REGIONAL DIALOGUE - UNEP South-South Cooperation Forum on Food Security. Online registration by Cvent

BACKGROUND

Empowering women and promoting gender equality is critical in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is at the core of efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger, improve education and health, combat climate change, address environmental problems and other goals.

However, we are still far from attaining gender equality and empowerment of women and girls with resulting losses of welfare to the whole society. Worldwide, women and girls are the key custodians of agrobiodiversity and food security and keepers of resilient food systems. However, they often do not have equal rights to own, use and control land and resources, while at the same time being hampered by limited support for their multiple roles and their formal or informal cooperation. This poses major challenges to food security and agrobiodiversity, especially in the areas with dramatic climate change and fragile ecological and socio-economic environments, such as countries in South and Southeast Asia, where the majority of the world’s smallholder farmers live.

The upcoming 2021 Food Systems Summit aims to generate significant action and measurable progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Likewise, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which recognizes gender equality as fundamental to achieving its goals, will hold the 15^thConference of the Parties (COP 15) in Kunming, China, later this year. These two high-level events are important venues for raising awareness of the crucial importance of the role of women in achieving food security while doing so with sustainable development at the core. What is sought from these global discussions is to elevate the policy discussions about how to support rural women in enhancing agrobiodiversity and agroecology and transforming our food systems to achieve the SDGs for all.

There has never been a more urgent and right time to hold a regional dialogue on this topic. The outbreak of COVID-19 has made women’s and girls’ situation worse, while starkly underlining the important roles they play in safeguarding livelihoods and the social fabric for sustainable food systems and climate change adaptation at grass-root level.

The three-day virtual event “South-South Cooperation Forum on Food Security and Agrobiodiversity in Times of COVID-19 and Climate Change”, organized by UNEP and partners during 30 November – 2 December 2020, clearly brought to the fore the fact that COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on women and disadvantaged groups because they have limited choices and opportunities. The poor, daily wage labourers, farm workers, and marginalized groups are already vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition and will suffer even more as the pandemic strikes. It is clear from different studies that there is a direct relation between poverty and food security. The existing inequalities – including in access to nutritious food/dietary quality and healthcare – will be amplified as a longer and medium-term effect.

Among many topics discussed and good practices shared, the topics less touched upon relate to the comprehensive understanding on the linkages between gender equality, women empowerment, biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, as well as food security for resilience and sustainable food systems. These would include, for instance, what kind of governance models and appropriate policy response measures should be in place to address gender equality challenges and empower women under current situation and thus, what kind of on-the-ground actions can be upscaled in other places.

As a follow up action and in response to the results of the South-South Cooperation forum in 2020, the “Regional Dialogue on Empowering Women to Manage Sustainable Food Systems and Enhancing Agrobiodiversity in the Asia Pacific Region” will be organized on 30 April 2021. This virtual event will bring together key experts and practitioners in the area of gender, food security, and agrobiodiversity in the Asia Pacific region to showcase good practices from actions on the ground to policy making process as well as to explore partnership opportunities to further collaborate on the topics of sustainable food systems. The event is hosted by UNEP, together with UN Women, ICIMOD and ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity.

Moreover, this regional dialogue is of relevance and can provide substantial contributions to several global commitments, for instance the SDGs, Paris Climate Agreement, and CBD. It is also in line with major landmark studies, for example the 2019 IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land as well as the latest UNEP’s sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6). For the CBD, the regional dialogue will directly contribute to the drafting/implementation of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, including on the 2030 Action Target 9 to support biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems through conservation and sustainable use; and the enabling conditions on gender equality, gender-responsive approaches and empowerment of women and girls, among others. According to the GEO-6, agrobiodiversity is highly correlated with food security and resilience of agricultural systems. This is consistent with the IPCC Land Report, which mentions that agroecological approaches can both increase climate resilience and have greenhouse gas mitigation potential. The event will also support the UNEP Medium-Term Strategy 2022-2025, which emphasises the significance of promoting gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in natural resource management, resilient food systems and environmental governance, and so on.

OBJECTIVES

(1) To exchange experiences, lessons learned, and best practices on gender equality and women empowerment in agrobiodiversity, food security and contribution to sustainable food system transformation

(2) To enhance capacity and knowledge for gender responsive policy implication and supporting actions with multiple stakeholders at multiple levels

(3) To provide inputs to the upcoming CBD COP 15 and Food Systems Summit

(4) To explore potential collaboration opportunities to further the gender equality in addressing agrobiodiversity conservation and food system challenges in Asia Pacific.

TARGETED PARTICIPANTS

The event targets more than 50 participants from the Asia Pacific region. These include representatives from UNEP, UN Women, and other UN agencies; interregional and international organizations; national and local governments; networks; NGOs; academic and research institutions; and others.

Opening remarks

(Moderator: Linxiu Zhang, Director, UNEP-IEMP)

15:00-15:15

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity

Dechen Tsering, Director, UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

Mohammad Naciri, Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

Kerstin Stendahl, Head of Ecosystems Integration Branch, UNEP

Session 1: Setting the scene: gender, agrobiodiversity and sustainable food system in Asia Pacific (15’ each)

Chair: Linxiu Zhang (Director, UNEP-IEMP)

15:15-15:30

Food Systems Summit and Gender (Stephanie Gallatova, Agribusiness Officer, FAO)

15:30-15:45

Gendered climate impacts on agriculture and adverse impacts on food security (Inkar Kadyrzhanova, Regional adviser on gender and climate change, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific)

15:45-16:00

Empowering women for sustainable food systems - Perspective from the Hindu Kush Himalaya (Dr. Bandana Shakya, ICIMOD)

16:00-16:15

ASEAN Perspectives on Gender and Biodiversity (Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, Executive Director, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity)

16:15-16:30

SHORT BREAK

Session 2: Showcases of gender empowerment and agrobiodiversity conservation experiences and lessons learned from on-the-ground actions to policy making process (10' each)

Chair: Sarah Knibbs, Deputy Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

16:30-16:40

Empowering Women through Community-based Agricultural Biodiversity Management: Lessons from Nepal Himalaya (Pitambar Shrestha, LI-BIRD, Nepal)

16:40-16:50

Women, food security, and biodiversity conservation: the case of the Orang Rimba in Sumatra, Indonesia (Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity)

16:50-17:00

Empowering Women for Resilience and Susatainability: The Case of Qinghai Project and Beyond (Professor Yiching Song, UNEP-IEMP)

17:00-17:10

Sustainable food system for food and nutrition security (Dr. Nomeena Anis, FAO Pakistan)

17:10-17:20

Agrobiodiversity in Bhutan: Pathways for enhancing wellbeing and happiness (Dr. Tulsi Gurung, Associate Professor/Dean of Academic Affairs, College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan)

17:20-17:30

Gender empowerment & agrobiodiversity conservation in large ocean states, (Karen Mapusua, Director, Land Resources Division of Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC))

Session 3: Open discussions & Closing

Chair: Dr. Abid Hussain, Food Security Economist, Livelihoods, ICIMOD

17:30-18:20

Moderated discussions on (but not limited to)

Inputs to the CBD COP 15, Food Systems Summit

Opportunities to collaboration and joint actions

Way forward

18:20-18:30

Conclusion and closing