SOFI 2024: Privately funded false solutions instead of structural change
This year’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World prioritizes “innovative” private funding solutions, without properly addressing the structural causes of extreme inequalities related to the global financial architecture and dominance of finance capital over the economy.
The latest SOFI report focuses on "Financing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity and Malnutrition in All its Forms," according to a preview of the report this week. However, there are major structural constraints on achieving the right to food for all.
Priority should be given instead to strengthening public funding and redistribution of wealth in order to create good, sustainable jobs, promote a just transition and enhance social and economic solidarity.
Where and how to put the money?
UN agencies presenting the preview argued that innovative approaches are needed to attract more financing from the private sector and that public money shall be used to reduce risks of private sector investment
This approach appears to be in line with the World Bank`s efforts to repurpose agricultural subsidies for sustainable food systems which the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, has criticized for their focus on creating unspecified incentives, while neglecting other key measures such as market regulation as policy option to curb food price inflation.
Insufficient analysis of the root causes of food insecurity
The FAO’s David Laborde announced that SOFI 2024 will include a “new definition of financing for ending hunger and food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition,” namely, where and how to put the money. He added that interventions shall not focus on symptoms only, but on root causes. However, the root causes outlined in the definition focus on symptoms, such as climate variability, and ignore how inequalities are created and exacerbated. There was no mention of financialization and speculation, power concentration in the food system and the fact that the global economic architecture significantly limits the abilities of governments to respond to their people´s needs.
Financialization of nature and profit-seeking false solutions
“Innovative financing” based on increased private sector involvement is a false solution for food systems transformation. This has echoes in climate and biodiversity policies with multiple impacts on food systems through the financialization of nature.
Similar false technological solutions for the triple ecological crises of climate, biodiversity loss and pollution are promoted by states and corporations which fail to address the rights of small-scale food producers and other people living in rural areas. Profit-seeking false solutions from agribusiness and fossil fuels lobbyists, including "Nature-based Solutions" and carbon offsets, perpetuate the climate crisis by failing to address root causes and further fueling abuses and violations of human rights. There is an urgent need for public oversight mechanisms to protect Indigenous Peoples', peasants' and other rural people's rights in the context of carbon trading.
The latest edition of the Right to Food and Nutrition WATCH, People's Ecological Alternatives to Corporate Greenwashing from the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition, proposes a different way forward based on grassroots struggles against corporate capture, greenwashing and neocolonial practices. It promotes instead the right to food and adequate nutrition, the human rights of peasants and other people in rural areas, and food sovereignty for all.
For more information, please contact Angelica Castaneda-Flores castaneda-flores@fian.org
