The overall program of the Dialogue consists of four sessions. These sessions were developed around the five Action Tracks, although not limited to them, that are being discussed at the UNFSS.
Session 1: Corporate Capture of Food and Governance
Session 2: Agriculture and Alternatives
Session 3: Food and Nutrition
Session 4: Livelihoods
Parminder Singh spoke in the Livelihood session, focussing on implications of the push for digital platforms like IDEA on livelihoods, offering crucial inputs and national and global perspectives.
Watch the live recording of the session here.
Details of the event:
The UN Food Systems Summit, designed to “Transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food” is scheduled to be held on 23 September 2021. The course of the Summit has been permeated with corporate influence to drive shifts in global food governance that threaten food sovereignty and security for large sections of marginalized and vulnerable populations.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has set up a steering committee, headed by Prof. Ramesh Chand and Niti Aayog to overlook the UNFSS- India process. As a member country, national-level dialogues were organized on 12 April 2021. A website has also been set up here.
Given the disastrous implications of the transformations pushed through the UNFSS in the global architecture of food systems governance, the Summit must be opposed by the peoples’ movements across the globe. The opposition to the UNFSS is primarily centred against a corporate driven unjust food system, which directly threatens the survival of the small-scale producers, fish workers, forest people, livestock farmers, pastoralists and impacts poor consumers. It raises serious concerns regarding nations losing policy autonomy and the neoliberal responses to tackling hunger, malnutrition, loss of livelihoods and public health.
Organizer information:
The Dialogue is being organized by Jan Sarokar. Jan Sarokar is a network of progressive civil society
organizations, social movements, mass organizations, academics, and other experts committed to reclaiming and rebuilding robust, democratically accountable public interest processes/systems.