Next week, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) meets for its 53rd session with a bold new report entitled Building Resilient Food Systems on the agenda.
Commissioned by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN), the report calls for Equitably Transformative Resilience (ETR), a new approach that foregrounds equity, justice, human rights and socio-ecological interdependencies to transform food systems so they are increasingly resilient.
Read Building Resilient Food Systems
The challenge is now clear: ETR must not become a buzzword or an abstract aspiration but be embedded in everyday policy and practice as a driver of food system transformation. As four researchers involved in the report development process, we propose three courses of action for food scholars to advance ETR from the ground up.
The 20th HLPE-FSN report
Each year, the HLPE-FSN produces a report on an agreed-upon outstanding food security and nutrition issue. The report then informs the CFS and has the intention of driving food policy towards the realisation of the CFS’s mission. The 20th report of the HLPE-FSN focuses on Building Resilient Food Systems and recognises the urgent need to bounce forward by strengthening the capacity of food systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and transform in response to multiple and overlapping crises, shocks, stresses and vulnerabilities. These include climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, wars, conflicts, and economic shocks, all of which threaten food security, nutrition, food rights and the livelihoods of millions globally.
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The report was written by an independent team of 10 international experts, of which we were privileged to be a part, who brought diverse perspectives from different world contexts to produce this interdisciplinary work. It provides an in-depth account of what makes food systems non-resilient in the face of shocks and stresses. The report elaborates the root causes and structural inequities that result in ‘differentiated vulnerabilities’ that undermine the realisation of human rights and the right to food. Discrimination often lies at the root of these differentiated vulnerabilities. Wars and protracted conflicts expose the many layers of fragility that leave people unable to cope. Starvation in Gaza and Sudan provide a stark, current example.
Equitably transformative resilience (ETR)
The report emphasizes that resilience can only be attained with the transformation of food systems with equity and justice at the centre, ensuring that the most vulnerable populations are not only protected but also empowered as active agents. It proposes ETR as a bold new framing of food system resilience that can be pursued through structural change, systemic approaches and agency-enabling action.
ETR focuses on transforming food systems to nurture equity and justice while remaining within planetary boundaries. ETR emphasises the need for structural changes to address the root causes of vulnerabilities and fragility of current food systems. It aims to enable agency and capacity development for marginalised communities to “bounce forward” in the face of shocks and vulnerabilities. The report introduces a resilience spectrum, moving from bouncing back through ‘bouncing forward’ towards equitably transformative resilience. As outlined by the report, ETR goes beyond short-term responses to enable bouncing forward in equitable ways that address the structural and systemic causes of differential vulnerabilities, redressing the unequal distribution of power, capabilities, resources, rights and duties; while harnessing socioecological synergies so that food systems are less prone to shocks and stresses in the future” (p.xvi).
Pathways to ETR
The report provides evidence that diverse and equitable food systems can improve the livelihoods, food security, nutrition and wellbeing of those most affected by shocks and stresses, by enabling agency and capacity development, grounded in communities’ values and building upon socioecological interdependencies. It outlines pathways to realise ETR, ensuring that food systems remain within planetary boundaries and, at the same time, guarantee food security and nutrition for all in the face of shocks and stresses.
And, it recommends building resilient food systems through governance reform, fostering diversity in production and food value chains, including markets and food environments, promoting agroecology, enhancing knowledge systems, and integrating resilience into disaster risk management. It emphasises inclusivity, equity, social protection, and science-based decision-making, as well as leveraging public procurement and territorial market mechanisms to ensure food security and planetary well-being.
After the formal presentation of the report to the CFS next week, a policy convergence process begins, leading to a negotiated political interpretation through the CFS’s democratic mechanisms. While this process takes its course, researchers, practitioners, and citizens worldwide need not wait for its outcome. The work of pursuing ETR can and should start now, and we propose three lines of action for researchers engaged in critical food scholarship.
Actions for researchers
As engaged researchers committed to producing knowledge that contributes to equity and justice in food systems, we highlight three areas for action that we hope can inspire others:
- Contribute to building more equitable knowledge systems by:
- Co-producing knowledge with marginalised groups, including local communities, smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, pastoralists, migrants in precarious circumstances, etc., to ensure that research questions, metrics, and indicators reflect intersecting vulnerabilities and locally defined priorities and perceptions of food systems
- Recognising that research is often led by academics and policy actors in fora and platforms that are not sufficiently inclusive, and findings are often disseminated in ways that are not accessible to the general population.
- Helping to create dialogue forums and innovation platforms at local or territorial levels for the sharing of evidence and experience, acknowledging and valorising experiential knowledge and lived experience of those that are marginalised in food systems.
- Developing resilience monitoring systems that can track not just “bouncing back” but “bouncing forward” resilience that drives transformative change.
- Advocating for and supporting the implementation of transformative public policy at the sub-national, national, and international scales that can help move communities towards ETR.
- Actively create spaces and opportunities for marginalised groups to lead and make decisions, while continuously reflecting on and addressing our own positions of privilege, by:
- Supporting training and capacity building for grassroots organisations, community leaders and local researchers in pathways towards ETR.
- Designing participatory, action-oriented research projects on resilience that actively involves communities and stakeholders in the research process, ensuring that projects are aimed at creating transformative change.
- Ensuring research is collaborative and non-extractive by actively involving participants in decision-making, protecting their intellectual property and traditional knowledge, and sharing benefits, credit, and outcomes equitably throughout the research process.
- Engaging in reflexive practice by regularly examining and questioning our own assumptions, biases, and power dynamics in research, advocacy and practice, and adjusting strategies to ensure we are genuinely supporting empowerment rather than inadvertently reinforcing inequities.
- Disseminate existing ETR practices at different scales of food systems that can inspire others to take context-relevant action by:
- Documenting and widely sharing examples of ETR in practice, i.e. cases where structural vulnerabilities (e.g. inequities, dependency, discrimination) have begun to be addressed via local innovation or partnerships that harness socio-ecological interdependencies.
- Using these stories to influence and inspire other communities working towards ETR, while drawing attention to context specificities and the limits of blueprints and linear policy transfer.
- Organising multi‐stakeholder networks linking practitioners, civil society, researchers, and local government to advocate for shifts in public support: for example, redirecting subsidies, financial incentives, or infrastructure investment toward diversified and socio-ecological just production and territorial marketing systems rather than large‐scale monocultures or long supply chains.
We invite all readers of the 20th HLPE-FSN report, including practitioners, advocacy organisations, and representatives of different social groups experiencing differentiated vulnerabilities to advance ETR in their own spheres of influence. While there is no single blueprint for ETR, its principles can be adapted to diverse settings and realities. Real change begins in everyday choices, advocacy, and actions.
